My home on the range

As I sit here and daydream at "my mountain" (it's really Sandia Peak that sits outside our backyard) I feel very tired but content. 

We arrived back in New Mexico the day before Halloween and started the process of unloading the motorhome and getting it ready for it's next journey to AZ for the winter.  But with this cross-country trip I was able to cross off one item on my bucket list.  I've always wanted to see Canada and go as far as I could.  Making it to the Maritimes and being in Atlantic time was quite a kick.  I've lived on Eastern timr for the first 18 years of my life then switched to Pacific for the remainer, but never have I ever been an extra hour away from Eastern.  Would I do it again?  Not the whole trip, but definitely go to the two provinces we missed which was Newfoundland and Labrador.  If Nova Scotia was any indication of what those two looked like that is a wonderful place to see.  We did have a friend that lived "on the rock" as he called Labrador, but he has since moved back to British Columbia.  Next on my bucket list is to visit Austrailia which we will be doing next April.

When Karl and I first got together I never realized how much I would be traveling, but after a while I realzed that if I didn't do it now while I was able, I would never do it as I got older.  The older you get the slower you get and I didn't want to miss things that I wouldn't be able to do as I got older. 

So here is a little advice that I have gleaned from my life so far: redo your priorities - housework can wait but kids and spouses can't - you may never know when they will be gone from you, when you retire don't retire to the couch and languish - get out and find a hobby to do - it will keep you young, don't wait until you have "time" - time will leave before you know it and you can't get it back.

Throwed rolls

Today was the last "official" cross-country trip stop before going on to New Mexico.  We stopped in Springfield, Missouri for a couple of days to see a friend of Karl's and to visit Branson again.  We had been here in '09 after my son got married and did a lot of shows in Branson - 16 in 7 days!  We weren't really excited to see anything this time, but his friends had to take us to see one show.  It was a variety show featuring six brothers that sing accapella including all the instruments.  They are from a family of 10 - count 'em - 10 boys!  No girls.  What was so inspiring is that their mom was told by the doctor that she would never bear children.  Unfortunately she passed away in 1992 from cancer.  It was a very good show and one you should see if you ever get to Missouri.  The show is called "Six".  Check it out.

While we were parked in Springfield we had to stop for dinner at our favorite restaurant called Lambert's - home of the throwed rolls.  What does that mean?  Well, as you sit eating the wait staff roams the place doling out fried okra (yuck!), mac and tomatoes, fried potatoes, sorghum and rolls.  Sounds tame, right?  Well, when the rolls are removed from the oven and nice and warm the staff comes out and THROWS the rolls at you!.  And I don't mean toss, but thrown!  They are nice, big yeasty rolls that are fantastic!  Unfortunately they have restaurants only in Missouri.

Tomorrow we go to another friend of Karl's (notice a pattern here?) and will stay at their place for the night.  Nothing is scheduled for visitation and we hope to take it easy for the rest of the trip.  It's been a fun journey and we have had a great time, but I am ready to get back to my "stick" house for a while, just to stay in one place longer that two days.  We plan on being home for a week then move the MH to Arizona before moving on to the CA house for the holidays.

I Saw My Boys!

We visited Nashville this time since I've already seen Memphis (thankyou - thankyouverramuch).  I've always wanted to see Nashville, but was always on the wrong side when we came through Tennessee.  This time I put it in our travel plans.

As usual we took a Greyline bus tour and got a lay of the land, so to speak.  We were taken through the city of Nashville and you really couldn't tell that they had a devastating flood six months ago.  There is a huge shopping mall that will probably never be open again because they had $50 million in insurance, but the damages are running around $150 million.  The Opryland Resort is still closed, but plans to have a grand re-opening on November 15.  We've been told that if you saw it before, it will be 10x better and more glorious.  The waters were about 6 feet deep and pretty much devastated the ground floors of the resort so there has been a lot of rebuilding and refurbishing going on.  The Grand Ole Opry House reopened in mid-September and we went to a show there on Saturday night.  But more on that later.

