Day 7, June 24, 2016 Rochester MN

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Patti has a delightful breakfast with Randy, one of her friends from Mayo High School Really nice to catch up on all the news about friends and family.  We both agreed that it is nice to get together at a time when it was not for a funeral.   There have been way too many deaths during the past couple of years.  It seems to be that time in life.  We used to have more weddings and babies….now those happen just for nieces and nephews (or GREAT nieces and nephews), or for people’s grand children.

More walking in the park.  How we wish we had access to such lovely walking paths near our home.   

Everything is so green, and there are wildflowers in bloom. Here is an example, a wild geranium.  

It is especially fun to walk with Patti’s sister and brother.  We grew up in this park.  Perry takes Patti’s mom walking there most every evening.  Mom is serious about her pedometer, most often getting in 6,000-10,000 steps a day.  Go, Mom!

We were pleased when Patti’s Uncle Jim and Aunt Len and their two grandsons, Max and Chase came over to join us for a big turkey dinner.  Joan did a terrific job of cooking for the whole crew, including making a homemade rhubarb cake, with rhubarb from her yard.

Paula and Patti took Max and Chase for a hike in the woods.  They were quite excited to discover dinosaur bones and fossils in the limestone Quarry.  They were CERTAIN that these were actual dinosaurs, and they are experts!  Their enthusiasm was fun. We wish we could bottle their energy!

After dinner, we gathered around Patti’s Mom’s two big-screen TV’s to watch for our nephew, Jackson’s High School band marching in the Rochester Fest parade.  It was a delight to watch this small city parade with many different units.  And we were very pleased that when Jackson’s band sent by, we were able to catch a good photo of him playing his trumpet.  He is an accomplished trumpet player, and will next year (his Senior year) be one of two drum majors leading his band. Go Jackson!

Family gatherings are so precious! So nice to be back in Minnesota.

Day 6, June 23, 2016 Ankeny Iowa to Rochester MN

Up early and on the road.  Today was the day we would drive from Iowa up to Rochester MN where Patti’s family lives.   Just before we got to the Minnesota boarder, we made a bathroom and gas stop at Boondocks Café.  This place was literally out in the middle of nowhere, or in the “boondocks” as the word is used in the Midwest.  It was a funny way to start our morning.

It is always a joy to cross into Minnesota, the state were Patti lived for over 25 years and Dick for 10 years.

Minnesota farmland goes on for miles and miles.  And, when you can see the dirt, it is the deepest, richest earth that we know.  Good food grows here!

We arrived at Rochester to stay with Patti’s mom, Joan.   This is our first visit back since Patti’s Dad, Harold, died 6 months ago.  So there were mixed feelings as we were so happy to see Patti’s Mom, sister, Paula, and brother Perry, as well as sister-in-law, Jodie, and nephews Josh, Matt and Jackson.  So nice to see all of them….some of Paula’s family were at their lake cabin for the summer,  and we will see Patti’s sister, Peggy and her family later on this trip in Texas.  Seeing family is always great!  And there is also a deep feeling that we all really miss Patti’s dad.  His love and influence still are at the center of our family and our hearts.

One of the joys of the house where Patti grew-up, is that it is situated across the street form a 2000 acre wooded park.  Each day that we will be in Rochester, we will go for at least one, often two, walks “in the Park.”  Walking, talking, enjoying each other’s company and being in the woods.  Priceless!

Across from the family home is a tennis court that Patti's father had been instrumental in being added to the park.  It was fitting that the family dedicated a bench overlooking the courts.  It was important to us to stop by and experience memories of him.  What a fine man!!

 

One of the unexpected things that has happened this last year is Patti’s mom has gotten an IPhone.  She has become quite an accomplished texter as well as really good at playing word games on the phone.  Go, Joan!

Day 5, June 22, 2016 Topeka KS to Ankeny IA

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We were blessed with some luck last night when, having inquired about a confusing $5 off sign in the elevator, which we would not qualify for, the manager gave us the full coupon worth $15, plus we each had a coupon for a free drink…so our whole dinner plus drinks and tips cost us $10 last night.  Score!!! Our young server also worked in a large dog rescue program and wants to be a vet tech.  She was great. And we also got a really fine hot breakfast this morning with a very attentive server guy on duty.  Hoorah for the Ramada Downtown Topeka.  You rocked.

