The view from our windshield as we crept along on I-80.
I tried to find a song that conveyed the feeling of coming back home to New Jersey.
I could not find one.
Take Me Home, Country Roads…. Nope
We are nowhere near the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Sweet Home Alabama (New Jersey)…. Nope
Nobody calls NJ “Sweet Home.”
Green, Green Grass of Home…. Nope
I don’t even know anyone named Mary.
Homeward Bound ….. ehh, maybe?
Getting closer, at least they’re from NYC!
Born to Run…… Now we’re talkin’!
This is it!
For all of you that live here, you know what I mean…
For those of you that live in far off places like Florida, Oregon , or Michigan, I will try to explain. There is no other place on the planet like New Jersey.
We are tiny.
We are crowded.
We have an attitude.
We have the best pizza.
We have awesome Superfund Sites.
And we have Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Frankie Valli, Jon Bon Jovi, The Rascals, Dionne Warwick, Gloria Gaynor, The Happenings, Ricky Nelson, Sarah Vaughn, Connie Francis, The Shirlelles, Deborah Harry, Ice-T, Count Basie, Clint Black, Charlie Puth, The Jonas Brothers, Halsey, Lesley Gore, and of course, The Boss….. Bruce.
The Born To Run lyrics are definitely not the most uplifting words to ever hit the airwaves…..
“At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines… Sprung from cages on Highway 9…”
I LOVE Highway 9! A classic local state highway that winds its way past and through all of the great New Jersey shore towns….. Asbury Park, Seaside Heights, Barnegat, Atlantic City, and Wildwood, just to name a few.
“Oh baby, this town rips the bones from your back,
It’s a death trap, a suicide rap, we gotta get out while we’re young….”
See what I mean?
But it’s Jersey…..
My daughter in Colorado has two tee-shirts, one says,
Welcome to New Jersey,
Now Get Out!
The other one says,
New Jersey
Only the Strong Survive
Those two shirts just about sum it all up.
But… it’s home!
We knew we were getting closer to home when on I-80 eastbound out of Pennsylvania, just before the Delaware Water Gap, everything ground to a halt. Looking at Google Maps we could see the solid red line (indicating stopped traffic) stretching all the way across the Delaware River and two more miles into New Jersey.
The +30 turned into +60 by the time were through it all.
As we inched along, we eventually came to a sign that read “One and a half miles – Left Lane Closed Ahead.” Well, that explained it. When we finally covered those 1.5 miles, squeezed down into one lane, and crept along for another two miles, we happened upon the source of this absurd backup. There was a guy in the left lane of this (two lanes only) major East/West interstate and he was working on a storm grate, putting some extra tar around it, I guess to make it waterproof.
I da know…. You can’t make this stuff up!
Mind you we made it all the way from Texas to the Delaware River without even the slightest hint of any traffic/travel issues!
Until.
Until New Jersey.
And that was just the beginning!
We needed exit onto Rt. 94 towards Blairstown for the final twenty miles or so until we hit Yetter’s Diner, our “campground” for the summer. Believe it or not (and if you’re from these parts you totally believe this) we had three more “Lane Closures” on this last leg adding an additional 45 minutes to a trip that should have taken only 30 to begin with!
Finally we pulled into our reserved spot at the Diner. They were very happy to see us, they always are. We surprised them, we just showed up and went in for lunch.
This where the good stuff starts.
New Jersey Diner food!
It really is like no other!
And for the record, the state is not all bad, in fact, when you get to know it and all of its specialties and peculiarities, it kind of grows on you…..
Oh, and we have Bucky Pizzarelli, the famed American Jazz guitarist and his son John Pizzarelli, who wrote a song a tad more positive then Born to Run….. It’s called; I Like Jersey Best
Just for fun Google it and have a listen, it’s got a catchy hook and is quite clever.
Here are two more older Posts. They are self-explanatory……
The first one is entitled…..
“On The Road Again…..”
Willy Nelson stopped by the campfire last night.
We had our usual good time just singin’ and playin’ our guitars.
Not really, I can’t sing a note as anyone in my family can attest to, and, besides, the only thing I can play is the radio.
But when “On the Road Again” popped into my head when thinking of a title for this post, well……
Today is Wednesday (4 AM as I write this) and as I put my best “Travelogue Narrator’s” voice on here,
“We bid a fond farewell to Durango and her neighbors as we drive ever Westward in search of the Perfect Walmart Parking Lot. So until we meet again, Adios! Durango, someday we’ll find our way back to you and your skyline of awe-inspiring mountain ranges.”
What a load of crap.
My daughter lives here and it is one of our Bases here in the West. Of course, we’ll be back!
But today is a Travel Day! Another “Ho-hum-incredibly-great-weather-as-usual” kind of day that abounds in this area. Our next destinations are several stops in Arizona where two of Paula’s cousins live. We have a few days to get there and luckily there is no shortage of sights along the way. The Drive itself may be rewarding enough, especially with the Gigundo Vista VisageBug-SplatteringWindshield in front of us. Our route takes us through Northwest New Mexico, past Shiprock and the Four CornersMonument, which because of an exceedingly embarrassing surveying error, is not, in fact, positioned at the precise location of the intersection of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. (Maybe Willy stopped by their campfire the night before they went to work and they all had some extra libations, et al, if you catch my drift.) Oh well, at least it makes for a good story! All of this is on the expansive Navajo Indian Nation’s Reservation or The Rez, as it is locally known. It is the largest Reservation in the nation, totaling a little over 27,000 square miles of desert, open range, and some of the largest coal deposits on the planet. To give you a perspective on how large it is, New Jersey is around 8000 square miles in size. Interestingly, and probably much to the chagrin of the Hopi Nation, the reservation entirely surrounds the Hopi’s Reservation. This issue has been around for a while, and of course the U.S. Government and their incredibly bad record of handling Native American affairs, compounded the problems. But, if you go back far enough, the Hopi’s, who still live in Pueblos, have a much better argument for living here because it is easy to trace their history back to the Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) whose relics and cliff dwellings abound in this region. The Navajo where a nomadic tribe from areas much to the north of here. But, back to our route. We had planned on visiting Navajo National Monument, a part of the National Park Service, but it is closed due to the Covid Deal. It seems that Covid hit the Navajo with more severity than any surrounding populations. So we are probably going to pass that by in favor of two NPS Parks a little further south and they are Wutpaki N.P. (one of the Ancestral Puebloans site ) and its neighbor Sunset Crater N.P. (this entire area is rife with old volcano activity).
