April 17, 2009

Springtime in the Rockies

Easter Dinner

Bruce is proud of this roast

Mom's Gravesite

We haven’t posted to the blog in over 2 weeks. We drove 1800 plus miles in just over 3 days -spending an evening with Jim and Carol Stevenson in West Lafayette, Indiana along the way.
Barb’s mother passed away peacefully with family present on April 3rd and her funeral was on April 6th. Barb, her 3 sisters and all their families were present at the visitation and the funeral. It was gratifying to see the overwhelming number of people who came to pay their respects to Mom. All of her siblings were also present. The silver lining in this dark cloud of sadness was the chance to see so many relatives that we hadn’t seen in a very long time. So many of you have expressed your condolences and we appreciate your thoughtfulness during this difficult time.
After the funeral, we started working on all the loose ends. We did spend Easter with family eating a huge beef roast.
Tuesday, April 14 found us starting our drive home. We had decided to abort our trip, head home and then drive back to Ripon in May for Matt Peppler’s graduation from college. We spent Tuesday evening with Dwayne and Mary Hochhalter in Perry, Iowa visiting with them and seeing pictures from their trip last fall to Berlin, Prague and Vienna.
On Thursday, we arrived at Joan (Barb’s sister) and Jim Graf’s house in Littleton, Co to deliver some things from Mom’s house after 2 windy days on the high prairie. We talked about how miserable it would have been to cross those prairies in a wagon in high winds. We also stopped for a look at the Union Pacific train museum in Council Bluffs and Don drove a virtual train. Unfortunately, a spring snow storm is predicted for Denver and the Rockies (18-36 inches) - it is snowing hard right now - and so they are stuck with us until it eases up which looks like Saturday afternoon. So Sunday we’ll start home and hope to be back in Seattle by mid-week.

April 1, 2009

After talking to Barb’s sisters, we decided to leave Key West and head to Wisconsin as quickly as possible since Mom was quickly slipping away. We drove 480 miles from Key West to northern Florida. Our goal is to be in Ripon, Wisconsin with family by Saturday.

March 31, 2009

Sunset in the Keys
Mallory Square Fun

On Monday , drove to Key West where we walked down Duval St window shopping, checking out the bars and onto Mallory Square for the sunset and street theater.
We heard from Barb’s sisters that their mom had suffered a massive stroke and was hospitalized. Tests showed a large clot pressing on her brain stem that is inoperable.
Tuesday found us hanging out by the pool, enjoying the beautiful weather and keeping in touch with Mom’s condition. We drove to the southernmost point in the continental US. We have driven 7200 miles thus far.

March 29, 2009

We arrived in South Florida on Friday afternoon and spent the weekend at Brian and Whitney Neff’s house in Coral Springs. Brian is Don’s nephew. Brian’s mom, Bev Neff threw a belated birthday party on Saturday evening for Don and Brian (both have birthdays in February) with a lovely dinner complete with a tasty coconut cake made by Whitney. We spent the weekend catching up on paperwork and doing our laundry.

March 26, 2009

Sonny and Holly with us at dinner

Today we feasted at “Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House” in Savannah. This was our third try - first time, the long line scared us away, the second time, we came on a day they were closed, this time the trip was scheduled around this event. The menu included: fried chicken, pork barbeque, beef stew, sausage, and 24 side dishes all served family style. We were stuffed and drove to St. Augustine, FL so we could have dinner with Sonny and Holly Carouthers. Sonny was Don’s best friend in high school.

March 25, 2009

Georgetown, SC harbor

Charleston, SC Architecture

We decided to visit Darlington NASCAR Speedway on our way to the coast. - another of the old time tracks. We followed the back roads to Georgetown, SC which was the largest rice producer in the US in the 1800’s. We art a fish lunch at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. Wonderful flounder and grouper. We followed the coastline into Charleston, toured the historical district and walked Battery Park with a view of Fort Sumter.
From Charleston, we drove along the coast to Edisto Island, home of Gullah descendants. Gullah means freed slaves. We continued our drive south to Beaufort, SC - second oldest city in South Carolina - Charleston is first. We bought boiled peanuts and enjoyed them on our way into Savannah, Georgia. We toured the waterfront district and admired some of the park like city squares that Savannah is famous for. This city is also famous for its candy - so of course, we purchased pralines - regular and chocolate.

