Part 3: Highway of Relatives

• Continuing the "Highway of Relatives" along US20 heading east through Ohio, New York, Massachusetts and then on to Maine, we first stopped to see Rhonda's grandparents Grandma and Grandpa "S" in Archibold, Ohio. Then we were off to see my Uncle David and his dog Barley in Elyria, OH, then up to Western New York state to see my Aunt Jo, Lisa, Jodi and my Uncle Paul from the other side of my family. Of course we went out to dinner to Bourbon & Burger for some of the best burgers around the area. My second cousin Michael is co-owner of B&B and recently opened another restaurant called Casa Del Taco, which is similar to a Chipotle or Baja Fresh found in other parts of the country.
• We visited my mother's grave in Wyoming, NY and planted some bulbs that will hopefully come up in the spring. After digging all around her memorial stone we may not have improved the looks much right now, but I'm sure it will fill back in again in the spring.

• Of course we had to visit my mother's side of the family, the Welch side and stop at the vegetable stand and pick up some quarts of their best maple syrup (http://www.welchsmaple.com/). The maple syrup business seems to be going really well as Chuck was loading boxes of syrup to be shipped all over the country from North Carolina to California.
• Next we were off to Boston to see my Aunt Carol and her Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog, Cal. We also went out for dinner to an old, cozy Irish pub called Doyle's for some beers and sandwiches (http://www.doylescafeboston.com/). It was my kind of place, similar to some of the places we like to frequent back in Portland.
• On the way up to Acadia in Maine, we stopped and stayed for a couple days in Portland, Maine. While on opposite coasts, we found quite a few similarities to the look and feel of Portland, Oregon. They have lots of good bars and restaurants, a few brewpubs and an active waterfront to explore. We took some time to do brewery tours of both Allagash and Shipyard brewing. The two could not be more different with Allagash focusing on high-end complex Belgian Beers (www.allagash.com/‎). They have a beer called Curieux aged in bourbon barrels that sells for a wopping $18 a bottle. Shipyard on the other hand is more of a macro-brew that produces an assortment of everyday drinking beers you can find in most supermarkets up that way (www.shipyard.com/). We also got to check out a local Irish Pub called Brian's Boru that served up one of the best steak sandwiches I have had (http://www.brianborupub.com/).
• We arrived in Acadia while the government shutdown was still underway. Suprisingly, even areas of the park that are normally open to the public without even an entrance fee were actually barricaded, so we didn't see as much of the park as we would have liked to. However people got to eat and drink, so as usual we found some other local attractions we could partake in. Atlantic Brewing on the north side of Mt. Desert Island is a small brewery but really works hard at putting together a fun interactive brewery tour, which seems to help them sell copious amounts of beer as well (www.atlanticbrewing.com/‎). They partner with Mainely Meat to provide food at the brewery, which was a good combination since their rack of ribs were some of the best I have had (http://mainelymeatbbq.homestead.com/Index.html).

 

Nemo's - a funky eatery on the west side of Mt. Desert Island

• Our return to Indiana was uneventful since we did it in two days; lots of driving and not much else. After another week or two doing daytrips and helping with some projects around Rhonda's parents house, we heard the weatherman calling for the first snow of the season since it was now late October, so we knew it was time to hook up the trailer and head south.
• We first stopped at Carter Caves in Eastern Kentucky based on some advice from fellow RVers ( Thanks to Kennen & Terri Shafer) that had stayed there. The area is full of caves and rocky canyons to hike through. The highlight of our stop was short hikes to a few of the natural arches that have formed. We only stayed two days because we knew we wanted to be getting farther south. 

Natural Arch at Carter Caves State Park

Part 2: Our Stay at Hotel Roger

• Once we got to Indiana the highlight for us was spending time with family. My nephews Justis and Logan have grown out of the infant phase and are becoming their own little people with unique personalities. We did go with them to the Niles Apple Festival to watch them ride carnival rides, but you really have to hunt to find anything with apples there anymore. 

Do you have Capital One? (Bored Viking at Apple Festival)

• Thanks to Anita, (Rhonda's mother) she was able to wrangle tickets to the Top of the Hops Beer Festival, hosted at the Silverhawks baseball stadium. They had about 50 beers from near and far and we were suprisingly impressed with a few of the local breweries. The craft-brewing scene is picking up in Indiana. The venue was impressive as well, since it was right on the field. I downed a couple beers from the great view on the pitcher's mound. Our favorites were Dragon's Milk Stout from New Holland Brewing in Michigan, Third Coast Old Ale from Bells in Kalamzoo, MI and Chucky Double Imperial IPA from the Evil Czech Brewery in Culver, IN.
• We also squeezed in a Southern Michigan pub crawl with my in-laws ... I didn't have to twist their arms too much. The tour included Bells in Kalamazoo, Founders in Grand Rapids and then, while mostly an ale house with only a beer or two of their own, we went to Hop Cat in Grand Rapids. With nearly 50 beers on tap and the classy dark old world pub feel, it was impressive. However, Bells was probably my favorite with a blend of good food, interesting beers and really nice facility that included and outside courtyard that I would love to go back to sometime.
• We also decided to do a first annual Brats and Beer Fest at the Hotel Roger. The local liquor stores have a pretty good selection of craft brews and we discovered DC Meats and their dozen or so varieties of great brats. 