This is the area that we plan to “Boondock” in. Boondocking is the term given to just parking and staying, not hooked up to any utilities. Even staying in the aforementioned Walmart parking lot is considered boondocking. The site will be on Bureau of Land Management land, (BLM for short) which is just public land that can be used for just about anything that is legal. BLM land does have some practical regulations having to do with the likes of fires in the dry season and not destroying the Ancestral Puebloan sites, the majority of which, lie within BLM management areas, all across the Colorado Plateau. This is the geographic term given to the expansive land uprising that starts around Flagstaff, Arizona and continues northward and eastward thru Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado.
Enough of the Geography lesson. No worries, you are all just auditing this course, there are no quizzes, and it is not even pass/fail. It is just for fun. 😊
(Same day, Later in the Evening, 7PM)
The trip today went as planned.
Ho-Hum gorgeous weather.
300 Miles of Western Desert Scenery.
Zero Traffic
And not even one Interstate Highway!
All was good until we got to the entrance to the Four-Corners Monument.
Closed.
Now I can understand how Covid has affected many areas and has wreaked havoc on many a Travel Plan. But this particular site is a giant concrete pad with the outlines of the four boundaries intersecting at perfect right angles. One does not need a Guide to interpret this. Maybe they are afraid of vandals, but really, this place could have been made available. So undaunted, we went off into the desert, I took out my phone, went on Google Maps, found the real Four Corners, drew our own State Boundary Lines, and stood in all four States at once!
Not really, but it would have been fun to try! We had kind of a schedule to keep because the place where we were planning to Boondock today is a National Forest, administered in the same way as BLM land and therefore needed some reconnoitering to find a decent (level) campsite.
Arriving too close to dark is taboo.
So back into the Whale we clambered and continued on our way. This day was the antithesis of most of our other travel days so far, so there are no hair-raising or near-catastrophic stories to tell.
Sorry about that.
But I’m not!
We arrived here in the Cocochino National Forest a little after three in the afternoon and as it turns out, non-too soon. The area is well used, and the sites scattered among the pines were many and varied. They are absolutely, slam-dunk, perfect for Camping. Especially if you have tent. Or a Pop-Up. Or a Pick-up with a Camper in theback.
Or a small travel trailer.
Maybe even a smaller, traditional RV.
But NOT a Full-Size Big-Ass Coach.
Hey! What did we know? We wandered our way in on the more than adequate graveled road and looked for sites for us to occupy. I felt like we were in Goldilocks and the Three Bears…..
“This one is too small”.
“This one is too rocky”.
“This one is not level enough”.
We tried one that looked promising, but after we tried to level and were unsuccessful, we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to extricate ourselves from the clutches of the various trees and rocks that seemed to pop up after we entered this site. Paula outside on her cell phone communicating with me inside, frantically working the controls in an attempt not to get too many scratches on our pretty baby. Well, let’s just say we finally managed to exit, and we will only need a few Band-Aids to fix her up.
Undaunted (and we really liked it here, plus we did not want to be the guests of Walmart of Flagstaff ), we tried the other direction.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
Ahh…. Maybe?
I exited the coach and looked around. Level looked good. Trees spaced nicely. Exit without backing even appeared ok. So, in we went and held our breaths as the leveling process began. It’s not that we can’t park in a spot that isn’t level, it’s just that we need to be level to put the slides out, which makes it way nicer to be inside walking around, cooking , bathrooms, etc.
There is an Auto-Level System aboard the senses our attitude and adjusts accordingly. But it does have its limits, so finding a spot that is fairly level to begin with is a necessity.
Finally, after many big tweaks, and then some tiny tweaks, the Leveling Lady decided that we were good!
We went for walk around and to check out our new neighborhood. We found that there were other like-minded folks in the area and that made us feel good. They are probably looking over at us and wondering who the big jerks are that drove a Giant Class A Coach into the woods. Spying our Jersey license plates, I am sure they just shook their heads in understanding. Can’t wait to get the Texas tags on!
Back inside, dinner, some cards, and now some Zzzzzz’s.
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Now for the Second One, and it is entitled ……
“Deep In The Heart of Texas!”
If California is a State of Mind
Then
Texas is a State of Being.
There are other States that started out as independent countries: Vermont, Hawaii, Oregon, and several other entities, most of them relatively short-lived, but by far the most famous and successful as an independent country is Texas. Texas, as a republic, was in existence for about twelve years in the mid 1800’s. California’s flag has the words California Republic emblazoned on it but, in reality, the “Bear FlagRevolt” lasted only 25 days in 1846. I’ve seen (more than once) the Texas flag flown here all by itself. No American flag above it. Nothing disrespectful mind you. Texas is as patriotic as any state, just a tad more “independent” as it were.
So, why you are probably asking yourself, is he giving us a stupid history lesson on Texas and random Statehoods?
I can answer that my friends.
It is because of a Gas Station.
Not just any relatively ubiquitous, monotonous, stale breakfast sandwich, and dirty restroom convenience store gas station. I am talking about the Holy Grail of this genre,
Buc-ees
It seems to me that after visiting one of this Company’s wonderful entities, that the reason that they exist is because of Texas.