During the tour we were able to have a short visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame.  We were there for an hour, but again we could have spent 3+ hours there.  Would we have paid the $30 for admittance?  Probably not.  That is a little steep.  But they have a very extensive collection of show costumes, guitars, gold and platinum records, pictures, artifacts, videos and recordings throughout the museum.

Our next stop was at the "Mother Church of Country Music" or the Ryman Auditorium.  This was the original home of the Grand Ole Opry until 1974 when they moved to the new venue.  It started out as the Union Gospel Tabernacle and held church services from the 1880's until 1904.  It was renamed Ryman after Captain Thomas Ryman who built the church.  In 1904 until 1943 the Ryman became a venue for a wide variety of events; revivals, jazz recitals, operas, ballet, debates and boxing matches.  In 1943 it became known as "Carnegie Hall of the South" due to the upgrade of the performing arts that started there; Rudolph Valentino, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Bob Hope to name a few.  The owner of the Ryman also rented out the hall for a live Saturday night radio show that had outgrown it's current hall.  So began a long (1943-1974) love affair between the Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman Auditorium.  In 2001 it was named a National Historic Landmark.  It's still used for performances and has tours for your to go backstage to see where Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton and Bill Anderson got ready for their turn on the stage.  The Ryman is so precious to the Opry that when they built the new Opry House they cut out a circle from the Ryman stage in front of the microphone and installed in it the new stage.  This auditorium has character.  The floors creak, the pews are scarred and nicked and the paint it a little worse for wear, but that's what makes it the Ryman.

Then, like I said, we went to a show at the Opry House and I SAW MY BOYS!!!  If your are into country music you will recognize these two:

Trace Atkins

Blake Shelton



We were seated about 125 feet from them and I was able to use my camera with the digital zoom and got real close without rushing up to the stage.  That night Blake was inducted as the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry family.  I think that was one of the highlights of this whole trip for me.  Karl?  Not so much.  He's not into new country.

Hatred

As I research my family roots for my genealogy I've discovered that 98% of my ancestors came from England and Ireland with a tiny bit of French thrown in.  Now think about yourself.  How many have, even a small amount, some Polish, Spanish, African, red Indian, Russian, Korean, east Indian or Romanian blood in the family?  How many of you, or someone you know personally, are handicapped, gay or deformed?  According to Hitler all of you, even though you may not be Jewish, but all of you are inferior to me.  Why?  Because I am of European descent - the superior race and you all need to be wiped out.

As you can guess our last stop was at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - one of the hardest museums I've ever walked through.  Again no photography allowed.  On one hand I'm glad there wasn't - much too hard to see.  On the other hand I wish there was - so I could remember what hatred can do.  But even pictures can't re-tell the full horror of the holocaust.  Videos?  They can seal images in your mind.  Exhibits?  They seal the reality of it when, on either side of a 60' hall, 6'wide and 1' deep are only a portion of shoes worn by the massacred.  Then you will walk into a tower and there on the walls, two stories high, are snapshots of people and families who lived in a town that was completely wiped out - wiped off the face of the earth.  Toys, toothbrushes, prayer shawls, hair brushes, scissors, pipes, things that people cherished, all stripped from them and tossed in a pile.

It hurts the heart.  And yet we still go on destroying lives because we think we are superior to everyone else - Sudan, Darfur, young gay students.  On the bottom floor is a wall covered by thousands of 4x4 tiles drawn on by children who went through the museum.  One little girl drew two people holding hands, side by side.  One was dark-haired with dark eyes and the other was a blue-eyed blond.  She wrote, "Why do we hate?  We are all the same."

                                                                    www.ushmm.org


First they came for the socialists,
and I did not speak out --
          Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I did not speak out --
           Because I was not a trade unionists.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out --
            Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me --
and there was no one left to speak for me.