• Near Elkhart, we went for a bike ride on a converted rail to trail in Middlebury, IN. Since we packed our folding bikes in the trailer, rail to trail bike paths are my new favorite thing to look for each place we visit. Normally a bike ride through Northern Indiana farm country would seem like a boring study in the crop plants of the midwest states, but this one cuts through Amish country. While yes we got to see our share of grain crops, we also got a glimpse into how the Amish culture lives today, from an Amish schoolhouse, to a farmer using an old world combine pulled by draft horses to cut down his corn fields, to a farm raising Belgian Horses and a field with some noisy Sandhill Cranes.
• We also got to see more of the amazing Sandhill Cranes, which can have a wingspan of 5 to 6 feet on a nearby hike at Boot Lake Nature Preserve. These huge birds are just passing through, but they stopped to congregate and rest and there were hundreds in this small lake. 

• Years ago, when I was probably about 6 or 7, we used to live in Northern Illinois in a little town called Harvard, IL. While we were back in Indiana we were visiting friends in Chicago and decided to see if we could find our old home. As we drove by very slowly I was suprised to see that the old gas station built in 1918 that we used as a vegetable market was still there! While we were looking a man that was trimming trees nearby came over and I explained that I used to live there. What happened next really suprised me ... he said "Do you know Duane? I bought the place from him." (Duane is my father). After 35 years, Frank Butts, the person we sold the place to still owns it! We went up to the house and took some pictures. The original house we had lived in had burnt down in 1991 and he built another with a similar configuration on the same spot. It was weird to drive around the neighborhood and recognize places from years ago. 

1918 Gas Station/Vegetable Market

Old Homestead

The cow on the town square was there when we used to live there

Our old school ... Now it is administrative offices for the school system

• Since Rhonda's parent's refrigerator was nearly bear, we decided it was time for us to move on.

Part1: Modern Day Nomads

So where have we been? After a while you just get into the groove as modern day nomads and while yes we are doing things everyday, not everything is magnificent or on the opposite end of the spectrum disastrous such that they make really interesting blog posts. However after a while, like now, when we think back to the travels over the last month or so, we realize, Wow! we have done a lot.

After Yellowstone we spent a couple days in the Black Hills of South Dakota and worked our way across to Elkhart, Indiana where Rhonda's parents live. After staying a week or two, we took the Jeep by itself and did a quick tour of New England, through New York, Boston, and up to Acadia in Maine. Then we returned to Indiana for a few more day trips from Elkhart and to pick up our trailer. From there the snow chased us south to Kentucky and onto the Outer Banks in North Carolina for a week. Continuing our East Coastal tour we stopped in Myrtle Beach and Charleston for a few days and are now in St. Augustine for a week. Mostly I want to be able to look back and remember where we had that good beer or where was that awesome campground or hole in the wall eatery that we stumbled across, so what follows is more of a bulletpoint list of some of the highlights over the last few months so I can remember them. If interested to learn more about any of these places don't hesitate to ask. The next five blog posts catch us up to our current location in St. Augustine, FL.

Where we left off last was the Black Hills of South Dakota.

• Mt. Rushmore was interesting, pretty much what you would expect as every American has seen thousands of pictures from every possible angle, but still worth a visit, since it was a reasonable $11 a car to get in.

Close-up of Lincoln's Eye - Drilling grooves are clear at this resolution

Rushmore welcome committee - a friendly mountain goat just outside Rushmore

• More impressive was the Needles Highway, a twisty highway that cuts right through some jagged rock outcrops, including one strange formation with a hole in it that give the highway its namesake.

• Custer State Park takes you back to a time when herds of buffalo and pronghorns used to roam everywhere (scratch that ... the pronghorns still do!). From the safety of our car we were able to get up close and personal... maybe a little to close with the herd of wild donkeys in the area. 