Big.
No, that does not do it justice.
How about Massive?
Now we’re getting somewhere.
The phrase “Big as Texas” is not just a local slogan. It is a mentality that seems pervasive down here. By rights, this State is big! It can take days to get across it. Alaska is larger but no one lives there. California is long, but no one remembers that they live there.
The Buc-ees mascot/logo guy is a caricature of a beaver (with buck-teeth) that looks like he could be a relative of Rocky the Flying Squirrel from Rocky and Bullwinkle. His face is on everything that you could possibly market and it is all done with great success.
A Buc-ees would probably do well in other states also, but its genesis probably could have only been in Texas.
Let us start with the obvious.
Gas Pumps .
Back East we have Quick Check, Wawa, 7-11, Sheetz, Raceway, Exxon, and a host of other national chains that have enough pumps at them that you can feel comfortable enough to leave your car there and go inside for a purchase or two.
Buc-ees has over 70 pumps.
You could park there all day and probably no one would notice!
Bathrooms.
Some of these establishments do a better job than others in this department. But, it’s a crapshoot, sometimes good, sometimes (well you know what the other side is here).
Are they “one-holers”?
Is there a line?
Are they even clean?
Squeaky-Clean?
Buc-ees has 35 urinals in the Men’s Room separated by walls. I know this because I counted them.
How about stalls?
No flimsy partitions here.
Solid masonry walls with doors separates you from your neighbor. This is also the configuration in the Ladies Room. I do not know this as an eyewitness fact, but I do have it from reliable sources. No waiting here ladies, there are just as many “sites” in your room as is the Men’s Room, all with the same solid construction.
Clean?
You bet!
Crazy clean!
Now let us step out into the Retail and Food Area.
You can do your Christmas Shopping here and get a delicious, home cooked, truly Texas-Chef Inspired meal. I had a pulled-pork sandwich (because I always have that wherever I go) and it was as good as any roadside, authentic, Big Bubba’s BBQ places that I’ve been to.
Prices.
More than fair, especially when you get all these other extras at no charge. Get a load of the drink prices in the photo! Everything else is competitively priced, and the fuel prices are the starting point. I even bought the DEF Fluid (used in diesel powered motors) for about half of what I was paying elsewhere.
And get this,
NO TRACTOR TRAILERS ARE ALLOWED!
Just cars and RV units
Not there is anything wrong with 18-wheelers, it is just that they have their own truck stops. This is like a truck stop for cars, lets call it a Car Stop!
Would you like a giant Fire-Pit?
How about a large BBQ or Smoker?
Yep! Got them too! Texas Sized!
Hopefully, I have painted enough of a picture for you to see how this business is Texas born and bred. As crazy as this seems, a stop at Buc-ees is a must when you visit here and apparently the go-to place for the local population also.
Can you imagine having visiting relatives over and saying to them, “I’m going to bring you to Quick Check! Wait ‘til you see this!”
Thanks for reading these Oldies, I hope that you are enjoying them!
Just yesterday we visited a Buc-ees on our way back from Trader Joes. Somehow it is impossible not to stop at one of these Perfect Petroleum Palaces and get something, anything…. it’s that good!
Everyone in favor of having a Class Trip to Buc-ees raise your hands!
Yes! Just as I thought!
Permission slips will be in your backpacks when you leave today!
Well, the Great Oil Change of 2023 has been performed by the masters over at The Truck Center, a beautifully maintained, spotless facility, just a few miles from where we live. These folks are our “Go To” experts when we are down here. You may remember last year at this time we were experiencing some DEF issues and it was these guys that dropped what they were doing (they had about a two-week scheduling backup) and worked feverishly to get us going again. They are a pleasure to work with.
Anyway, as I wrote the other day, this Event comes complete with its own Majestic Invoice which this time arrived with just a tad more majesty than previously. The reason for the grandioseness of it was the inclusion of an innocuous air filter. These babies are the size of a small trash bin and have the price tag of a large diamond. It’s a good thing that (if it’s not too dirty) it can be “blown out” using compressed air and that will get you another “use cycle”. It appears that was what happened last time and now, 20,000 miles later, it was too far gone. So, an appropriate Memorial Service was hastily prepared and when it was over the new air filter was commissioned and installed as the Reigning Filter of Airs. Miss Motor is now breathing a little easier and when you are gulping the amount of air that a diesel motor dragging around a 28, 000-pound motorhome does, well, it can make a huge difference!
We drove up to College Station to top off the tank. This is a fifty-mile round trip. You may ask,
“Why Don, do you go that far out of the way to procure fuel that can be had just around the corner?”
Good question my inquiring amigos!
The reasons are mainly these:
A. The price was significantly cheaper than locally and,
B. I wanted to put some miles on the entire system before setting out for the East Coast. She hadn’t been exercised since early January and you never know what bug-a-boos and/or gremlins have crept in whilst we were away. I am happy to report that it was a fine outing, and everyone behaved themselves except the air conditioning and that may just need a “charging”.
When we got back home I took advantage of being “out” and drove up onto our concrete pad so that the rear end hung out over the end of the pad, which is opposite of the way that we normally park. I wanted to check the condition of the inside two tires of the dual wheel set-up that is in the back. These tires cannot be seen without crawling underneath or taking the outer tires off. These two are original tires and while the milage is ok, the “time” factor can be an issue. Luckily these inside tires are not subject to the UV rays of sunlight so that helps out in this situation. I did my inspection and did not find any obvious signs of tire “rot” or anything of that nature.
Phew!
But, upon crawling out I did notice that under the DEF tank chassis, there was more than enough of a rust issue. This is what happens when you get underneath any vehicle and actually see what goes on down there! Any of you that live in the Northeast or anywhere that there is a possibility of snow and ice…. Well, you may not want to look underneath your car because it will scare you to death! All of that stuff that they put down on the roads in order for us to drive at ninety miles an hour in any type of road conditions, can, and will, take its toll on your undercarriage!
