"Live! from the Jersey Turnpike, the Last Chapter! (of this trip at least)

Hi! Well, this is a surprise. We planned to take 2 days to get to Memphis and sit around waiting for Jan & Dave (my cousin) while getting a head start on the city. We had planned to stay overnight in a Flying J just across the Arkansas border. We got there and there were no obvious places for us to park for the night so we kept on truckin’. We looked around for something interesting and found Hot Springs National Park. Ok, I could use some time soaking in a hot spring. Cheryl got on the internet and did some research finding us a KOA in Hot Springs (the town rather than the park). We called and they had space for us (space is not usually a problem after Labor Day).

Their directions were kind of an adventure but eventually we found the place. We went into the office/store and could find no one. Cheryl went back to the camper and called them on the phone. No one answered but they did find Cheryl. It seems that the girl in the office was out filling someone’s propane tank and had problems with it. They had a place all marked out for us and we soon were all settled in. We didn’t have to take the trailer off the camper. It was near late so we left the car on the trailer and figured we will take it off tomorrow. They have cable TV. I fixed supper and soon we were clearing off the bed. Criminal Minds left off with one of their cars blowing up with people in it so we are curious where that story will go. Last year, Mandy Potemkin left the show at the last minute and they filled his position. I wonder if someone is leaving the show this year. Tonight will tell.

Monday night CSI Miami turned out just as we had suspected (although a little different). Last year left Horatio lying on the runway in a pool of blood but as it turned out Monday, it was just a ruse to make the “bad guys” think he was dead so he could solve the case from an under cover position. Cheap shot and very predictable.

We will stay here at least one more night so we can spend tomorrow in the National Park and soak in the hot springs. If we really like it, we will stay another night. That will still put us in Memphis ahead of Jan/Dave. I am looking forward to Memphis which is one of the top BBQ Capitals in the world. Yummmmmm!

We took in Hot Springs National Park today. It was not as I expected. Other parks with hot springs that we have been to had the springs outside in large pools that you could soak in. This was more in the vein of European baths. The hot water from the springs is piped into bath houses where people soak and bathe in it. They drink it and steam in it, sitz bath and then get wrapped with hot packs and then showered with needle showers, cooled, massaged and relaxed.

The park consists of a series of 6 buildings that were all bath houses in the “old” days during what is referred to as the golden age of bathing. The visitor’s center is located in one of the buildings. It is still set up as if it were still in use. You can tour the facility and see all of the equipment just the way it was set up. They had one piece of equipment that bathed and stimulated you electrically. I am not sure how that worked but the poster said that no one had ever died from it telling me that upon review, it may not have been all that safe.

Another building is set up pretty much the same and is in use today. You can sign up for a bath and spend a couple of hours in abject luxury. There is also a building that has been renovated and reopened this last July. It has one or more large pools on the order of a huge hot tub. Many people gather in it at the same time and you soak there.

The water soaks into the ground and descends slowly through the rock for 4,000 years descending to a depth of 8,000 feet. Then it ascends rather rapidly to the surface where it comes out of the springs.

Hot Springs is also the boyhood home of Bill Clinton. There are some pictures of him in the sixth grade. In spite of the circle around his face, you could not have missed him in the crowd. He didn’t look all that much different back then. Driving across Arkansas, we passed through Hope, Arkansas. There was a big sign telling us that Hope was the birthplace of Bill Clinton.

I think we will load up tomorrow and head for Memphis. We need to do laundry and that is as good a place to do it as any. Well, that’s about it for today. Cheryl is knitting up a storm; her scrubby bag is full though she keeps giving them away. She is about out of nylon net (and she bought more in Santa Fe). She always manages to find people to give them to. She is our ambassador to friendliness everywhere we go.

Another moving day (so soon?). It has been only 2 nights but then we weren’t supposed to be here at all. See y’all in Memphis….Oh the BBQ!

The trip to Memphis was nice. The weather is great as it has been this entire trip and the miles evaporated nicely. We stopped for a break in one rest area and had to park in a no parking zone to hit the bathroom (coffee). The spaces were all full including some cars that apparently didn’t want to drive all the way over to the automobile area and took up entire truck spaces. Trucks were lined up along the no parking area along the back and we joined them. The call of nature is greater than the no parking sign as long as there are no cops around. Back on the road again we were soon at the next rest area (37 miles). We stopped and made lunch and sat watching the world go by.