This morning’s highlight was a visit to the Brown V. Board of Education Historical Site in Topeka. This National Park Service site is in one of the four black-only elementary schools in the city prior to 1954.  This school was one that was very nice.  It had highly qualified teachers, a nice facilities, good curriculum and good books.  The “tangibles” there were equal to what was found in the “whites-only” schools. However, tangibles being equal still did not mean it was equal.  The Supreme Court confirmed the students were still having to deal with the fact that they were not allowed to go to a “white school” which had bad psychological and social effects on them, as well as on the white students.    

We arrived in time to look around before going on a wonderful Ranger talk where a highly knowledgeable young ranger talked to us about the fallacy of “separate but equal” as it applied to education as well as to other kinds of public services.

This presentations and displays were high level technological displays with really fine videos.  One thing that was highlighted as sad was the fact that once the schools were integrated, many black teachers lost their jobs because schools did not want white children taught by African America teachers.

We were struck by a mother from New Hampshire who had her 3 children with her, and felt that this stop was a must for her children to understand this part of our country’s history.  This family was taking advantage of the amazing offer that Obama has made to offer any 4^th grade students a year long National Park’s pass for their whole family.  This is normally an $80 value (unless you are over 62 years old…then you can get a life long pass for $10).  We appreciate and honor families who are working hard to pass along to the next generation the enjoyment of our National Parks and our American historical sites.  The teen wrote a thank you note on the blackboard in a classroom.

An hour and a half drive down the road to Independence MO brought us to our afternoon’s visits.

First we went to The National Frontier Trails Museum:  a small museum in a former flour mill which is dedicated to telling the story about the westward expansion that went through Missouri.  This included Lewis and Clark and their voyage of discovery, The Santa Fe Trail, The Oregon Trail, The Mormon Trail, The California Gold Rush.  

 For many years, travelers gathered in Independence to form the wagon trains that would head West. All of these are areas of history and stories that we have followed through out travels and studies. We were pleased to notice, both in watching the movie onsite and walking through the exhibits, how many of these stories were familiar to us. Dick was struck again by how hard it was for people to be on the trail.  Going 900 miles to Santa Fe and over 2000 miles to Oregon….90% of the people who took off for Oregon survived their trip, but 10% did not.  They traveled 15 miles a day. Often walking. 

As we were out in the nearly 100 degree weather today we thought we were glad to get into the air conditioning and were super glad to not be walking alongside a wagon.   We can contrast the fact that we ourselves were in Santa Fe just two days ago, and we have traveled already over 2000 miles in 5 days, in our air conditioned mini-van.  Travel has changed!!!!

We then drove just a couple miles down the road to our second Presidential Library of the trip: The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.  Truman became president in 1945 when Franklin D. Roosevelt suddenly died.  He had been Vice President for only 70 days when this happened, and had met with FDR only twice since the inauguration.   He was president during a very challenging time in our country:  as World War II was coming to the end, he made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the Korean War started, he push for the US to recognize Israel as a country, he ordered that the US military be desegregated. Although, as a southerner, he likely never got over some of his personal prejudices, he still took strong actions for civil rights stating repeatedly that he was the president to all.

He had a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here.” Which meant ultimately he was responsible for the decisions that were made.  He also took on a “do nothing” congress, and while we was campaigning and talking about fighting them, he said he would “Give ‘em hell.” And he did.  His reelection was one of the closest in the history of the country, with the newspapers already printing the headlines that Dewy (his Republican opponent) had won.    Truman had great fun with those newspapers after it was clear that he had been the winner. 

We stopped briefly at the house Truman lived in prior to his Presidency and for 20 years afterwards.  Each day he would arise early and take a walk.  Once he left the White House, he initiated the creation of the first Presidential Library and Museum.  In fact, for most of that 20 years, he personally guided visitors around the Museum.

Then it was time to get back in the car and drive north to our next stop, just beyond Des Moines, Iowa.

Day 4, June 21 Limon CO to Topeka KS

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Dick cleverly suggested that we set our clocks ahead before we went to bed last night so that when we got up on Central time, the clock said 7:00 not 6:00 as we then drove 60 miles to get to Kansas and the Central time zone.  Today focused on a long drive across the state of Kansas.  We drove nearly another 500 miles and enjoyed the easy driving now on Interstate 70.  As we drove we watched the land change from the arid grasslands of Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas to irrigated farmlands to rolling green hills of Central Kansas.  We passed from what had been the native short-grass prairies to the native tall-grass prairies.  The tall-grass prairies, often over 6’ high, were almost totally plowed under by the early white settlers. Dick is fascinated by the change of the land and the countryside and what was possible for people because of the differences in land.