                                 -attributed to Martin Niemiller (1892-1984),
                                   anti-Nazi German pastor.

Potpourri

This is a conglomeration of things we have seen in about three days in Washington DC.  So where do I start?

We arrived in Virginia on October the 15th, Friday.  What would have taken us 4 hours to drive ended up being 8 hours!  Because of two accidents on I-95 just past Baltimore we crawled and crawled and crawled.  Finally, at about 8 miles from our campground we turned off of the interstate and took back roads to the place.  Thank goodness I lived here for a while and I knew where some roads went.

After setting up the motorhome we just crashed for the rest of the night and planned our methods of attack for the next three days.  On Saturday we met up with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law for lunch before we took off for the city.  We arrived late in the day and didn't think we would really have time to see anything, but both of the museums we scouted out stayed open late and we were able to get them done.

Our first museum was the National Spy Museum.  Unfortunately no photography allowed.  Why I'm not sure since a good majority of the exhibits were about spy "things" that dealt with World War II and the Cold War.  But it was still very interesting to see the things that spies used: button compasses, pen recorders, brass knuckle knives, etc.  But, did you know that a lot of the stuff that were "invented" for spy movies, such as James Bond's cars, the technology is used in our cars now as standard?  How about GPS, halogen lights, re-inflating tires, shatterproof glass?  All of those were ideas that came from spy novels and movies.  And did you know that George Washington was a spy?  Edger Allen Poe was an expert decoder?  What was really disturbing was the spies that were Americans spying on Americans.  What people will do for money or notoriety. 

Then in keeping with the theme we visited the National Museum of Crime and Punishment.  This one dealt with a lot of criminals and crime.  It was three floors and we were able to see one floor real well, but didn't get to see much of the other two due to time.  If you like to see and learn about criminals this is a great place to go and spend about 3+ hours.

On Sunday we went with the in-laws to visit the brand new National Museum of the Marine Corps.  They are in the process of raising money to continue expanding the museum.  It is impressive right now and I can't imagine how much greater it will be when they finish the whole campus.  The outside structure is a very odd looking things until you are told what it represents - it is an artist rendition of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima.  Inside it starts from the beginning of the Corps in 1773 and continues through today with many exhibits and films.  There is one thing I can say about the Corps is that they are definitely a different breed of military - in a good way!

Today we went "Memorial visiting".  We visited the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, The World War II Memorial and the Korean War Memorial.

The Law Enforcement was rather hard for Karl to see because he knew many of the names on the wall.  It's a white granite semi circle in two halves with a lion family at each end of the semi circles.  That is to depict the lion defending and protecting the lioness and cub just as the law enforcement community does everyday.  Also on this wall, which starts from the early 1800's are names from those lost on 9/11, those killed by Billy the Kid, those protecting the president, the first officer killed, the youngest, first female, first African-American, first killed in the line of duty, oldest, Attica Prison Riot, and J.D. Tippit who was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.  They broke ground for the museum on the 14th which will be across the street from the memorial and three stories underground.  The World War II Memorial was a very impressive memorial located at the end of the Reflecting Pool by the Washington Monument.  Again it is made with white granite and is divided in two halves depicting the Atlantic and the Pacific campaign.  On one side are the states that sent their people to fight and the other half depicts the different campaigns fought.  Lastly the Korean War Memorial was the most impressive in the way that it was done.  The memorial has soldiers "walking" through the trees surrounding the reflecting pool in their rain ponchos and watching for snipers.  It is a very eerie display as you walk up to it because you see these life-size men among the trees.  There are different races of human kind in this display that makes you realize that EVERYONE was involved.  Many still call this the "forgotten war" because it doesn't get the recognition it deserves.  We were near the Vietnam Wall, but I couldn't go there again.  I was there quite a few years back and I cried through the whole walk and I couldn't face it again.  But if you are ever in the the DC area I do recommend you see all of these memorials, they are well worth the visit.