We called the campground in Memphis and made our reservations for that night. We hadn’t made them before as we didn’t know just when we would get there. Now that we were on the way, we figured it was probably a good time to make them. After Labor Day, you mostly don’t need any reservations but since we were going to be at Graceland, we figured it wouldn’t hurt. Jan and Dave are coming in without reservations but we let them know at the office that they were coming so they could put them in a space next to us.

Everything was certainly going too well. As we came into Memphis we started getting lost. The directions were not very good and we were using our computer routing program (it is really a GPS program but we left the satellite reader in the jeep) and a map. With 3 tools to use, we got 3 times as lost. First, we found I 55 south but didn’t know that it left the road we were on with a left exit (its hard to see those left exits on a 5 lane road when you are firmly seated in the far right hand lane. I go worried when I noticed that the buildings had moved right to the edge of the road. I realized that we were way off the chosen path when I hit my first red light.

That sent Cheryl scurrying for the maps. It wasn’t too long before she found a recovery route which was actually the road that we thought we were on to start with. Soon we found our exit and turned onto Elvis Presley Blvd. OK, we are back on track. I had entered the street address into the computer so we followed that. Near the address in the computer, we found an RV park but it was not the right one so we pulled into a large shopping center and dug out all the maps. As we were trying to figure out this mistake, Cheryl noticed that the address I entered into the computer from the paper I had written it down on were not the same. My fault. We had been looking for the campground sign and had not seen it but we seem to have driven right by the place. I drove back to the road and noticed that a big motorhome had turned into a parking lot on the other side of the road. We pulled out together and headed back down the street in lockstep.

This time we looked for the street sign rather than a campground sign (Lonely Street). First we saw the street sign, and then we saw the campground sign. It was quite large and hard to miss (?). As I turned into the road, I noticed on top of our campground sign was an even bigger sign in bright blue noting that the Heartbreak Hotel was down the same road. I remembered seeing the Heartbreak Hotel sign and thinking that we were really in Elvis Land.

The big motorhome also turned into the same road ahead of us and then pulled over and waved us by. I didn’t understand why but who am I to argue in the middle of the street, especially when I come out on top. He was waiting for 2 other motorhomes that he was traveling with to catch up. I guess they all missed the road. So far, the count is “Found the Road….0; Missed the Road….4…..I guess we didn’t do so badly after all.

So we have now been lost twice and were in the campground. All we have to do is get to our site…….yea right. Lost again. I missed the road completely and had to drive all the way around the campground a second time to find our site. Once we got there, the camper and the trailer fit exactly in the site but there wasn’t room for the car so we parked it by the laundry. Serendipity strikes again. The laundry is right across the street from our campsite. We didn’t take long to run the dirty clothes across the street and plug them into a suite of washers.

We watched the presidential debate last night. It was interesting. Traveling is a good relief from an election year. We get the highlights of the campaign but are not subjected to the daily grind. People wonder at the candidates for their endurance on the campaign trail but think of us poor voters; we have to listen to it all the time, day in and day out until we are about to scream.

The financial debacle is pretty frightening. This is truly frightening. I don’t know whether forcing these people to sink or swim based on the decisions they have made over the last several years is the best deal or bailing them out with taxpayer’s money to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars. Innocent people are losing their investments and their retirements and their savings while many of the people who foistered this off onto us are bailing out with their multi-million dollar parachutes. One newly appointed CEO was hired recently to bail out a failing company. After 17 days on the job, he threw the company into bankruptcy, it was bought up by the government who sold it to Chase for a pittance (if you can call 1.8 Billion dollars a pittance) and all of the stockholders lost their money while he took an outclause in his contract and collected 20 million dollars. Pretty good pay for 17 days work.

I talked to some people down in Mississippi this morning. They were all outraged at the governments spending more than 700 billion dollars to save these greedy companies. They were upset about common people (main street people according to our candidates last night) but most of all were against the bailout in general.