Our first stop midafternoon was at the first of our Presidential Libraries….this is one of our new themes or projects.  Over the years we have done a number of these: visiting all 21 of the California Missions, finding the former Japanese-American Internment Camps, All of the Bridges of Madison County (Iowa), and we traveled to all 50 states.  We don’t believe that “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

We have now set a goal to visit all of the US Presidential Libraries, around 13 of them in the country.  Last summer we made it to the Lincoln Library in Springfield IL.  Why visit these libraries?  It can be best summed up by a quote from a book Patti found about a guy who went to all of these museums in two months, David Cross. (We are reading about his experiences with each library as we are driving to them).  He wrote:

“I took a journey to visit each of the Presidential Libraries, not because I am a historian, but because I am an American.”

Today we visited the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas.  Eisenhower was the Commanding General of not only the US forces but all of the Allied forces in Europe in World War II.  He was president for 8 years from 1952-1960.  The museum had a huge focus on the history of World War II, but not glorifying his role, rather that of so many, from so many different countries, who worked together to defeat Hitler.  

 Patti was especially touched by the section focused on what had happened in Denmark with the Nazi occupation.  There was a great little photo of Danish soldiers guarding a building that, after the Nazi had left, was “closed due to happiness.”  Indeed.  We were again struck by what it would be like to have your home, city or country filled with enemy soldiers. We know that many people around the world do not have to imagine what this would be like, but have lived it.

The museum also focused on what was happening in the country during the 1950’s.  It was a time mostly of peace, and prosperity for the US, as well as a time of change.  Eisenhower was a military guy through and through, one of the very few 5 star generals in the US Army.  He was big on giving and enforcing orders.  He was also a man of his times.  So that while many Civil Rights advances and battles happened during his presidency, he was more of an enforcer rather than providing moral leadership.  We will be visiting both the Civil Right sites in Topeka KS, following the Brown V Board of Education (which established that "separate but equal" education doesn’t fly here), and the site of the Little Rock 9 in Arkansas where Eisenhower sent in the National Guard to allow the black children to attend the formerly all-white schools.  So we will learn much more about these events that happened during “The Eisenhower Years.”

He was a popular president who then seemed to go out of fashion, as dull and uninspiring, especially as compared to John F. Kennedy. When he was running for office, his campaign slogan was “I like Ike” (referring to his nickname).

In several places Eisenhower was referred to as a “decent man.”  And we remarked that the country could use a few more decent men (or women) as leaders. 

The second stop, about an hour down the road, was The Oz Museum in Wamego, KS. This was dedicated to all things OZ.  Not too many genuine artifacts from the movie, but lots of fun photos opportunities. We learned some fascinating things about the author, L. Frank Baum, but also lots of trivia about making the movie and all of the actors and participants.  Dick especially enjoyed the looping version of the movie playing in a little movie theatre in the back.  We got to see Dorothy throw the water on the Wicked Witch of the West….Classic! After the Wizard of Oz book came out in 1900, and was so popular that the public demanded more.  Baum wrote 13 more books in that series.  It was the Harry Potter book series of his time. Baum married a woman whose mother was a major Women’s Right’s leader, Matilda Jocelyn Gage.  Some say that Dorothy was the first popular feminist movie hero. All in all, kind of a cheesy place, but for sure worth a stop. 

Next door to the museum was Toto’s Tacoz.   

You had to drive on the "Road to Oz Highway" to get to the town. They pumped the Kansas connection with the Wizard of Oz for all it’s worth. There is even a little Yellow Brick Road pathway leading to a restaurant.We felt that we had a real visit to the Land of OZ, and then returned back to Kansas because "There's no place like home."

Day 3, June 20, 2016 Rio Rancho NM to Limon CO

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Up early (6:10am!) and after breakfast and packing the car, we hit the road.  A long amount of driving today, around 500 miles, so we wanted to get an early start. 

We headed north through Santa Fe, where we remembered a lovely week we spent there several years back).  Our reminiscing brought us by Abiquiu, where Georgia O-Keefe did much of her painting, and by Ghost Ranch, where we took an amazing tour previously where we went to many of the actual spots where O’Keefe painted and then saw prints of the paintings in front to the astounding landscapes.  We had so much fun that we somehow missed our main road route that was to easily take us into Colorado.  

 Instead, we found a “scenic byway” with breathtaking views. 

The highlight of this was seeing The Toltec Scenic Railroad.  We saw people getting ready to go up the mountain on this steam engine pulled narrow-gauge train. Another time, we thought…we’d love to see that in action.  As it turned out, soon, as we were driving we saw smoke, Patti said, “Is that a fire?”  Dick replied, “No, that is the train.” 

