Category Trips

West Coast Spring 2018 – Santa Fe, Part One

May 29 – June 1 With a seven-hour drive ahead of us we got on the road early, walking out the door with Bev as she left for work.  We’d be splitting the 11-hour drive to Santa Fe into two stages, doing the lion’s share today with an overnight in Dalhart, Texas giving us a […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – Kansas

May 24 – 28 With just a four-hour drive ahead of us (one goal for this trip was to minimize big mileage drives) we broke camp in a leisurely fashion and made the drive into Colony, Kansas for a long-anticipated visit with Bev and her husband Bill on their spread out in the country.  It […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – Branson

May 20-23 We had a four-hour drive ahead of us and wanted to get to Branson early in the afternoon in order to set up camp at Branson KOA, our home for the next four nights.  We were curious as to what we would find in this town, known as a popular destination for vacationers […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – Sikeston

May 18 – 19 Because we had to cancel our weeklong ride along the Katy Trail, we needed to fill up the days before arriving in Kansas at my sister Bev’s place.  We added a day to Nashville and one to our stay with her, which still left us with six nights to fill.  We […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – Nashville, Part Four

May 14 – 17 With some time to kill our last morning in Nashville, Joanna took her bike out for a ride on the nearby greenway (my knee was still in no condition to do so) while I read and worked on the blog.  After she returned and cleaned up, we drove to Post East […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – Nashville, Part Three

May 14 – 17 With not much on the agenda for the day but to drive to Lynchburg for our scheduled tour of the Jack Daniels Distillery, we drove two blocks down Fatherland to a cool looking coffee shop we’d noticed, The Post East.  We parked out front and went it, scanning the menu as […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – Nashville, Part Two

May 14 – 17 Our first stop of the afternoon was the Parthenon (Nashville).   A full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens, it was designed by Confederate veteran William Crawford Smith and constructed in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Originally built of plaster, wood, and brick, it was not intended to […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – Nashville, Part One

May 14 – 17 We set out as planned on Monday morning, hitting the freeway right around 9am and settled in for the first of many such drives on a trip that would take us somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 miles.  It was a nice weather for driving and we’d enjoy similar days throughout […]

West Coast Spring 2018 – It Begins

May 14 – 17 Upon our return from Cycle North Carolina I prepared for my last few days of working on campus and on Wednesday went there to be one of the featured speakers at the retirement celebration of a valued co-worker and friend, Jim Kay.  He was one of our most important hires for […]

Montreal 2018 – Part Three

April 12-16 With the wedding scheduled to start in the early afternoon, we were up pretty early and with coffee made, laid into the “Francois” breakfast we’d assembled, Dillon requesting it as it reminded him of the picnic we’d had in Paris in 2015 with his then girlfriend Simone, Beverly, Francois and myself. With temperatures […]