Nuff politics for now, this is not the aim of this blog. We did drive down to Mississippi this morning. We are only 4 miles from the border and Mississippi is one of the last states I need. Arkansas was 48 and Mississippi (I love to write that word) is number 49. All I need now is Idaho to complete the set. I also have all of the Canadian provinces but one; Northwest Territories. That one will be more difficult than Idaho to get as the only way to get to it is up a 400 mile dirt road. The next time we go to Alaska, we will have to take a few days and drive up there. Idaho is another story. We do want to go back to Yellowstone so we will make the effort to grab Idaho then.

Back to the problem at hand. I broke my sunglasses probably by carrying them in a soft case in my pants pocket. The screw broke and one of the bows fell off. We had a kit to fix glasses but the screws in it wouldn’t fit. On our drive to Mississippi, we looked in vain for a glasses place. Finally, we found a (you guessed it) Walmart with an optical department. I was a little skeptical because once I was trying to get a battery put into Cheryl’s watch and went to Walmart only to have them refuse me because I hadn’t bought the watch there and they said they only work on things that were bought in their store. This, however, was not the case in the Walmart just over the border in Mississippi. The woman took my pieces and disappeared into the lab returning in just a couple of minutes with the glasses not only fixed but cleaned to within an inch of its life. I asked what I owed them and was told just a handshake and the hope that I have a great day.

It reminded me of a time years ago when I had so much trouble with Sears in Newington. They wee the most frustrating people to deal with. I would call and ask if they had an item to be told oh yes. Upon arrival, I was told they didn’t have any of the sale items other than the ones on display. They got one for display and ordered only the number that they took orders for. I bought a lawn tractor from them along with a snowblower attachment. They didn’t realize that the attachment didn’t fit on the tractor until it was time to get ready for snow. I had a huge fight with them over that. After that, on one of my race trips to Dover, Delaware, I noticed that I had a big bubble on one of my tires. There was a Sears’s right next door and they were having a sale on tires so I reluctantly wandered over there. They were out (of course) of the sale tire and had to upgrade me 3 quality levels of tire to get one that would fit my car. Newington would have made me pay the difference but they apologized that they were out of the sale tire and gave me the (much) better tire for the price of the lower grade sale tire. Nice people.

Why is it that people are much nicer away from New England than they are around home? It seems to be true all around. Out here, people will make room for you in traffic. If you put on your blinker, they will let you in. I have had people see that I was in a right turn only lane and didn’t think I wanted to be there and would hesitate so that I would have room to get into the right lane. People stop around here when the lights turn yellow; there I no mad dash to make the light and certainly no cars driving through the red light after it changes. There is very little weaving in and out of traffic and most people get into lines and take their turns. In the cities there are a few people who don’t follow this but…..

BBQ interlude: Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ. This was one great BBQ. I had the beef ribs; the first I have seen on this trip. Cheryl had the pork ribs. Both were delicious. The sides of potato salad and cole slaw (known just as slaw down here) were tangy and flavorful. I think the potato had a mustard based sauce.

We stopped at a Krispee Kreme afterwards. The red light had been on when we went to dinner but was out when we came back by. We stopped anyway and found they were making a fresh batch. They seemed like the original Krispee Kreme but they didn’t glaze them. They have a big cabinet with a serpentine belt with little hanging trays. The freshly dropped dough rides through this cabinet at 120 degrees and 30 % humidity. They rise and are then dropped into the hot grease where they float controlled via a set of rods moving through the grease. Another shelf looking thing flips them over and another timed journey through the grease until just at the right moment they are lifted out, drained and cooled. If this were a batch of originals, they would pass through a sugar spray the glaze them but these weren’t. The doughnut master came out and offered to glaze some for us since we had watched them from the beginning but we declined. We only wanted one each instead of more (you can easily eat these things like potato chips).

Another wonderful day dawned this morning. We headed off and did a little shopping then wandered around the campground checking out the new crop of campers. My cousin Jan and her husband Dave are supposed to show up today. I logged onto the computer and checked out the results of the Formula One race in Singapore. It was a momentous race being the first F1 race to be held under the lights on a brand new street circuit. It was a huge success. Everyone seemed to like the lighting and the new course but it was a little rough. Hamilton came in third but his closest rivals in the championship finished out of the points so it was a pretty good day for McLaren.