So, out came the scrapers and rotary wire brushes used in an attempt to get the metal down to an acceptable state of cleanliness in order to put a coat of Rust Primer on and finish it off with a coat of flat black. It’s not that the metal was ready to crumble or anything like that, it’s just that it was staring me in the face, and I am retired, so that means that I have the time, and I also had the supplies already in my handy-dandy-I-carry-almost-everything-with-me tool and supply department!
So I spent the better part of the next two hours underneath trying to work at odd angles in an attempt to both scrape and paint. The only ones who suffered anything were my arms and shoulders. The recipients of all this attention were delighted and are wishing that their new “duds” could be paraded around for all to see, but unless you look at the accompanying photos (or crawl underneath) they are destined for a life of obscurity.
Before
Primed
Finished!
The planned extrication of our stay here in Texas is only three days away so all these preparations are now at a feverish pitch!
Not really, we could leave just about any time now because yesterday while the oil change was in progress we made our way to the local Trader Joes (an hour and a half away) and procured all of the Necessary Emergency Snacks (and Food) for the journey.
We probably will not be losing any weight on the trip North.
I went back to the beginning of our travels and extricated a few short ones that introduce you to the Motorhome Madness way of driving around, particularly on our most unfavorite road around, that of Interstate 10. Here for your amusement (at our nerve-wracking expense) are some of those examples.
The first one is entitled Goin Down the Bayou and was published in the beginning of October, 2020 while on our first trip down here from New Jersey to Texas…….
Goin’ Down the Bayou
I consider myself a fairly accomplished driver. I’ve been driving since 1972 and when I worked for Ritter Food and Sysco, I would routinely drive 1000 miles a week because of the size of my selling territory. Route 80 in rush hour and the screamingly busy New Jersey Turnpike were just another walk in the park to me. I have even driven a NASCAR race car at Pocono Speedway.
A few days ago, (our second full day on the road) I experienced what was probably the worst and most stressful 45 minutes of driving in my life.
Some sicko in the Louisiana DOT designed a highway that runs from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Lafayette, Louisiana. It is Interstate Route 10. Running basically in a straight line following an almost perfect East / West tangent, it is elevated on a windy bridge above a giant swamp just high enough that you know that there would be no survivors if some idiot caused you to careen over the side.
It ran for THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of miles.
With itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny balsawood guardrails.
And alligators underneath.
I KNOW this is true because I’ve watched Swamp People.
It’s two lanes wide and I needed to be in the right lane of what felt like it was being on the Jungle Cruise at Disney World except there was no humorous Guide to shoot the ‘gators and hippos as they charged the boat.
When we finally hit dry land I thought, Phew! That’s over with!
Nope.
Another 14-mile Destruction Zone that had me feeling as if I was driving on the streets of Monte Carlo in the Grand Prix.
Except their course is much wider and has easier turns than the road we were on.
All of this in a 40’ motorhome dragging a 15’ trailer behind it.
Driving a vehicle this size in windy conditions, is like carrying a piece of plywood out to your car at Home Depot.
In a hurricane.
With only you holding on to the plywood.
The term White Knuckle Driving was invented for situations like this. When it was over, I looked down at my hands and found out that there were, in fact, no knuckles left on my fingers.
They were permanently imbedded in the steering wheel.
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The second one came a few weeks later, after we had been in Texas a while. We needed to travel to Durango, Colorado to drop off the trailer that contained my Library and a few other essentials that were deemed so when Paula had sold her home in New Jersey, and we officially moved into the motorhome. Colorado has a Relative Humidity of about 1% while Texas sports one of about 1000%….. so, the Library et al, were going to a place of Dryness…..
It is from the end of October 2020 and is entitled:
Westward Ho!
You know that it is going to be bad when even the GPS unit warns you there will be High Gusty Winds.
I knew it was windy!
I was driving!
How did my GPS know it was windy?
Did it sense my erratic driving style?
Could it tell by the many Lane Departure warnings she was giving me?
At that point, I wondered if she had a DWI Warning built into her too! ( No worries there, I do not really drink except for an occasional Strawberry Wine Cooler maybe once a month.)
Then I passed a sign that read, “High Wind Area”
OK, now it made sense. Someone had programmed it in. We were traveling on Interstate Route 10 through southwestern Texas headed for New Mexico and eventually Colorado. This area of Texas is about as broad and expansive as any Texan could brag about. To complicate things, that Weather Anomaly that kept us from departing on schedule reared its ugly head once more, as if bidding us a evil, final, farewell.
But we had Bluebird Skies and Bright Sunshiny Vistas!
And Wind.
Lots and lots of Wind.
So not only were we in a High Gusty Winds Warning area, but we were still in the clutches of a departing Low Pressure System, which as it leaves, gets filled with an incoming High Pressure System that packs a Pressure Gradient that will knock your socks off! (in our case I guess you could say “tires off”). And unfortunately, it hung around for a while because Hurricane Zulu, Zorba, or Zumba (Can’t remember and don’t care) was still hanging in Louisiana and environs and wouldn’t let “our” system pass through!
This made the previous drive through the Louisiana Bayou seem like just another Sunday ride on a Bike Path. (except there are no ‘gators in the Texas Desert, just a rattler or two). Remember how that previous drive went on for thousand and thousands of miles? Well, this one went on for millions and millions of miles!
All day long, constant, no let up, save when we pulled into a rest area for a break. At that point we could still feel the wind rocking us back and forth like we were on the boat with Jesus and the Apostles when the storm came up.
Everyone knows the feeling of the Passing Truck on the highway.