Please take a moment to look at the pictures I have posted on the right of this page and you will hopefully be intrigued enough to go and visit for yourselves.

I Don't Get It

We arrived in New Jersey on Tuesday the 12th and are squatting in the Elks Club parking lot.  So much better than Wal-Mart.  I mean, don't get me wrong...God Bless Wal-Mart...but if you want a quieter spot without a lot of traffic, the Elks Clubs are great.

On Wednesday we met up with some friends who live in Somerset, New Jersey.  They came by the motorhome then we go to their house for dinner and some games.  After making plans for the following day Karl and I return to our "home away from home".

On Thursday The Hildebrands pick us up and we drive into the city for the day.  What city?  Why New York City of course.  Now to me, a girl who grew up in the country without a lot of people, or cars, or noise, this is a major getting used to.  When we were here a couple of years ago we went into the city then also.  Now I need to remind you that I grew up in New York State and lived there for 18 years before I ventured out on my own.  Not once did I ever go into the city nor did I ever want to.  So here I was, 55 years old, and an out-of-towner had to take me into the city for the first time!  Now I've been there twice.  But I don't get it.  How can anybody like a city, any city?  Too many cars, too many people, too much noise, too much of everything!  The wife, Joy, is from the Seattle area and absolutely LOVES NYC with a passion.  Her husband, Gary, is from New Jersey so he's okay with it.  In fact they both drive in that madhouse without a second thought!  Me?  I'll stay out in the country where I can hear and see nature.  Sure, it may be a slower pace of life, but I'm in not hurry anyway.

We plan on leaving tomorrow and the weather forecasters have forecast a nor'easter is coming in which means rain and wind (again).  Oh, well, at least it was nice while we were parked.  We plan on staying in VA for about 4 nights with an option to stay longer depending on how much we want to see.  I used to work in Washington D.C., so I would visit lots of places while I lived and worked there.  Unfortunately I haven't been a "tourist" there for a very long time (probably over 20 years) and I wanted to see things that have been added to our nation's capital.  Plus I have this annoying brother-in-law that keeps wanting me to visit them (LOL - just kidding Dave!  Love you.)

ME, NH, VT, NY

Well we have finally reached my Mom's house in New York.

We stayed in Bangor, Maine for a couple of nights because we had to visit the Blue Knights International offices for some business (yes, we paid homage to Mother Ship) then took off for our trip south.

We traveled from ME to New Hampshire and met up with an ex-Riverside PD that wanted to have his picture taken for the Riverside PD web page that was started because of Karl's travels.  Had a great visit and a wondreful meal with Dave and Wendy Barrett.  He is now the head of the Marine Division of the Lake Winnepisacke region.  What a job - on the water all summer long.

As we travelled south we noticed that the colors are getting a little less now.  A lot less red and more golds and yellows.  As we travelled from Concord, NH to the I-90 New York Thruway the roads took us through lots of small towns.  Did you know that in New England, during the end of the season, they have lots of flea markets, car washes, bake sales and roadside chicken bbq's?  Well they do.  It would have taken us about 7.5 hours to drive, but with all of the small towns having things on Main street the trip ended up being 9.5 hours.  We arrived at the Elks Club for the night around 8pm then ran over to Mom's to pick up our month's worth of mail.  Today I took Karl and Mom for a ride to a very nice state park, Letchworth State Park, to see the colors there.  As we arrived closer to the park we noticed that the traffic was getting worse and worse.  It took us almost an hour to go 2 miles.  When we finally got into the park we found out that there was a HUGE crafts sale going on at the same time.  So there was Karl, my Mom and me with about 100,000 of our closest friends. 

After we finished with the park we moved the MH to the driveway of Mom's house for the next two nights.  We do make quite a sight for the neighbors.  On Tuesday we take off for our friend's house in Sommerset, NJ for a few nights.

We've Arrived

Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA...I was born in the USA."  Kate Smith "God bless America...Land that I love."  George M Cohen "I'm a Yankee doodle dandy...Yankee doodle do or die."