The NASCAR race came on in the afternoon. That was a good race too except that Jimmy Johnson won. Carl Edwards made a desperate attempt to pass Johnson on the last corner but was going too fast and slid up into the wall letting Jimmy back by for the win. Carl came in second in a car with one side caved in.

Jan and Dave showed up just before the end of the race. After they got set up, we sat around and caught up on family news. We headed out for BBQ. We went to the place Cheryl and I had eaten last night but since it was Sunday, it was closed. We stopped at Tops BBQ but they didn’t have ribs so we motored on. We stopped at Marlowe’s, a place where Elvis used to eat. Dave and I had ribs, Cheryl had pulled pork and Jan had Brisket. This brisket was served in two large slabs more like Prime Rib than any brisket I have seem before. All were served with slaw and BBQ Beans and a small fresh hot roll.

The entry to the restaurant was filled with trophies won by Marlowe’s in BBQ competitions. The food was worthy of all those trophies too. It was delicious. The young man that waited on us spoke with such an accent that I could not understand a word that he said. Everyone else seemed to understand him to some degree but not me. It might as well have been Greek.

Tomorrow we tackle Graceland.

Breakfast was at Jan & Dave’s at 8:30. Waffles and sausage followed by the walk across the campground to Graceland. It is amazing. Elvis, the cash cow, left the building a lot of years ago and is still a huge money maker. Graceland is a beautifully kept place. The house and grounds are well kept and you get to walk through the house. They give you an electronic version of a tape player and you can follow the tour. There are many stations that have separate numbers you can enter to get additional information. We toured Elvis’ car museum and then a museum of his outfits. You can buy replicas of some of his jumpsuits for $3,000; how many do you want?

We toured the 2 planes that he owned. One is really large (the Lisa Marie) and was all fueled up and ready to go to a concert when Elvis Died (they don’t tell you that the destination was Portland, Me). Yes, Elvis died the day before he was supposed to play Portland, Me.

This afternoon we had another adventure with the post office. We went to the Post Office that my mother had sent our mail to. When we got there, we were told that all General Delivery mail goes to one of the post offices in the middle of the city. We told him that the Priority Mail package had been sent to that specific post office. He again said that all general delivery mail goes to this other post office. I stood there and stared at him and after a half minute, he said he would go out back and look for it. A minute later, he came back with a package in his hand. This is your lucky day, he said handing me the package. We got this in the morning and figured we would hold on to it for a couple of day and see if anyone showed up to get it. Then we would ship over to the main Memphis post office. (I was the lucky one?) This is the second place we have been told there was a special post office where all general delivery mail went….the first was Bullhead City, AZ. There the only post office to have general delivery mail was not open on Saturdays.

Tonight we wandered down to Beale Street. This is where the blues were born. They close off Beale Street and leave it to the revelers. You can buy drinks and walk up and down the street with them. There are Police cruisers at either end of the closed areas. It was Monday when we were there so several of the places were closed and many of them were quiet. There were bands in the clubs all up and down the street. They were belting out blues oriented music. Not all of the bands were in clubs. One band was playing in a pavilion in a park along the street and down near the bottom end of the street, there was a band set up on the sidewalk. You could hear music everywhere you went. It resembled the French Quarter in New Orleans but on a much smaller scale. It was fun but not real exciting. B B King has a club there and there were a lot of panhandlers with just as many signs warning you not to give money to them.

Tomorrow, we are heading into town to visit Mud Island. More on that tomorrow.

The day started out positively overcast. It didn’t rain but there was no sun and the clouds were rolling across the sky. Could it be that we will not have the usual great day? Noooo! As we hit the road, the skies cleared and the sun came out. I was glad I had taken my sunglasses as it got bright. We drove into Memphis and immediately got lost. Riverside Drive just seemed to disappear and we found ourselves on Interstate 40 headed for Nashville. It wasn’t where we wanted to go but it took us right by the St. Jude’s complex. Hospitals, research Centers, Children’s Hospitals and Danny Thomas Blvd whizzed by as we tried to work out what went wrong. Jan was navigating and Dave was driving so I got to sit in the back seat and watch the world go by.