Herd of Buffalo roaming free



Young Pronghorns

Friendly wildlife in Custer State Park

Prairie Dog on the lookout in Custer State Park

• Two thumbs up for the Crooked Creek Campground in Hill City, SD. Nice park-like setting, quiet and well-maintained facilities.
• The Badlands were well worth a visit for $15. Unlike other national parks there really is no "lead-up" with the scenery change. You are driving across a grassy prairie, you come up to the edge of the valley and all of the sudden its there! 

• When you have been driving for hours it can't hurt to take a break and see Wall Drug in Wall, SD of course, and the converted high school basketball gym called the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.

Wall Drug - Tourist trap and Americana Museum

Mitchell Corn Palace

On to Yellowstone ... or our tour of stinky holes in the ground

Okay, despite my sarcastic title, Yellowstone is a really awesome place. It has to be one of the most natuarally active areas that I have ever seen. It is geologically very active, the wildlife activity is unreal and even the weather when we we there was intense. We had on and off thunderstorms while we were there. The day after we left, it snowed in September! Over two days we did the quickie tourist tour, but I could definitely see spending a few days here hiking and biking off the beaten path.

The best way to describe Yellowstone is through pictures, so lets start with stinking holes in the ground. Yellowstone is a still active volcanic caldera with a lake in the middle. Not very far under the lake is a pool of molten lava that keeps pools of water above bubbling, steaming and spewing at nearly every turn around the caldera rim.

Our first sighting of thermal vents as we entered Yellowstone on the west side.

Here Rhonda stands next to a natural hot tub in West Thumb Geyser Basin. The water is actually scalding, so it is not safe to take a dip.

Deep calcite encrusted pools in West Thumb Geyser Basin.
 

Hot springs in the Mud Volcano area of Yellowstone Valley. The bubbles on the surface of the water is actually steam being released from underground.

Pools of primordial bubbling sulphur mud in the Sulphur Cauldron area of Yellowstone Valley.

 A pit toilet near Yellowstone Lake. Hey how did that get in here? I guess its another stinky hole in the ground.

 

Mammoth Hot Springs on the north side of the park. Absolutely spectacular and the rain cleared just in time for us to get some pictures.

Another shot of Mammoth Hot Springs.

Old Faithful. The grey plume on grey skies doesn't make for a good picture, but it was a sight to see in person.

At every turn we also saw wildlife in the park. The wild Bison were everywhere to the point of almost being annoying as they just stood in the road holding up traffic, the elk were common and on our last day we caught a Grizzly in the distance that I was able to pull up with our telephoto.

Yellowstone Elk

Yellowstone Bison posing for tourists.

Yellowstone Grizzly Bear taken with a telephoto. I wasn't going to get too close.

That concludes our two days of Yellowstone, next we headed to South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore.

Across Idaho

We didn't end up taking many pictures of Idaho as we came across for whatever reason, but that in no way diminishes our opinion of the state. We encountered some of the nicest people in Idaho. After the "Hermiston Incident" I had a couple parts that I wanted to replace ... like the wheel hub that looked like melted cheese. As we checked store after store in Boise, unfortunately to no avail, the lengths that people would go throught to try and help us out was amazing. I guess I am used to a more general, "nope, don't got it, see you later." approach, instead, every store I went to was researching their catalogs to see if they could find it or referring me to another vendor that might. We ended up at a semi parts service center and while they did not have the parts I was looking for, they thought they had something "in the back" that might work and went looking for it. In the meantime, I swapped stories of trials and tribulations on the road with the chatty front desk guy. In the end, they didn't have what I needed, but I got to spend the day with some really nice, hard-working people that didn't help you because customer service was their business, but because they were the type of people to lend a hand to anyone that needed help.

We liked Boise. It seemed like a very active city, and lots of restaurants, hangouts and a sense of culture that develops around university towns, since this is where Boise State is located. For recreation there is a 25 mile greenbelt park along the Boise River through town or the Sawtooth mountains are less than an hour away. Our campground was right along the greenbelt and unlike other similar pathways, we saw dozens of bikers, joggers and dog-walkers all using this path. They use it, they are proud of it and they keep it well-maintained. I also have to give two thumbs up to 10 Barrel Brewing that has brewpubs in both Boise and Bend, OR. They had some great food and even better beer. I really liked their beer "Pray for Snow", which is pretty similar to one of my favorite beers of all time, Arrogant Bastard by Stone Brewing.

After leaving Boise, we took the backgroads across on highway 20. On this trip, one of our goals is to see lots of small-town America, the kinds of places you don't see from the highways, so when it makes sense, we will be trying to stick to highway 20 on our way across as much as possible. This road starts in Newport, OR and goes all the way to Boston.