As the truck approaches and pushes that big wall of air in front of it, you can feel it coming and you need to counteract that push by steering into it. The problem is that you need to stop that countermeasure the precise moment that the Wall passes you because if you do not, you will oversteer and only cause more problems.
All of those issues are compounded by our size.
I’m used to that by now.
I watch my rearview mirror for the overcoming Big Rig and as it comes alongside, I steer into it until I feel the effect lessen and then I pull back to center and then steer the other way because now, as it passes, it wants to suck us in behind it.
Got it!
Been there. It is now all part of the Driving Experience.
Except when in the aforementioned High Gusty Winds Warning Area.
Now it gets dicey.
All of my carefully calculated, tried and true, driving techniques go out the window (literally and figuratively) when every maneuver that I make gets buffeted back and forth always in the wrong direction.
I considered taking a Xanax but decided that it would not look good on the Police Report if they did a blood test. Poor Paula was as nervous as I was but made heroic efforts not to show it. You know how it is riding Shotgun, all of the drama and none of the control (slamming your foot to the floor in an effort to grind to a halt using your invisible imaginary brake on your side of the vehicle!)
Miss GPS and Navigator Paula found an alternative way to go that not only promised to get us off of blustery Interstate 10, but it looked like it was even shorter! Off we go onto Route 285 North towards Pecos. I felt like I was in a Western Movie just hearing the word Pecos! All was good until another Destruction Zone.
They were widening the road (good) but in their efforts to do so they forgot to keep even the semblance of a shoulder on the right-hand side (bad). The road is only two lanes, one each way, so there was no riding in the left lane. The big issue with the No Shoulder scenario was that IMMEDIATELY after the white stripe on the right side there was NOTHING! Except a downward slope of freshly graded, sandy-type soil that would have flipped us over if I even thought about wandering over the line. It was so close to the edge I wondered how they even painted it onto the road. We made it into Carlsbad, New Mexico which is in the next time zone so theoretically we bought ourselves an extra hour to do with what we pleased.
Sleep?
How about Coma.
Except we were so used to the constant motion of being shellacked all day long that when we finally stopped for the night and pulled into Walmart of Carlsbad, we felt like we had just gotten off an all-day rollercoaster ride.
It took a while to fall asleep.
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And lastly for today is a short one about the ungainly shape of a Class A Motorhome and is from the same trip up to Durango. At this point we were traversing New Mexico and going through Roswell, the site of the infamous UFO sightings from the ’50’s. It is entitled:
Bugs or UFO’s?
Karen, one of your fellow readers, asked in the Comment Section if the spots on the windshield were bugs or UFO’s.
I’d love to report that they were UFO’s because that is a much more exciting story! But, alas, they are just BUGS.
It goes like this, a motorhome is about as aerodynamic as a shoebox. No, let me take that back. A shoebox is more aerodynamic because it does not have all sorts of appendages sticking out of it. The assortment of antenna, folded up awnings, TV satellite domes, and air conditioning units makes this thing like its dragging an anchor. But the number one reason for it’s ungainly shape is the FRONT.
It’s as flat as the proverbial pancake.
Which makes your chances (if you are bug) less than zero of surviving a meeting with it. In a car we’ve all witnessed the “Close Encounter” as a very fortunate bug gets swept up and over the car when it gets caught in the aero airstream instead of a “meeting of the windshield” event.
This NEVER happens with the motorhome. If you are a bug ANYWHERE in front of me, I will find you and SPLAT!!! I now have to clean you off the glass.
And soon.
Because what’s the fun of driving around seeing the country if your giant-vista windshield is covered with the “Remains of the Bugs” (to borrow a title from a like-sounding book.) So kids, keep those cards and letters coming and I’ll try to answer them when I’m not driving!
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That’s it for today, as usual I thank you for indulging me and reading these accounts of our travels. If you’ve read them before, an extra Thanks for re-reading and I hope that you have re-enjoyed them!
This is what Texas looks like now, Wildflowers all over the place!
Well, it’s been a while since you’ve all last heard from us!
A respite of sorts, to be sure, but short lived at that!
Now it’s back to the keyboard……
In about a week we will be high-tailing it back East for this, our Third Eastern Foray and Escape from the Heat of Texas.
Lot’s needs to be done on the motorhome, the most important is the oil change on the diesel motor. Luckily this only needs to be done every 20,000 miles.
Yea, that’s a lot longer than your car, but then this baby holds almost four gallons of oil, not four quarts! This reservoir (of sorts) allows for a longer changing cycle. It also allows for a much larger Service Invoice upon completion. I could do some of this myself but there are all sorts of filters, water separators, and other stuff that we feel much more comfortable with a professional poking around down there. They have experienced eyes and can spot an issue way before I ever could!
Besides the oil change, we need to have a general emptying out of everything stored below, evaluate its current need/value and the re-assemble it all back where we can find it again. Plus the roof needs cleaning and inspecting and the tires need a close examination, just to name a few items.
For those of you that were on the Cruise with us, you will remember the lamentations of our Reupholstery Debacle. The front seats and the dinette seats were taken out before we left and brought to be reupholstered while we were gone. Hopefully to be ready when we came back (four months later!)
Hah!
Well, that did not happen! We arrived back home to the job just beginning to be done! The story is long and tedious so let’s just say that we finally got them re-installed just a few days ago, just in time to get to the Dump Station and empty the by-now filled Dirty Water Tanks!
Old ones, note worn fabric.
The “New and Improved” model!
For the newer folks that started following the blog for the cruise, I am going to start to re-post some of the older posts that are from back in the day. I am being choosy and only selecting ones that are somewhat entertaining, but then, I should let you be the judge of that! It will be like a Greatest Hits compilation, and I will make note of each one’s original post date so there is no confusion! This will help fill in the gap between now and whenever we do something that is actually post worthy!