Eventually, we found the bridge to Mud Island and drove out to the Mississippi River Museum. If you saw the movie “The Firm”, the monorail to Mud Island was a crucial part of a big chase scene late in the movie. The red monorail cars go from the mainland to the museum in the middle of the Mississippi.

The museum told about the history of the river. They had a big exhibit on the boats on the river from canoes to rafts to the barges, sidewheelers, sternwheelers and later on the larger diesel boats and barges. The river is a very important highway for the transportation of goods up and down the country. They had a model of part of a sternwheeler. They showed you staterooms, salons, gambling halls and decks. They had a large section about the civil war. I was surprised to learn how many ironclads there were fighting on the river. They had a partial model of the fighting deck of an ironclad and then took you up to a shore battery that looked down on the boat. They talked about being part of the Louisiana Purchase and how the Spanish explored this entire area.

They had a big section on the musical history of Memphis. Blues though country to rockabilly and finally the birth of Rock and Roll. The owner of Sun Studios, Sam Philips, specialized in blues recordings but he was on the outlook for something new that he felt was coming. He was working with Elvis on his first recording and it wasn’t going well. They took a break and were considering calling it a night. Elvis started fooling around with a well known song and all of a sudden sped it up. His other two bandmates picked up on what he was doing and jumped in with him. The owner of the studio heard what they were doing and stopped them asking what they were doing. Elvis looked up at him and said he didn’t know (they were just fooling around). He told them to start over and play the whole song and he started the recording equipment. This was just the sound he was looking for and they didn’t know what to call it because no one had ever done anything like it.

They recorded a 45 and he wanted to test the waters with it. He had a friend, Dewey Philips (no relation) with a very popular radio show (Red, Hot & Blue). Sam Philips took a copy of the record down to him and asked him to play it on the radio so they could judge the feedback since the record was not like anything that had been played before. Dewey played the song and the feedback was immense and immediate. He ended up playing the song again a few minutes later and then played it again. In all, he played the record 15 times in that one three hour show and Rock and Roll was born.

There is a great little web site about Sun Studio. It has a free tour that is 13 minutes long and is definitely worth visiting.

Elvis issued 5 singles on the Sun Records label before the owner sold his recording contract to RCA for $30,000. He was about to lose the studio (he wasn’t really making any money) and the influx of money was enough to keep the studio running. It was a good thing because that studio started the careers of Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and many many others. Quite some years ago now, U2 recorded Rattle and Hum in that same studio. Today, there are tours of the studio all day and when the last tour is complete the musicians come in and record there until the studio opens again for tours the next morning. The studio has been used by many of the top bands of today who want to record there and pay homage to the originators of Rock and Roll. The studio is much the same as it was then and there are Xs on the floor where Elvis and his two bandmates stood when they recorded. Look it up, it’s worth a few minutes and the pictures of the studio today are just the same as then.

Just being in the place sent chills down your spine. This was the place where Rock and Roll was born and nurtured. They have a museum upstairs and loads of pictures all over the place. But I digress.

After Mud Island, we took the monorail over to the mainland and walked along the streets looking for a place to eat. We ate at *******. They had a buffet of salad, cole slaw, potato salad, rolls for pulled pork and smoked chicken. More BBQ! Yummm (but then you knew that). Then we took the trolley over to Sun Studios and spent a couple of hours there. Back to Mud Island and back into traffic finding our way back to the campground quite easily.

We had an inhouse BBQ last night. It is fun to visit with people you don’t see very often although we met then down at Cape Cod last spring. We caught up on family news and what everyone is doing, where we have all gone over the last year and where we want to go in the next year or so. We also talked about the financial crisis and critiqued what everyone was doing (not doing is probably a better description).

We got up early and made them apple pancakes so they could hit the road. Right now, they are breaking camp. They have a tow behind trailer. We have watched a lot of neighbors hook up their rigs and “leave the building” (in the Elvis tradition since we are still at Graceland). It will only be a few minutes before they turn the Tahoe around and hook up to leave. We will go over and see them off. They are heading for Branson to meet up with some of their friends from Michigan. We, on the other hand, are off to DC to visit Ivy and Andrew and check up on the progress of this soon to arrive bundle of joy. We will take 2 days to get there and will spend a weekend there then it’s off to home. We plan to get on the road early and do it in a single day but we may be a little more relaxed.