March 23, 2009

We finally are leaving Mississippi and heading into Tennessee on the Natchez Trace. The Trace is a 300 year old trail between Nashville and Natchez used by Ohio Valley farmers who floated their goods to New Orleans, sold their goods and returned home by foot or horseback. We exited the Trace and visited the Civil War site of Stones River at Murfreesboro. We finished the day in Pigeon Forge, TN.
After a good night’s sleep, we drove through the Great Smokey Mountains National Park - which is celebrating its75th anniversary this year. We had lunch with Barry and Betty McKay, high school classmates (and high school sweethearts) of Don in Ashville, NC and drove to Columbia, SC.

March 21, 2009

Race Car Driver -Talladega

Corinth, MS Railroad Junction - same as 1862

Talladega Speedway is the longest track in NASCAR with a 2.66 mile track and 33 degree banked turns - requires speed of 85mph to stay on the track. We toured the track and lucky for us there were sprint/nationwide cars testing. We drove back into Mississippi to Corinth. A civil war battle here was fought to seize and protect a critical railroad juncture. It was interesting to stand at that same crosswords today that existed in 1862.

March 20, 2009

Alabama's Football Stadium

Arlington House

Birmingham Botanical Gardens

Today we drove northeast to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for lunch at the famous Dreamland Bar-B-Que Restaurant. The restaurant is hard to find until you can see and smell the smoke. They only serve pork ribs, sausage, white bread to soak up the sauce and just recently they added cole slaw and potato salad to the menu. These ribs were smoked meat at its best. Yum! Yum! We also drove through the University of Alabama campus - huge football stadium and beautiful buildings.
We drove further north to Birmingham to visit the antebellum mansion, Arlington House and the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. We spent the night in Talladega.

March 19, 2009

New Orleans

Garden District
St. Paddy's Day - New Orleans Style

Gumbo Dinner

Street Cars are running again
Algiers Point Shotgun House

Shopping in New Orleans

Ninth Ward Abandoned House - Flooded to the Attic

Jimmie Rodgers' Original Guitar

Tuesday, we drove into New Orleans. The weather is glorious - not too hot and beautiful blue skies. We parked the car in the Garden District and walked around the area enjoying the architecture and gardens. This area suffered little damage from Hurricane Katrina. We found a block party celebrating St. Paddy’s Day - lots of green beer and people jamming the streets. We took some pictures and moved on.
We rode the St. Charles streetcar to the French Quarter and ate gumbo at the Gumbo Shop.
Wednesday, we used the Garden District again as our base and took the streetcar to the French Quarter. We rode the ferry to Algiers Point across the Mississippi River from downtown. The architecture in this neighborhood had a real Victorian feel to it and the shotgun style houses were much more accessible than the mansions in the Garden District. This neighborhood is being restored and renovated.
We had read and heard a lot about the destruction in the Lower Ninth Ward. Remember that 80% of New Orleans were flooded by the failure of the levees (September 2005). The center of this was the Ninth Ward. We drove through the neighborhood to see for ourselves. We saw some houses had been rebuilt, some still have the markings from the search crews and too many razed lots. Interesting enough, Fats Domino’s home is located in the Ninth Ward and suffered some damage. We did see the Habitat of Humanity new homes and the new neighborhood construction by Brad Pitt. Still a very sad situation but we did see some hopeful signs.
Spike Lee directed a 4 part DVD called “When the Levees Broke”, it is a fascinating and moving documentary.
Today we left New Orleans and headed east to Mississippi. We stopped in Hattiesburg at Camp Shelby to visit the Armed Forces Museum. We drove to Meridian to visit the Jimmie Rodgers Museum - considered to be the father of country music. Jimmie Rodgers, also known as the Singin’ Brakeman, was born and is buried in Meridian. The docent at the museum let us in even though it was closing time, showed us his $750,000 guitar(kept in a safe) and some of the memorabilia.

March 16, 2009

Today we drove east to Sealy, TX - home of Sealy mattress factory and then east to Houston and northeast to Beaumont. We crossed into Louisiana and to Lafayette. We had our first taste of Louisiana food - shrimp po’boys from a grocery store, Olde Tyme Market. Yummy- stuffed with plump, sweet shrimp.