We can’t believe that it will be three years on July 4th that we have the motorhome! Time (and miles) fly when you’re having fun, and we certainly are!
Stay tuned for those “oldies, but goodies” and keep watching the road in front of your house because we do have your address, and you never know when we’ll pop by!
Opening shot: Camera pans across a desolate landscape, there is some sparse vegetation, assorted cacti, and some hazy mountains can be seen in the distance. The wind is blowing, evidenced by a single tumbleweed entering the shot from the left and then scurrying across the frame. The faint sounds of a lonely harmonica can be heard over the wind as the camera slowly zooms in a dusty cowpoke astride his horse singing, “I’m back in the saddle again….”
Well, that’s how we arrived back here in Texas after the Nirvana Cruise had finally (and unfortunately) come to a close.
I guess that I should qualify that last remark.
I say unfortunately not because we knew that it was time to re-enter the real world, not because we are running from anything, and definitely not because we were getting tired of being on the ship.
Nope, it was not those things.
I say unfortunately because this voyage was enlightening on so many levels and those new experiences could have been far from over given the opportunity to explore further each port that we visited. In some ways you could say, “Been there, saw that, gotthe refrigerator magnet”, and move on. In reality, we just scratched the surface, maybe whetted the appetite for further discoveries for there was so much more to explore.
But all of that is for future consideration.
For now, let’s re-cap……..
Here are some interesting numbers/statistics for you,
– 47 Ports
– 31 Countries
– 2 Equator Crossings
– Panama Canal and Suez Canal Transits
– 6 Continents
– 34,567 Nautical Miles
– 21 World Heritage Sites
– 1,382,680 gallons of fuel oil
– 1,110,000 eggs consumed
– 49,950 pounds of butter used
– 28,000 bottles of wine consumed.
Paula had wine.
I did not.
Paula’s Porterhouse. Mic drop.
And for most significant statistic of all…..
Drum roll please………
We only averaged a four (4#) pound weight gain!
Yes, Paula gained zero and I gained eight!
This is the reason why. Yes, that is a dessert, practically all chocolate!
AJ and David met while serving in the Army, the year was 1989, the place, Fort Ord, California.
I met them a few months ago on board in the Horizon Court Dining Area. I was intrigued by the writing on their shirts… it read, “DD-214 Alumni.” And they had hats with DD-214 emblazoned on them.
I was curious because they did not look old enough to have served in WWII. DD is the Navy’s prefix for identifying destroyers. The Navy uses different alpha-identifiers to distinguish between the types of ships, CV is aircraft carriers, DE is Destroyer Escorts, BB is Battleships, CA is for Heavy Cruisers, and the list goes on….. DD-214 was the destroyer, USS Tracey, who had an exemplary reputation and record during that war. I thought that maybe they were the descendants of someone who had served on her.
I had to find out.
One day, mid-morning, they were sitting alone at their usual table. I walked over, introduced myself and asked about the DD-214 and the USS Tracey. They immediately burst out laughing and saying, “We knew you were going to ask about that!”
They went on to explain that they had no knowledge about the Navy and the USS Tracey, until someone had asked the same question that I did. They went on to further explain that the DD-214 was the standard form used by the Department of Defense (DD) (form 214) and was issued to most of the veterans when they get discharged from active service.
Hence the DD-214 “Alumni” written on their shirts.
I then sat down and heard their story.
They call each other “brother”.
Not “Bro”
They are obviously not related.
But they refer to each other as “my brother.”
This kind of relationship is the kind that is forged in the heat of battle. Every battle is not shared, but the experience is.
I am in constant awe of the persons that put their lives on the line in the name of defense of our Homeland. AJ served in Vietnam in ’71 and David was in Special Ops In El Salvador in ‘88/’89.
One day, David watched as a new Platoon Sergeant rolled up in Fort Ord. It was some new guy named AJ Griggs. Dave asked him if he needed some help.
And the rest is history.
The time period that David served in was relatively calm compared to what AJ experienced in Vietnam. But there were some “Hot Spots”, one of them being El Salvador. David spent a year there in Special Operations, you know, the kind that goes unappreciated because no one really knows why you are there, except maybe the CIA.
Returning home after experiencing combat situations, David was in need of someone to talk to. Because of the relatively calm conditions in the world at the time, the guys surrounding David did not have any combat experience, hence they had never suffered anything like what David had gone through.
Enter AJ.
AJ was one of David’s superiors and he recognized immediately what was going on. He was the only one that could effectively work with David and all those demons that accompany a returning soldier from the front. Even David’s immediate superiors did not have the same combat experience level that David had, and it was AJ, who was still junior to those superiors that told them to back off.
He would take care of this.
David had finally found someone who could commiserate with him, acknowledge the difficulties, and finally help bring him “back” from the combat that no one knew about.
Sitting across the Horizon Court I watch these two brothers, morning after morning they arrive early to sit with each other and some other veterans who have found each other on the ship.
I am always welcome at their table, the DD-214’s, but I will never be one of the guys, I cannot be, for I have not run that gauntlet of battle and emerged on the other side. Combat wounds come in many different forms and one of them is PTSD, a clinical acronym that defines a diagnosis but sterilizes it at the same time.
Maybe it would be better to go back to what it was called during the Civil War….. when it was known simply as…..
The Original Published Route of the Island Princess, 2023 World Cruise.
Well, that about wraps up this cruise.
There is only one more Port to call on and that is the port of disembarkation, Fort Lauderdale.
We do have an Excursion booked for there,
The Airport!
If all goes well, we will be back in Texas by Thursday evening, and back at Danny and Kaitie’s in Brenham by mid-day on Friday. Then the fun begins!
Lots to work on in the motorhome before our “Touring Season” commences in about a month or so.