Life has returned to normal but then normal is about to be shortlived. We have one more day to play around in Memphis before heading back towards New England. It will seem good to get home and see everyone but there will continue to be that gleam in my eye when I think about what is around the next corner. I may only have one more state to make the clean sweep but there is something in every state that I have been to that still calls to me. Over every hill is a new countryside and around every corner is something different to see or do, even in the places that I have been before.

We have one last day here in Memphis. What will we do with it? There are many days of things left to do but we have to pick one or two then start to pack up so we can get an early start. We have not had to get an early start since the day we left home. We did in many of the Flying Js we stayed in because life starts early on the interstates of this country but we do need to get an early start as we have 900 miles to do between here and DC. We will drive across Tennessee I think although that will take us through Nashville and the TV has said there is a problem getting gas in that area. I guess I will do some research on that potential problem and adjust the route if I have to. The highways seem to have less of a problem than the intown stations but I don’t want to take a chance.

This afternoon we went up into Memphis proper and visited the Pink Palace. This mansion was built by the man who invented the selfserve grocery store known commonly as the Piggly Wiggley. He built this huge pink marble building but never finished it. He went bankrupt before it was done. Another company bought the property and subdivided the grounds. They couldn’t sell the pink monstrosity so they donated it to the City of Memphis. They turned it into a museum and have since added a planetarium and an IMAX theater. The museum is sort of eclectic. It has bones and fossils and recreated log cabins, doctor’s offices, dentist offices, music displays, antiques, Memphis history, Black history. It was interesting and a fun place to spend an afternoon. Included was a replica of the first selfservice Piggly Wiggly which you could walk through and check out the items and the prices.

On the way back to camp, we headed back down to Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ and had one last helping of Memphis BBQ. This was the best yet and there was enough left over for both of us to have lunch tomorrow. Cheryl had the brisket and I had what they call rib tips. They apparently cook the ribs full sized and cut them down to the ST. Louis sized ribs. The remaining pieces with the cartilage are the rib tips. They are sort of left overs or rejected parts of the rib. When you order them, you get a platter full of them along with slaw and either beans or potato salad. The other night, I had the potato salad but this time I tried the beans (2 nights ago I had the beans at Marlowe’s and found they put a big helping of pulled pork into the beans). Interstate does the same thing except that they put more BBQ sauce in the mix and the beans are much darker and richer.

As we got back, we loaded the car right onto the trailer (it was still on the camper) and tied it down. The sox play later on. I hope we get the game on TV here. I will watch part of it but probably not all of it since we need to get an early start.

Well, we got up early and hit the road. We topped off the gas tank before we hit the road. The TV News has been telling us all week that there is a gas shortage in Tennessee especially in Nashville and we have to go through Nashville and Knoxville. The flying J website lists problems with gasoline in Virginia so we will probably not pass by a station.

The road across Tennessee is long. It is more than 420 miles to the point where we turn north onto I 81 and another 80 miles to the VA border. 77 miles into VA there is a Flying J and we plan to stay there overnight which we did. It was kind of small and the camper spots were about 10 feet shorter than my rig. We looked around and found that other campers with towed vehicles had taken the primo parking spots (or several of them). There was one nice big space but the downside is that it was along the front just where the trucks used their jake brake creating a very loud sound of the motor’s compression.

After taking the very large but very loud space, we cooked supper, started up the generator and tuned the TV into the VP Debate. It was interesting. I had no idea what to expect so there were surprises. No one won but more importantly no one lost. Also, no one answered the questions they were asked. They both seemed to have their own answers prepared and when the right questions were not asked they used their prepared answers ignoring the intent of the debate. It was good fun though.

