Category: General

When we get close to St Louis, we feel a magnetic pull to our regular RV parking spot where we’ve visited a few times with my father’s brother Jerry and his wife Suzy. Much closer to my age than to my parents, these were my cool and fun aunt and uncle who lived away from the family homestead in New England (though they visited often). They hold the distinction of being the first of my extra large family that Doug ever met, back in 1984.

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One of the reasons for this fall trip is that another Blues Guitar Unleashed member jam will be in Albuquerque, NM, early in October. Now, the shortest, most direct route between our home and Albuquerque goes through Cincinnati, OH. Regular readers are aware of our reluctance to take the shortest, most direct route to anywhere. Well, sometimes we make exceptions to that rule and we did for Cincinnati, because that’s where my piano-playing buddy Honghong lives!

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In the years past, we’ve traveled during the warmer seasons and wintered back home in VT. This year, following 2 short-ish trips to Maine and Toronto, we spent the rest of the summer at home, and we’re heading out now on a fall trip to the Southwest. This is definitely a part of the country we can’t visit in the summer as we’re heat wimps. Also for the first time, the trip is open-ended. We’re not sure when we’re coming back – presumably, we’ll know when it’s time.

Of course, what’s not changing is seeking out adventure, friends, and music along the way. But first, we needed to get a few things in order…

Continue reading “Home! And on the road again…”

The weather forecast was calling for 90% chance of rain, so it seemed like a good day for an indoor tourist thing. We headed over to the Maine Maritime Museum, on the original site of the Percy & Smalls Shipyard in Bath. Uh oh. A big part of this museum is outdoors or inside the preserved original buildings connected by footpaths across the 20-acre site. But as luck would have it, the forecast was mostly wrong. The sky cleared up nicely after a 10-minute downpour, and stayed that way for the rest of our day at the museum.

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We’re often on the road in May. This year, we’re trying something different. We’ve typically traveled during the summer. We spent last summer in Eastern Canada, ending our travels with a an extra credit loop to Michigan to attend Doug’s blues guitar meetup. This year the group is having a meetup in Albuquerque, NM in late September, just in time for the weather to start cooling off in the southwest, where there’re lots of things we haven’t seen because it’s just too hot in the summer. Let’s try for a fall trip! In the meantime…

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During the final two days of the trip, we tried to determine what it is that we both were experiencing – a now-familiar feeling we’ve had at the end of each of our trips. We’re happy to be coming home, yet there’s a sadness to ending our adventurous life on the road. We concluded that it’s primarily a feeling of wistfulness (yearning or longing) with a touch of bittersweet (contrasting emotions of sadness and pleasure). And overall, it leaves us with a sense of satisfaction with the adventure just concluded.

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Greetings from a rainy day in Cape Breton Highlands National Park!

We set out to visit the Maritimes this summer, and it appears we’re gonna fail. When we started planning, we’d thought that all of island provinces in eastern Canada were considered the Maritimes. As you probably know already, that assumption was incorrect. Newfoundland and Labrador are not considered Maritime provinces – they’re eastern or Atlantic Canada. We stand corrected!

Continue reading “The Best Laid Plans…”