So, for all of you that had initially joined us for our cruise, we thank you for sailing along with us, but the traveling does not end there! If you stick around, we will bring you on all of our terrestrial adventures with us. (If you go to the “Archives” you can see some of our past adventures and destinations….. for example, a trip to Yosemite never goes out of style!)
In between, you may be treated to a “lesson” or two on some totally random subject, that for one reason or another, is apropos at the time. I may even find a way to work in another Plate Techtonics post!
(Oh no!!! Not another one of those!!!)
We shall see.
We hope that you’ve had an adventure also, we loved having you on board and globe-trotting with us!
So, ’til then……
For the Love of Traveling……
Paula and Don
As you can see, our personal tracking chart is almost complete! That thin green line that has traced our course over the last four months or so, is now halfway across the Atlantic, bound for home!
This a really cool app! It’s called Marine Traffic and is very similar to Flight Tracker. It’s crazy how many ships are out there at any one time! The little blue ones are Passenger Ships. The others are Cargo, Tankers, Harbor, and Yachts.
Las Palmas, the view from the first overlook on our Tour. We all love seeing our home in the harbor! (Center, right)
As barren and lunar as Lanzarote was, Las Palmas was just the opposite. Nicknamed La Isla Bonita, “The Beautiful Island”, this last (sniff!) stop on our World Tour lived up to its name.
We couldn’t quite figure out what Princess was up to as there was only one tour available, called Panoramic Las Palmas and it did not have a description attached. Our little group searched both Viator and Tours By Locals for anything available. Neither website had anything to offer on this little gem of an island.
We had a few weeks yet before we arrived, so time was not critical yet. We finally booked an outing with a newer unknown start-up called Tours by Strangers. The guide seemed to know something about the place, at least more than we did and he promised us a full day guaranteed to see stuff that no one else on the ship would experience.
He was correct.
We met our Guide, Donaldo when he pulled up in a slightly beat, nine passenger Renault diesel stick shifter van. He had a name tag identifying himself so that we felt completely at ease immediately.
Note the uncanny resemblance!
He even had a little flag (fashioned by Darla and Sandra) for all of us to follow him with. It turns out that this was unnecessary as we never went anywhere that had more than six other people there.
Here you see our Guide holding the little flag and in his other hand is the Dark Chocolate used for payment in return for his services. It was a fair trade.
Our first destination was the highest point on the island the summit of Roque de los Muchachos, which is just eight feet shy of 8000’ above sea level. In the middle of the Parque National de La Caldera deTamburiente, this extinct volcanic mountain has the distinction of being one of the best sites on our planet for astronomical observations. There are a total of thirteen different telescopes up there along with an incredible “crater” that seems to plumet from those star-strung heavens to a bedrock deep abyss.
When you approach the edge…. It sucks your breath away.
The view from the Summit.
My apologies here, I’m afraid as good as the photograph is, it cannot convey the drama that a personal visit will induce. You will need to come here for yourself!
This venture took way longer than our intrepid (and inexperienced) guide thought that it would. Google maps calculated that it should take a little over an hour to travel the 42 km from the bottom to the top. That would normally be correct, the speed limit was an official 40 kph, so that makes sense. What the Google Gal forgot to fold into her calculations were the (approximately, but I counted) 262 (mostly hairpin) turns in the road. There was no way that we were making that trip in an hour!
A small portion of the road to the summit! It shows 53 of the 262 turns in this road!
But the scenery was spectacular and watching the flora change from sub-tropical sea level, up through deciduous, and then pine forests, to alpine mountain was quite a treat! One of the reasons that the observations are so good here lies with a combination of factors having mostly to do with location. It is not uncommon to have the base of the island covered in clouds and the summit in constant clear air, with no light pollution (it’s in the middle of the ocean!). While it is quite common to have clouds around the world at 8000’, here the combination of the surrounding water temperatures and other meteorological factors, keeps the clouds usually below the summit and those thirteen telescopes. You will notice the cloud layers below us in the photos.
All these observatories can’t be wrong!
This photo shows the MAGIC array of special “telescopes”. MAGIC stands for MajorAtmospheric Gamma Imaging Chernakov. This parabolic, hexagon-shaped collection of mirrors help fill in the blanks of information gathered between optical observatories and radio-telescopes. There are only three of these arrays in the world.
The slightly chilled (usual) members of the Expedition.
If you look closely, over the far ridge in the distance, you can make out one of the neighboring Canary Islands. Note the path that extends way out to the castle-like overlook at the end.
After our Summit Sojourn, we deftly picked our way back down the mountain by the route we had come up, trying our best not to smoke the brakes! Good thing it was a shifter-car! It was while pulling into one of the most spectacular overlooks on this road that our guide and driver managed to just slightly (?) come in contact with another vehicle parked there. Luckily the folks (from Switzerland) were very nice, and it was a rental also, so we exchanged some paperwork and we’ll let the companies fight it out when we’re all far away! It really wasn’t bad; I was more dismayed about the time that it was eating up!
You can barely see the slight scrapes on the corner of the bumper.
Here, it is slightly more obvious. But this car was beat when we got it! All the Warning Gauges were lit, and there were other dings and such quite evident. (Maybe not quite as apparent as this one!)
The view from “Bumper-Cars” Overlook. It was worth it!
By now it was apparent that the rest of the Tour of Las Palmas was not going to take place. There was just not enough time to get to the other sights that had been planned, including a nifty lunch on a beach-side (sandy floors) restaurante at the end of the island.
No worries!
We found a cool local harborside place that only spoke Spanish, so our adventures continued as we struggled, laughed, and cajoled our way through the menu and ordering process.
We had mostly a Fish n’ Chips type fish but without the Chips. Instead, we had Wrinkly Potato’s which are those little round guys on the small plate. They are small potatoes soaked and cooked in seawater, with local sea salt added. The salt sticks to the skin and makes for a delightful potato!
