Hit the Road

When we retired in January of 2002 we decided it might be time to do some traveling instead of camping.  In our mind traveling was totally different from camping.  Although we still used the truck with the camper, but instead of parking overlooking a canyon or meadow and hiking and riding the ATV we planned to travel across America. 

We decided to start with something that was totally different but seemed relatively easy.  We organized the travel information we’d been saving for years and took off to see the South and the Florida Keys. What an adventure, neither of us had ever been through the South so everything was new, miles of bluebonnets across Texas, swamp land in Mississippi, Cajun food and Zydeco music in Louisiana, gators, armadillos, and miles of sugar sand beaches in Florida.  

The Florida Keys surpassed our expectations, who wouldn’t love a place where Mallory Square celebrates the sunset every night with sailboats silhouetting the setting sun, key lime pie, accompanied by key lime margaritas. Music, magic and  Dominics flying house cats, created a carnival atmosphere in the square.

When we arrived home after that spring trip we immediately started thinking of a fall trip to the Pacific Northwest. We were hooked on this traveling thing.  

RV travel isn’t for everyone, you have to really enjoy road trips, get a thrill from beautiful scenery and be interested in meeting folks from all over the country. Oh, and it helps if you really like your traveling companion.  

Of course there are challenges, preparing for a long trip takes planning and organization, it is necessary to be an expert list maker.    As demonstrated with the recent news stories, airline travel comes with its own set of challenges, lost luggage, cancelled flights.  At your destination  you are sleeping in a strange bed.  Our RV is our second home, we never lose our luggage, we sleep in our own bed and use our very own potty.  So we are good with RV life.

One of our favorite places is St. George Island, a barrier island just off the panhandle of Florida.  The eight miles of sugar sand beach on St. George Island was recently voted the best Florida beach for 2023.   We love the island and from there we’ve made several more trips down both the East and West coasts of Florida.  One year after we left the island we did a southern  cities tour of St. Augustine, Savannah, and Charleston, Chattanooga and Nashville. On another trip we made our way up the East coast, stopping in Washington DC to take in the sights after visiting a nephew in Fishing Creek, Maryland.  

We fell in love with Maine the first time we set eyes on a two pound lobster sitting on our plate.  We love sitting at a picnic table at the edge of the bay with our bottle of wine, feasting on fresh lobster and corn on the cob. We have returned to Maine four or five times since then.  Yep, it is a long drive especially since we like to travel the backroads, but there is so much to see on the way that it never felt like a long trip.   

The first time we went to Maine we continued up through Canada through New Brunswick and on to Nova Scotia.  Another trip we crossed the Canadian border at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and drove across Canada to Montreal and Quebec and down through Maine.   

Traveling in Canada was easy until we got to Quebec Province where we discovered everything, even the highway signs were in French. We don’t speak French and neither did our GPS so it was a bit daunting.  With luck and a prayer we  found our accommodations and we set off to take a city tour of Old Quebec.  

We’ve been at the trailhead for the Appalachian trail  at Springer Mountain, Georgia.  We’ve driven on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Rockfish Gap, Virginia to Cherokee, North Carolina. After visiting the Rock N’ Soul museum in Memphis we followed the historic Natchez Trace down to Nachez, Mississippi.

We’ve spent time in Gettysburg visiting battlegrounds with a living history docent who played the part of a returning soldier.  I don’t think there was a dry eye on the tour as he talked about the Civil War.  We visited Chattanooga, Tennessee and stopped at Lookout Mountain where Monty’s great, great grandfather was captured.   We’ve toured the beautiful park at Vicksburg, Mississippi commemorating the Civil War.  

We toured Jonestown, the location of the first permanent English Settlement in North America.  We were intrigued by the story of the Lost Colony on the Outer Banks where first settlers arrived in the 1580’s.  We loved spending time at Kitty Hawk where the Wright brothers built their first plane. 

Out west, we’ve beach hopped up the Pacific coast from Malibu to Washington, staying in beach side State Parks .  We’ve seen Mount Helens in Washington and Mt. Hood and the Three Sisters in Oregon,  the Badlands in Wyoming and South Dakota.  We’ve enjoyed cave tours in Arizona, California, Texas, Nevada, Arkansas and Florida.

We take our time traveling and use travel articles and books to plan our stops along the way to the end destination.  We discovered factory tours as a great way to learn how things are made and have some fun.  The Corvette Factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was surpassed by the Harley Davidson Factory in York, Pennsylvania. One trip we stopped at a John Deer factory in Illinois and another one in Iowa both were great tours. We’ve seen Gibson and Martin guitars being manufactured and visited with Paul Beard of Beard guitars.  We learned how ammunition was made at the Hornady Ammunition factory in Nebraska. Breathed in the fragrance of the chocolate in Hershey, Pennsylvania and ate double scoops of delicious ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s in Vermont.  

The last time I counted I think we have visited more than 35 National Parks.  Yellowstone, Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon we’ve visited multiple times.  On the way to British Columbia, Canada we stopped at Glacier National Park for the second time and when we returned to the states we stopped at North Cascade Park in Washington.  This National Park is off the beaten path but absolutely worth the trip. A beautiful green forest with an undergrowth of waste high ferns and sparkling turquoise lakes.   

Our two favorite places to spend an extended stay are Durango, Colorado and Missoula, Montana.  Missoula is a wonderful town with such a sense of community it is hard not to fall in love with it.  Durango is a smaller mountain community with spectacular scenery and lots of music. We’ve spent a few weeks there in recent summers.    

In our twenty years of traveling around America the only state we haven’t visited is North Dakota.  We’ve had opportunities to go there but if you Google the ten best things to see in North Dakota you will find three of them are the signs that say leaving North Dakota.  So we don’t feel remiss in excluding it.

The best part of this kind of travel is the people we’ve met along the way.  In the beginning we always preferred State or National Parks to park for over nights,  we felt RV parks were for old folks but as we’ve gotten older we appreciate the convenience of RV parks and for better or worse, we fit right in.   RV folks are generally helpful and enjoy sharing their trip experiences so there is always something new to learn.   

We have been blessed to see so much of America and loved every road trip.  This essay was a brief trip down memory lane for us and a reminder to  ourselves how much fun we had traveling America.  This summer we are going to hop over to Durango, Colorado for a few weeks and then revisit some of our old haunts in Colorado that we love. 

Monty told me a story his uncle told him many years ago and it still makes us laugh. As the story goes, Jackson, and his brother Daryl, were eager to make a good impression at the lake resort. While Daryl climbed up on the pier, water skies on and tow line in hand, Jackson revved up the ski boat. Jackson’s famous shout “You ready ski cat?”, and Daryl’s reply, “Hit it Jackson!” still reverberate along the shore! Every time I think about the guy on the pier flying through the air it makes me laugh.

We don’t head out on an adventure without Monty asking, “You ready ski cat?” I reply “Hit it Jackson” and the trip has begun.

You can read about all of our trips in the Travel section of this blog, we’d be happy to have you travel with us!