We put on the radio to keep the noise level something we could control and hit the rack right after the debate ended. It had been a long day and we were beat. The next morning, we got up even earlier, topped off the gasoline and were on the road about 6. The valleys were filled with fog providing a great example of the Name “Great Smokies”. It was strikingly beautiful. Soon the sun came up and the fog burned off giving us another fine day. We drove alongside the mountains. Eventually we found a place to have breakfast and returned to the road sated. There is something about a buffet breakfast that lets you graze through a pasture of different breakfast foods.

Soon we made the turn onto I 66 and headed into DC. We dug out the computer and it guided us through the jungle of roads surrounding our capital and we drove right into our campground. It was a surprisingly nice place. Campgrounds are a real crap shoot. You never know whether it will be a really nice friendly place or a crappy place. More often than not, it is decent but every once in a while you get a truly nice place. We haven’t explored the place yet but it looks nice. The site is long enough to leave the trailer on the camper and still park the car on the end. That is worth something. They also provide a wealth of information on touring the area. They also have a meeting to discuss the tourism of the area with the campers.

We headed into the city to meet up with Ivy. We got there just as she was getting out of a cab. We walked several streets over and ate at this little Italian place. I had wild boar. It was braised and was really tender. It was served with long wide noodles made from fresh pasta. The flavor was intense and everything was delicious.

I made one wrong turn getting back to camp. I guess I got confused by a couple of onramps and headed south instead of north. Correctable but irritating.

We had a nice visit with Ivy. We missed Andrew but he was visiting his mother. It seems that they ended up with 2 family visiting opportunities on the same weekend so they split. The good news is that they now have a weekend off from visiting (the only one in October. It is no wonder Ivy is tired. If I hadn’t mentioned it before, she looks really good. We gave her a baby shower of our own. We have been picking up stuff along the way and Cheryl had made some stuff. She made a really cute baby quilt out of a greenish flannel panel of pictures of cats. That was a challenge for the road since she hadn’t brought any of her quilting stuff with her. She also made a pair of those knit baby jeans along with a matching hat and Mary Jane booties.

Well, today is the day. We got up early (but not as early as we had planned) broke camp in the dark and headed north. We checked off Baltimore and the rest of Maryland then a brief sojourn through Delaware and now we are bouncing along the Jersey Turnpike. Tolls for the most part are 3 times what a car pays. It has been nice driving around the country where there are no tolls. I think that we paid a toll once after Pennsylvania. Oh, we did pay a toll on some little obscure road on an Indian Reservation. This morning we have paid 4 tolls so far for about $40 and are on the Jersey Turnpike which should be the biggest one yet followed immediately by the GW Bridge for another of those one way tolls that pays both directions even though we only went one way. The way around the tolls would have added 100 miles and 2 hours to the trip so we bite our tongues and drive on.

Somewhere along here we will buy our last tank of gas. We saved it for the pike because their gas is always the best price of the highways around here at least. We could have gone up 295 and caught our last Flying J but that too was out of the way. 295 saves you part of the tolls but they are weighted towards the exits above the free road so that you save little by using them and add several miles on as well.

The adventure starts during the upper part of the pike and continues across the GW and over the truck roads leaving NY. Hopefully since this is Sunday, we will find light traffic unless of course there is a football game at the Meadowlands and then it is a crap shoot.

Well, its time to sign off for this trip. I may come back and write a summary of lessons learned or something but no promises.

Do you have your tickets for the Olde Berwick Historical Society’s Lighting up Ball? If not, you better get busy. That is our next adventure. That is always fun and this year is November First. No dinner but heavy appetizers ala Spring Hill Lodge. This party is always fun. Cheryl and I will be playing there again this year so get your tickets and join the fun. I am sure several people have tickets but Call Nicole StPierre to find out where the tickets are available. See y’all soon.

Thanks for tuning in; I hope you have enjoyed traveling the Southwest with us. It has been fun documenting our trip and I hope in some small way you have enjoyed it too. I have to sort through some 4,000 pictures and pick out some of the best ones for a (shorter than last time) dog & pony show. If you would like to see them, drop me a line or give me a call and we can find a time to get together.

What’s next? You ask. No idea! Alaska beckons again but so do the Canadian Maritimes and Georgia, the Virginias, the Carolinas and Tennessee. Time and the price of gasoline will tell.

Clayton & Cheryl