No more meters, kilometers, Celsius, millimeters, funny colored money, 1 and 2 dollar coins.

If you can't tell from this we have arrived in the USA.  As of noon today we crossed the US border in Maine and are SO glad we are back on American soil.  Canada was great, but like Dorothy said, "There's no place like home."  We are still travelling down the East Coast and across the south to our home in New Mexico so there will still be a travel blog, just not daily.  But don't stop checking in every few days or so.  I will keep you up-to-date as to where we are and what we see.

For the next two nights we are camped in Bangor, Maine and will take off west into New Hampshire still looking for the fall foliage.  Stand tune for more pictures.

Canada 17

What can I say about Nova Scotia or New Scotland?  It's a lot bigger than we thought and it's covered with trees.  That about covers it.

When I first planned out this trip I got a lot of AAA books to check out things to see in each place that we stopped and I wanted to make sure that I found things that would interest Karl because he's been to most of the provinces except for PEI and Nova Scotia.  So I found things that would interest him and me both.  Now PEI, if we really wanted to, could have taken us two days to see.  Not because of the size but because of the timing and what we wanted to see.  Nova Scotia on the other hand is a different story.  Neither of us realized how much driving we would have to do to see things on this peninsula.  It would take us about 3-4 days to see all we wanted and that's because of all the driving.  So we sat down and re-analyzed our desires.  After taking a hard look at what we highlighted we were able to take out a few things because we have done things like them at other places.  That left us with four places to see - two on the southwestern end and two at the northeastern end.  The problem?  The "ends" are about 9 hours apart!  So we are spending the night in Nova Scotia and cutting the peninsula in half.

Today we took in the southwestern end and visited a beautiful little village called Peggy's Cove.  It's a very small (only 35 year round residents) village that the people make a living lobster harvesting.  But during the season thousands descend on this place.  The cove is a picture postcard with craggy coastline, lobster boats in the cove, small homes and a lighthouse.  We had lunch at a great place called the Sou'wester and there I finally had my lobster roll.  It was worth the wait.  While we were there tour buses showed up to let their passengers off.  It's amazing the number of people that come here in this desolate area.  But it was well worth the drive.

We drove back into Halifax (typical large capital city) to go to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.  This was a very good museum showing how the sea is an intricate part of life on Nova Scotia.  On the first floor they showcase the Canadian Navy and different sail boats that have been donated to the museum.  That was okay, but to me the second floor was much more interesting.  There you had displays of shipwrecks and the artifacts they have recovered.  The most exciting display was one on the Titanic.  They had stories and artifacts from the doomed ship.  It was rather sobering seeing things that were recovered and you knew that people once held those items or wore those items.

The next day we took off from Halifax to drive northeast to see our destinations up there.  About 70 miles outside of Halifax we noticed a commonality in street names: MacDonald, MacInnis, MacIntyre, Campbell, Ross and in town names: Inverness, St. Andres, Invernary, Glendale, Glencoe.  See similarities here?  All of a sudden we are into the heart of New Scotland.  Even signs are in Gaelic!  The areas opened up more and you could see the countryside.  A lot of Scots landed there because it reminded them of home.  Our first stop was at a living history area called Highland Village Museum.  It was like Fort William was in Thunder Bay, but more people were there at the village.  They get a lot of cruise ships docked in Sydney, about an hour north, and tour buses bring them there so they are open until the end of October.  They have recreated a Scottish village and moved buildings there that would have been used by the immigrants as the years went by.  The only buildings that weren't original were the stone soddy house (the first house they would have built) and the log house which would have been the second house they built.  Every one else was moved from a previous location in the area to be preserved to the village to be preserved.  Another place I would have loved to have seen during the "season".