And so we began an hour of leap-frogging the train as it went through mountain meadows and class train stations.  We caught up with it and were able to see up close just how lovingly this train has been cared for. We even had a deer jump out in front of the picturesque pond as the train went by. Stunning! 

The smell of coal burning brought memories of childhood back to Dick, and Patti swore that the sound of the train really was “I think I can, I think I can!”  Not on our agenda, but well worth the out of the way trip.

Our real goal was the only national park in Colorado that Dick had not visited:  Great Sand Dunes National Park, a little ways into Colorado in the middle of the state.  Sounds straightforward, right?  We kept losing our highway due in part to an appalling lack of route signs.  Even our trusty GPS “Joanne” (as we have named the woman’s voice who tells us what to do) couldn’t really help us.  She would keep” recalculating” our route and our estimated arrival time slipped later and later into the afternoon.  Persistence (or stubbornness) kicked in. We were going to find this park!

At last, we could spot some large sand-colored areas up against some tall mountains.  Yay, we were here!  No, it was still nearly 30 miles away, these dunes were so large, we just kept driving and driving

How did there get to be sand dunes in the middle of Colorado? you ask.  Here is the simple explanation:  The valley had originally been the bottom of a sea, breaking volcanic rock into sand.  When the water left, the sand remained.  Strong winds swept down the valley, pushing the sand against the mountains.  Counter winds from the mountains formed the sand into dunes.  These are the tallest dunes in North America, over 750 feet tall and covering 30 square miles.  So impressive, especially with the snow topped mountains behind them.

Having watched the excellent film about the dunes, looked at the exhibits in the visitor’s center, we were at last ready to go explore.  However, the major short-term exploring meant wading across some fairly fast moving, deep, muddy water, then putting your shoes back on to clamber around on the lower sand dunes.  Although clearly many people were totally enjoying this….the buzz of mosquitoes and the muddy water, plus knowing we still had a number of hours more driving led both of us to the decision, we didn’t need to go through the water to be up on the dunes.  We had climbed dunes in several other places so knew what they could be like, but thought we would pass on these.  We could be impressed without walking onto the lower dunes. They were gorgeous and rare, and we were satisfied with having gotten there to see them.

We packed up and headed another couple hundred miles down the road to Limon Colorado for a greatly appreciated night at our hotel.   One sign we had  never seen before at a hotel check-in desk asked guest to please not smoke pot in their rooms…. Marijuana is totally legal in Colorado…I guess they need to be more specific with their "no smoking" signs. We followed that request.

Day 2, June 19, 2016 Flagstaff AZ to Albuquerque, NM

Up early, enjoying the fresh mountain air of Flagstaff.  The smell of pine forests permeates this town at over 7,000 feet elevation.

As we checked out of the hotel, we had a sobering discussion with the young woman at the desk.  Her boyfriend is a firefighter and he had just finished up a fire and they were in “clean up” mode, so he was sleeping at home at night.  Fires are burning throughout the west, so she was prepared for times when he could be gone fighting fires for several weeks at a time, where she would not know whether he was safe or not. With temperatures blazing above 100 degrees in many places, it is quite a thought to put on fire fighting gear (which we know quite a bit about because Dick’s brother, John, has been selling this gear for something over 30 years, maybe close to 40 years.   Our thoughts are with fire fighters who risk their lives everyday working to keep us all safe.

Driving down the road, Patti is ever on the watch for cool roadside attractions.  We saw a few today.  She could not resist hopping aboard a giant jackrabbit.  Who could resist something like that?

We then drove over 300 miles east to arrive in the Albuquerque area.  Patti’s seminary roommate, Tomi, and her husband, Hank, have lived in this area for a long time.  We try to visit whenever we get in the area.  The temps were over 100 degrees there, so we sought cool air conditioning.  Good friends, good food.  Always nice to get together even though we live 800 miles apart.

Dinner was at one of their favorite restaurants where we got to eat Coffee Chicken….delicious, although Dick swears it doesn’t taste at all like coffee. We ended the evening with Patti and Tomi having a couple of hours to get caught up just the two of them.   

After driving Tomi back to their place, Patti had a moonlight labyrinth walk back at our Air B&B.  Magical! 

We were pleased to spend a quick night’s stay at an Air BnB that we stayed at before.  This one is run by a yoga teacher with a lovely labyrinth in the backyard.  Wish we could have stayed longer, but we must roll one.  Miles and miles more to go on this trip.