March 15, 2009

Jim's Latest Find-Cascabel Mexican Food

On Monday, we drove across west Texas through the rain and wind. The truck was pushed around as we struggled to do 80 mph. Texas has been suffering from a drought so they were happy to see 4 plus inches of rain in two days. We were cold and wet as the temperatures were in the 50’s. We were so happy to arrive in San Antonio at Ruthie and Jim Stewart (travel buddies).
We spent the weekend visiting the McNay Museum Statue Garden, Missions - San Juan and Espada and having lunch at the wonderful restaurant, Cascabel (traditional Mexican food).
Finally on Sunday the weather broke and we saw blue skies and warmer temperatures. We enjoyed a neighborhood walk before we packed our bags for our departure on Monday.

March 10, 2009

Fabulous White Sands Monument - walk barefoot and never burn your feet!

After spending the night in Las Cruces, we headed out to White Sands National Monument. The white gypsum sands are so white and the dune formations offer lots of choices for hiking and picture taking. It is one of our favorite spots. We drove back to Las Cruces and along the scenic route to El Paso, TX. This route took us through pecan orchards and farmlands. We had planned to visit Chopes Restaurant for lunch but they were closed by the time we got there. Don went into the Post Office to ask about any other restaurants in the area. The woman working the counter suggested “The Rose Garden” in Anthony, TX. The food was tasty and reminded us of some of our favorites in Mexico. We drove through El Paso and spent the night in Van Horn, TX.

March 9, 2009

Silver City Art District
Silver City Architecture

Fort Bayard Officers' Quarters

Santa Rita Open Pit Copper Mine (the town of Santa Rita is now buried under the tailings)

We left Phoenix and drove south to Tucson and visited the Saguaro National Park (sentinel cactuses). We then east to New Mexico after a lunch spot at a great Mexican restaurant (Magalys in Benson, AZ). In New Mexico, we headed northeast to Silver City, a silver, gold and copper mining region discovered in the 1800's. We had hoped to spend time learning about the mining history of the area, but Silver City today is focusing more on their art colony. We have been talking about coming here for 10 years and needless to say it turned out to be a disappointment. We did visit Fort Bayard, the last New Mexico military post built. It was also home to some of the buffalo soldiers who fought the Apaches to protect the miners in the region. Today due to its 6000 foot altitude, dry air, and clear skies it is one of three facilities in the country dedicated to the research and treatment of tuberculosis. Unfortunately, today was rainy and cold so the views were not what we had anticipated. However, we did take a scenic drive through the Gila National Forest up over Emory Pass (8200 feet- wet slush along the road). We had lunch in Hatch, NM, a town famous for its chili peppers, chili powder and canned chilis. We are spending the night in Las Cruces, NM, a favorite of ours.

March 7, 2009

Poolside at the Flamingo
Amanda, the birthday girl

Family Breakfast

After spending one day on our own at The Orleans Casino, we joined Barb's sisters, Joan and Margaret (and her family) at the Flamingo to celebrate the 21st birthday of our niece, Amanda Kautzer (junior at DePaul). It was her first time in Vegas, her first time gambling so we added to her slide into adulthood (not to mention the quart size margaritas she was drinking). Amanda's brother, Luke and his girl friend, Meghan flew in late Friday night to add to the partying and we all had a nice family breakfast before we left for Arizona.

We drove to Hoover Dam (still spectacular) south to Kingman, AZ to the Route 66 museum and arrived just after sunset in Phoenix.

March 5, 2009

Drove north and east to Las Vegas. Part of the drive was on Old Route 66 which was the first cross country highway to the west coast. When Don was 4 years old, his family drove this route from Los Angeles to St. Louis where his Dad joined Mcdonnell Aircraft in the run up to WWII. In 1940, you could only cross the desert at night due to the car's speed and frequency of overheating. We had 6 people in a Plymouth coupe and Don slept on the rear window ledge.

March 4, 2009 AGAIN

Mike and Cindy Kelly - home in Palm Desert

March 4, 2009

Don's birthday lunch- Sherman's Deli
Our house in Palm Springs

Superman's Vacation Home Marker


Greek Festival

It turns out that the cabana we are staying in is the original home of George Reeves (the first Superman). We are on the edge of the famous district called “The Movie Colony”. We have been in Palm Springs a week now and today is our last day. Our days have been filled with sun tanning by the pool, relaxing in the hot tub under the desert sky and swimming in 80 + degree weather. A cold front is moving in today and the temperature is dropping into the mid 70’s. During our stay here, we have also connected with friends, Richard & Diana Newton, Gloria & Cliff Johnson and Mike & Cindy Kelly. The first two couples are from Eldec days. We attended a local Greek Festival on Sunday with Richard and Diana. Mike and Cindy we met on the East Europe trip in 2007 and we had dinner with them at their new home in Palm Desert.
Tomorrow we leave for Las Vegas to do our part to jump start the economy (and help celebrate our niece’s 21st birthday.)