While the interstate 84 through Idaho follows the Snake River, Highway 20 cuts up into the high desert and goes right by Craters of the Moon National Monument. This is an area of numerous cinder cones and barren lava beds. As a geology buff, I found the area interesting, but I wouldn't recommend a long diversion to see the area. We did pass through Atomic City and it wasn't until later with a google search that the significance became clear. Atomic City is where the very first nuclear reactor to generate power was tested. While a fraction of the size of modern reactors, it only powered four 200-watt lightbulbs. Today, Idaho National Laboritories is still located there. Supposedly they still have a couple of active nuclear reactors funded by the Department of Energy where they continue to run experiments to make nuclear power safer and more sustainable. However, with 4000 people working in this remote desert complex of thousands of acres of off-limits area behind chain-linked fence, the conspiracy theorist can't help but wonder if something more nefarious is going on out there.

We pulled into Rexburg, ID just about an hour and a half outside Yellowstone and ended up staying a couple days just to get a few preventative things checked out on the Jeep before we were truly in an area without auto mechanics. Highway 20, goes right through Yellowstone National Park, which is definitely an item to check off on the old bucket list. Consistent with our experience across all of Idaho, the campground host at Thompson's RV Campground, Connie, was one of the nicest and most talkative ladies I have ever met. For our time there, I was generally called "Honey" and Rhonda was called "Sugar". She was just one of those people that you find immediately endearing.

Escape from Portland

Welcome to our blog for our travels across country. As you can imagine when a lot is happening, it is hard to find time for blog posts and when nothing is happening, you finally find time to catch up. Right now we are sitting in Mitchell, South Dakota waiting for the wind to die down. Little did I know that much like sailing, when traveling across country we would have to watch the weather. We are not in a hurry, so instead of watching the gas gauge drop before your eyes as we try to pull the trailer into a 20 mph headwind at 7 mpg, we are hanging out here. After all, what better place to stop, since the biggest (and only) attraction in town is the Mitchell Corn Palace. (note the flags whipping in the 20 mph winds)

In the mean time I am backdating a few blog entries to catch you up on what has been going on.

We finally escaped from Portland, but we almost didn't make it. Since arriving in Portland it has felt like one thing or another popped up or broke that kept us in town waiting on something as parts arrived or loose ends were tied up. We actually had one failed attempt where we got as far as The Dalles and determine we were going to be a lot better off from a handling perspective if we installed a weight distributing hitch and a brake controller ... so back to Portland to wait on more parts to arrive.

We finally hit the road on September 12th. We actually made it as far as The Dalles again before we had our first break down. Fortunately a good samaritan flagged us as he drove pass that there was something amiss with our trailer tire. I had just repacked the bearings, so my first thought was, uh-oh what did I screw up now. My first thought was that I had not seated the bearings correctly and that was what was causing the wobble in the tire, so I snugged up the axle nut a little ... as I would later find out ... huge mistake, axle nuts should be a little loose, not tight. I only publish my stupidity here in the hopes this helps someone else out sometime. We still saw some wobble in the tire, so we pulled the trailer across the highway to the local Les Schwab in The Dalles. They confirmed that one of our tires was "off-round", which I have come to understand can happen when the trailer sits too long on one side as it had sat for the last couple of years. The heating and stress of starting this long trip had caused the plies to begin to separate and it had gotten worse fast. The thing I love about Les Schwab is they focus on quick customer service, so within an hour we had a set of new tires and were back on the road heading east. I did not think to loosen the axle nut now that we determined what the real problem was.

We pulled off the road near Hermiston and I immediately knew something was amiss. A pool of black grease from the wheel hub was all over the rim and the plastic dust cap that covers the hub looked a little like melted cheese. It was then that it dawned on me that I had not loosened the axle nut earlier in the day and that had caused the bearings to overheat. Later I heard horror stories about bearings fusing to axles and wheels just snapping off when this happens ... fortunately we caught it before anything like that happened. Of course I loosened the nut, but we decided once again to take it to the Les Schwab in Hermiston to determine what kind of damage I may have done before setting out on this big trip. I should get some kind of frequent flyer discount. Sure enough, the bearings on that tire were in pretty bad shape and took some coaxing with a puller to get them off. However, no damage was done to the axle, they had a new set of bearings and again within two hours we were ready to hit the road.

We decided we had all the fun we could take for the day, so we pulled into a campground in Umatilla nearby. Pretty much the only thing that anyone from western Oregon knows about Umatilla is that they have stockpiles of chemical weapons being incinerated there. Oh well, despite the town's dubious reputation, the campground was a really nice grassy field with a few trees with a great view over the Columbia river.

We contemplated returning to Portland a couple times that day, but each time, we figured nothing else could go wrong and there were services to fix the problems we encountered along the way, so we kept going ... and indeed it did get better from here.