Day One: June 18, 2016 Oceanside CA to Flagstaff AZ

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On the road again.   The further adventures of Patti and Dick.  Some of you have followed us on a number of our legendary roadtrips in the past: to Alaska, to Key West and Cape Cod, to Washington and Oregon.  Some of you might we asking, “What, are they crazy?  Driving to all of those places from San Diego?  And you might be all asking, “What now?”

Tune in during the next 49 days to the semi-regular postings of our travel blog, filled with just a few of the many thousand photos that we plan to take, and some of our travel musings as we drive from San Diego, through the middle of the US with stops in New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas with a week’s stop in Minnesota, then up over the Great Lakes through Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City to get to the Canadian Maritimes.  As some of you might know, this includes visits to Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.  Then we head back down into the U.S. with stops in Maine, Boston, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Arizona and back home.

Sound fun?  Sound exhausting?  Either way, you can come along with us by look at our blog at   www.PattiDicksGrandAdventure.blogspot.com    We are not promising every day will have new things, because sometimes you just have to take some time out to play, rest and see things, but we will write and post when we are able.  Come along and join us!

Okay, so what does it take to clear your schedule and take off on the road for 50 days?  You have to work your hind end off until the last minute.  Someone asked Patti if to do a trip like this you just got in your car and started driving.  Not really.

These past months has given us time to plan, create Excel spreadsheets with the routes, places to stay, timing, etc. (more on this another day).   Dick creates routes and figures out dates and then Patti springs into action of exploring and making reservations at hotels and Air BnB’s (more and these later, too).  There are also contacts with a number of friends and family to let them know when we are able to be in their area and to see if we can get together and/or stay with them.

There are things to buy, and things to find, and sometimes things to build (again, more on Dick’s plate.)  This time, he built a new version of his famous shelf to fit in the back of our new minivan.  We used to sleep many nights in our old minivan on these types of trips, but decided that our sleeping in the van days are over.  However, this shelf allows us to pack up everything we need for 7 weeks, plus be able with have space for a single mattress on the side that we can take turns taking naps on while we drive.  This is a very slick deal, and allows us to bring a lot of stuff while still being able to go off duty and stretch out.  Ahhh!

Having cleared it with our jobs (with lots of things that needed taking care of until the very end), and talking with our neighbors who keep an eye out on our house, stopping delivery on the mail and the newspaper, and making sure our plants will get watering and TLC while we are gone….we are finally “off”.

We pulled out of the driveway at 10:21am, and headed down the road.  One of the activities on the first day is always coming up with items that we left behind.  This time:  the pocket knife that has the wine opener, a printout of car license plates for the license plate game, a small cutting board to use when cutting cheese or making sandwiches….nothing that we cannot replace.  One year Dick forgot the battery charger for his camera.  THAT one was tricky, and required ordering on Amazon twice before getting one that would work.  Just par for the course.

Dick, as usual did most of the driving, with Patti spelling him in the middle of the afternoon so he could take a well-deserved nap. 

The landscape changes when you drive 500 miles in one day:  from Southern California cities, to desert landscapes, mountains, and climbing up into the juniper trees.  Huge sections of the road go by without any cross streets or roads.  Lots of trucks and people on the move, including us.

As it happens, a heat wave has moved across the country, so we are so grateful to have good air conditioning.  And our hotel in Flagstaff has a swimming pool which we thought we had arrived at soon enough that we could take a dip before a nice long night’s rest.

However, in the spirit of adventure, Patti found a place to go check out on her roadside attractions app:  The Lowell Observatory.  This was built by a millionaire in 1898 because he wanted a great telescope where he could see the supposed canals on the surface of Mars.  Plus, he was hopeful to be able to see some Martians or other aliens.

This sounded like a cool quirky place to go….as it turns out, not just quirky, but high quality and highly popular with literally hundreds of people gathering after dark to see plants and stars through the big telescopes, plus see other shown by amateur astronomers.  We had an amazing time standing in a long line in order to see Mars.  A tourist and his 5^th grade son had been on an afternoon tour earlier and gave us the mini tour while we waited;  the most notable things about this observatory was that this was where the planet Pluto was “discovered” and the fact the universe is expanding.  We were reminded that Pluto has been classified as the largest of the known dwarf planets.

We also learned that this millionaire guy had the telescope built in Flagstaff, didn’t like the weather and had it disassembled and moved to Mexico City for one month.  There he decided he liked it better in Flagstaff so had it taken apart and moved back.  If you have enough money, anything is possible.

Dick was so pleased with the capability of his new camera.  He could take some amazing pictures in the dark of the telescopes, plus got quite amazing photos of the moon.  Wow!  A stunning way to end day one.

And so it begins….