Our last stop was at the Alexander Graham Bell Centre.  Here they told the story of his life and inventions besides the telephone.  They had artifacts, photos and stories about him and his family.  Here are some things we found out that we never knew:  His father, being interested in speech and audiology, created the first visual speech system; his mother was practically deaf; his wife was completely deaf; his passion was trying to find a way to help deaf people hear; the telephone was created by an accident when he was working on perfecting the telegraph; he helped invent a hydroplane; he invented the first flying airplane in Canada.  There was so much stuff that he worked on that I can't remember it all.  A very educational place to go.

          The first "cell phone"   

The first "Ipod"

And that ladies and gentlemen concludes our tour of the great country of Canada.  We hope you have enjoyed this tour as much as we have enjoyed your company.  Now please check around your area and make sure you have all your personal belongings.  Please stay seated until we have come to a complete stop.

Join us next time as we explore the next great country, The United States of America which starts tomorrow.  Until then, good-bye.

Canada 16

To get to Prince Edward Island (or PEI) from New Brunswick we had to cross The Confedereation Bridge which is 8 miles long.  The island is a very clean and uncluttered place.  There are no billboards on the roadways except for ones advertising your buisness placed on your property.  Lawns are kept mowed, most houses are well maintained, no graffitti and even the "large" capital of Charlottetown is clean and well kept.  We were pleasantly surprised.  There isn't much to see in the capital, but we did find a great place called Founder's Hall that told of how Canada became the Canada as we know it now.  It was cleverly done with video monitors in each section and followed a reporter who was telling the story of how it all began.  Very well done.

Unfortunately the other sites we wanted to see were closed, such as:  Avonlea Village and Anne of Green Gables, Orwell Corner Historical Village and the International Fox Museum.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to come off season.  We drove out to East Point and did tour the lighthouse that was built in the 1800's.  It's the only octigonal shaped, wooden lighthouse on the island.  The others are square to save wood and one is a round shaped stone one.

We did want to see the Bottle House, but we were way too late to make the hours.  So we decided to go find a good lobster restaurant instead.  Didn't find that either.  Oh, well.  There's always Maine.

Once lobster season is over just dock your boat in your side yard

                                        I dunno......waddaya think......long, cold winter ahead?



Canada 15

New Brunswick is our home for a few days.  We drove from Quebec and took about two days, but we did stop at a few places to see interesting things.  We are using New Brunswick as our jump off point to visit Prince Edward Island (or PEI) and Nova Scotia.

We our first stop in NB was in a town called Grand Falls because, guess what, it had a falls in town!  How ingenious!  But seriously - on Monday the falls were dry, no water at all - they were in a drought.  Then two days later this is what we saw ----------------
They usually use this as a flow release dam, but the river behind it was rising.  The Maritimes have had 48 hours of continuous rain, not hard just continuous.  Everything is soaked.  They had also just installed a new zip line that goes over the falls and a training class was going on when we were there.

Our next stop was in Florenceville at the Potato Museum.  Believe me, this museum was close to the Spam Museum in Iowa (but not better than).  It traced the life of a potato from seedling to your table.  Did you know that the company right next door, McCain foods, provides 50% of the Northern American continent the french fries you get in restaurants?  HA!  You didn't know, did you?

We spent the night in Fredericton, NB (the capital) before moving to today to land at Moncton, NB.  On our way we stopped in the town of Sussex - the Mural Capital of North America.  They paint murals on the buildings around town and range any where from NB's history to a common cause.  The town or county is known for covered bridges.  You've heard of the Bridges of Madison County in Iowa or you should have if you follow my blog, since we were there.  Well this town has more and most of them you can actually drive through.  Some have their floors blacktopped and others have wooden roads.  Did you know that they are also called "kissing bridges"?  They are called that because during the days of buggies it took enough time to travel the darkened bridge that you could steal a kiss from your sweetie before you come out on the other side.  There is a rumor (that Karl and I tried) that if you make a wish then hold you breath and lift your feet off the car floor until you are on the other side, your wish will come true.  We'll see.