February 27, 2009

Today is Don’s 73rd birthday.

We woke up in our cabana at El Castillo Del Sol in Palm Springs, California. From our bed, we can see the pool and woke up to blue skies and warm temperatures. It fit’s the bill. Yesterday we drove 500 plus miles through the rain, over mountain passes and arrived to 80 degree weather here in Southern California. Barb had rented this place for a week. The house is owned by a man from Seattle and he rents out 2 of the wings. It is a funky, eclectic home from the 1930’s with Hope/Crosby/LaMour as neighbors in old Palm Springs. We have a little kitchen, use of the pool and hot tub. And all the grapefruit we want. Last night was VillageFest in Old Town with lots of booths with crafts, dates and funky California stuff.
(We are still in California and we’re already 1800 miles into our trip.)

February 25, 2009

After saying our good byes to Patty and Gerry, we drove south along the east side of the bay to Arjun and Bindu Israni’s house in Fremont. They live in a gorgeous home in the hills with views all the way to the water. Arjun shared some of his extensive wine collection with us- wonderful California cabernets. The evening was filled with wonderful food, great wines and lots of reminiscing.

February 23, 2009

We had lunch with Mildie Whedon. Mildie and her husband, John are dear friends that we had met on a trip in the Scandinavian countries. John is now in the Alzheimer’s wing in a home in San Rafael. Mildie has moved to a lovely condo just minutes away from John. Mildie is planning a trip to Italy with her Italian study group in June and still is as feisty as ever.

February 22, 2009

Yesterday we drove up to Sonoma and Napa valley to visit wineries. We stopped at Jacuzzi, Larsen Family and Ballentine to taste. Each had its own unique character. Jacuzzi was very crowded but the host was very attentive and focused on us - their speciality is Italian style wines which were very tasty. The Larsen Family is located down unpaved road - very rural feeling. We really enjoyed the Gewurtztraminer and purchased a bottle which was consumed while we played a game of boules overlooking the vineyard. Gerry and I took an early lead. Patty and Don tried to make a comeback but we pulled out a win. The mustard was blooming in the fields and was very photogenic. For lunch, we dined at The Rutherford Grill (Patty and Gerry's favorite restaurant) - good food and ambience. We ate so late that it became our lunch and dinner. Our last stop was at Ballentine-we purchased a case of red - big, full taste - YUM!!!
Today it is really raining here. We are taking a slow, lazy day. Patty is leaving us to fly to Albuquerqe, New Mexico with her mom, Lois for a meeting and some touring. We'll miss her.

February 20, 2009

We left Reno this morning. Our drive into Reno was uneventful. The weather was gorgeous. We had purchased chains for the truck in Sacramento because the highway report insisted that chains were required for 40 miles along I-80 across Donner Pass and partway into Nevada. Of course by the time we had driven up into the mountains, the road was plowed and very clean and no chains needed at all. Frustrating but the driving was very easy. We gambled our way around Reno - no big winners and no big losers either. The weather was very good and driving back into California on Friday was easy.
We drove to Patty and Gerry Hiatt's house in Mill Valley today and are sure happy to see them. It has been so long since we have had the chance to visit and we've really been anticipating this visit.

February 17, 2009

After we left Washington, we drove to Red Bluff, California. Crossing into California was uneventful, however, as we drove into the Mt. Shasta area we entered a snow zone with lots of snow along the road and big flakes hitting the windshield. We were not amused. As we got to lower elevation, the precipitation changed over to rain which continued throughout the evening. Unfortunately, the weather report was full of bad news. It was snowing in the Sierra Mountains and chains were required to get over the pass into Reno. This meant we moved out reservation out a day in Reno and spent the night in a motel in Sacramento.

February 15, 2009

We packed up the truck with clothes for every situation, camping gear, and all our maps and headed south. Our first stop was with Dave and Mandy McCallum in Vancouver, Washington. The weather was spring like and really put us into the travelling mood. Dave cooked a wonderful meal of lamb which we enjoyed with Mandy's parents, Ed and Eileen Hyde. Ed's daughter from France, Viv and her husband, Allan were also visiting. The evening was fun with lots of laughs and a few bottles of wines.

Reason to Leave Seattle

So much snow has fallen this winter in Seattle that we knew we had to get out of town to someplace warmer.