It all turned out great, the meal was fun, and the wine was good. The driver was verboten to drink so he had a Coke, which he would have ordered anyway! Our all-aboard time was 4:30 PM and it was already late in the afternoon so we high-tailed it across the harbor to our waiting ship.
The folks at Tours by Strangers are anxiously awaiting the reviews from our group!
Just before disembarking the harbor, the little town of Santa Cruz de la Palma, below the clouds!
Just off the coast of North Africa, they sit beckoning tourists mainly from Europe to come and see all of the cute little birds flying around. Thousands of yellow Canaries can be seen wherever you go!
What?
What do you mean there’s no birds???!!!
No little yellow Canaries flying around?
What a rip-off!
I want my money back!
So, Don and Paula discovered that the Canary Islands are not the avian haven that they thought!
Now you may ask, “Why are they called the Canary Islands if there are NO CANARIES!
For the answer to that question we will defer to Mr. Bruchalski, my Freshman Year Latin Teacher…
“Well Don, if you were a better Latin student, you would not need my help here. If you can recall the root word that you are looking for is “Canes” which is “dogs” (think canine) and Insulae which is “islands” or if we combine them, it reads the Isles of Dogs. We get this from someone who actually spoke Latin back in the day, Pliny the Elder, who in his travels reported a lot of large dogs roaming about.”
Thanks a lot Mr. Bruchalski, you just outed me in front of my entire readership!
So we now know that the little tweeties got their name from the islands and not vice-versa and if you do look around you will find these little flyers on most of the islands in varying densities, having mostly to do with habitat. That is why on Lanzarote, where we are today, you find very few.
Why again?
Because there are no freakin’ trees here!
This place makes the moon look like the Amazon!
Volcanos galore!
Relatively recent vent, several hundred years old.
This one’s a little larger, note line of cars down on access road.
In reality, this island is rather sparse in vegetation that isn’t cultivated. The landscapes are somewhat newer (because of volcanic activity) and therefore not quite ready to support vegetation with any kind of regularity. We did witness farming going on, particularly grapes that inhabit some neat little semi-circles of piled lava stones for protection from the wind and retention of waters. More on that later.
The Canary Islands belong to Spain. They are really not near Spain; they are only 80 miles off of the Moroccan coast and kind of off to themselves. There are seven major islands, lots of islets, and a bunch of named “rocks” so archipelago is a great description for them! The total population is just a tad over two million, but those Venturing Vacationers from Europe add to that by an annual migration total of about twelve million!
We had another private tour here. We were a party of eight, Darla and Sandra asked two of their on-board friends to join us to help defray the costs a bit. It turns out we could have invited about twenty more and made some money because the vehicle that ferried us around was a small bus that held probably 20+ tourons!
Our very own Tour Bus!
Our “cramped” group. Monica, our guide, up front in yellow.
Our first stop of the day was to the Timanfaya National Park covering almost 13,000 acres, which is about 15% of the island. The landscapes are the result of its volcanic origin, namely The Canarian Hotspot. Age-wise it’s pretty old, maybe 70 million years or so, and owes its origin to our old friend Mr. Plate Tectonics. We haven’t heard much from him since back in Australia, but here he is tearing the African Plate and the North American Plate apart, leaving plenty of room for magma to works it way up and out, forming the Canaries and other archipelagos in this region. It can take thousands of years for a lava bed to garner enough wind-driven sand, dirt, and other botanical basics to eventually let enough plants grow and turn the lunarscape into a landscape.
So, with the last eruption in the 1700’s you can see that this infinitesimally small time-period is not yet long enough to really show any progress in the reforestation process.
But it does give us an incredible place to visit and experience! We were lucky that we were in a Tour Bus because they received preference when it came to entry into this very popular Park. Judging from the long lines that we saw when were departing, it looked as if every man, woman, and child on the island decided to take the day off and visit the Park!
Due to their relatively close proximity to the surface, the geothermal features of this area were made even more apparent by the Rangers here. We witnessed a few exhibitions at the Visitor’s Center. First there was a pit that had hot enough temperatures to ignite some brush that was cast down into it.
Hot enough?
Yup! A kind of spontaneous combustion!
Then a Ranger took a gallon of water and poured it down one of several tubes that led to a chamber below. A few seconds later we had our own significant Geyser, complete with the bang and roar that accompanies these events.
Do not try this at home! The instructions read, “Just add water.”
Wait a few seconds, be really quick on the shutter release, and we get the nano-second start of the Main Event!
With a BOOM and a ROAR, our gallon of water goes ballistic!
And last, but not least, upon entering the facility we could see today’s chicken lunch being roasted above a large pit that was definitely hot enough to do the job!
No quick shutter needed here, nice, slow roasted chicken courtesy of Mother Nature and her consort, Mr. Plate Techtonics!
After all of that we went out on the road that wound its way through and around the various vents, calderas, and tubes of the lava fields. The sights were otherworldly!
We next went to the shoreline where the promontories were prominent, and technicolor was the shade du jour.
Nutrient rich, lava induced algae pond at the shoreline. Photo courtesy of Harold. I liked his better than mine!
Deftly placed colorful rowboats, ready for their close-up!
The Black Sand Beaches here are better than most because the “sand” is fine, not coarse.
A short stop here was followed by our agrotourism stop at a vineyard. It was an interesting site this vineyard, because there were no rows upon rows of grapevines clinging to their arbors. Instead, we saw those individual plants sheltered from various weather conditions and apparently doing well enough to keep this island industry alive.
Those semi-circles are all hand-stacked, no binding materials are used to hold them together. There were thousands of them in scattered fields all around. Those are grapes growing in them.
The wine tasting went well enough for two bottles to be consumed along with two bags of interesting potato chips because one of them was “chicken” flavored.
Hey! We were hungry, and they filled us up nicely….. at least until we got back to the ship!
