A favorite part about being in the midwest is catching up with members of my family that we don’t get to see very often. With the A/C saga behind us, we aimed for Missouri where temps were forecasted to hover around 100. Does the outdoor thermometer on the RV get to 3-digit numbers?
Continue reading “St Louis and Columbia”
Sue recently pointed out that our approach to route-finding often places a much higher priority on visiting different places to do interesting things with great people than it does on efficiency or saving time or following a direct route. These priorities brought us not only to Cincinnati, but also to the two Ohio towns in the title of this post.
I want to point out that I am writing perhaps three posts in one right now. The two visits in this post sandwiched the visit in the previous post and the A/C saga spans all three of those, as well as the one before that. In the past, we’ve tried to remain chronologically consistent in our posts, but this shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Still, please pay attention!
Continue reading “Ashtabula and Ostrander, OH, thoughts on route-finding, and the Great Air Conditioner Saga of 2025”
We headed out from the Drumeo meetup in Hamilton, ON, nominally en route to this year’s upcoming Blues Guitar Unleashed live jam near Denver, CO. Now, a direct route between Hamilton, ON and Denver wouldn’t normally go through Cincinnati. Fortunately, we don’t care about direct routes nearly as much as we do about going different places and seeing different people, and we love getting together with my piano buddy Honghong. Last year’s visit was way too much fun, so there’s no chance we’d pass up another opportunity!
Set course for Cincinnati!
Continue reading “Cincinnati – deux”
The first live Drumeo meetup of our online drum student group we attended was in 2022 in Toronto. Last year’s (nearly) annual meetup was in Hamilton, ON. In the infamous words of Brian Wilson, it was so good, Do It Again! We wouldn’t miss another chance to meet up with the Drumeo group, again in Hamilton.
Continue reading “Hamilton, ON – Drumeo live meetup, Do It Again!”
Last year, we planned something a little different, and it went, well, the way plans often go. Planning to explore the Southwest US in the fall, we reached LA in time to learn my mom needed surgery for her broken hip – in Florida! The last 2/3rds of our trip were replaced by an about-face and a coast-to-coast dash across the South. Everything worked out in the end and it was a fine trip. And certainly a little different…
This year’s trip planning was easy – let’s go back and finish last year’s plan! So, is this still something different? Or more of the same?
Continue reading “Something a little different… deux”
Well, it wasn’t the trip we’d planned – exploring the Southwest – and we saw enough to know we want to go back there to catch the people, national parks and other cool places we missed. Although we’d visited much of the Southeast before, we did manage to see a few new places and enjoy new experiences, as well as help out my mom. We learned that if necessary, we could get across the country quickly. And we confirmed that the concept of traveling in the fall with a careful reentry into New England after the first snows was not only doable, but adds a different kind of beauty and fun with just a few adaptations of the usual RV logistics.
Continue reading “Home”
As we left Everglades National Park, we drove west through Big Cypress National Preserve. It’s another million acres of wetlands, though deeper and with slower moving water. Yes, the folks at Cypress are proud of their swamp! The National Preserve status allow for more recreational usage (compared to a National Park) so fossil fuel exploration and extraction, hunting, and off-road vehicle use are all permitted. There are also parcels of land withing the preserve that are privately owned, and traditional uses by the indigenous Seminole and Miccosukee tribes also take place.
Continue reading “Big Cypress National Preserve”
I think people are often drawn to beaches or to mountains. There’s no doubt that Doug and I are drawn to mountains. We’ve not vacationed in the islands (Newfoundland doesn’t count) or on beaches in our 40 years together. Of all the times we visited my parents in Melbourne, FL – their chosen retirement location – in the past 30 years, we’ve likely actually intentionally gone the 4 miles to the beach a handful of times. (Except for ice cream – my mom’s and my favorite ice cream shop is a block from the beach.) So let’s just say that the Florida Keys have not been near the top of our bucket list. Still…
Continue reading “The Florida Keys”
Although we were glad to help my mom through her first-ever experience with surgery (at age 91!), we had to defer the latter 2/3rds of our planned southwest adventure. By the time my mom was stable (which happened very quickly, given the possibilities), there was no longer enough time to get back to any of those southwest plans. But we didn’t really need to rush home. Could we find a different adventure? What if we had planned a trip to the southeast… Is there something we would explore in Florida that we haven’t yet visited on our many family visits to Melbourne? This was a no-brainer – Everglades National Park!
Continue reading “Everglades National Park”
Here is a PSA from my mom, Theresa:
Continue reading “Melbourne, FL”Walk 2 miles every day. That’ll keep you feeling and looking young. And if you ever fall and break your hip, it’ll make everybody shake their heads in disbelief and say wonderful things about you when recovery from your surgery takes a few days instead of a couple of months.