And Away We Go!

(Soon!)

Four weeks and counting.

          March 31 marks the beginning of The Great Circumnavigation of the Lower forty-Eight as a Way to get Back East to New Jersey to Visit with Friends and Family Trip.        

          It took me longer to write that than the entire trip will take.

          Well, not really as we plan on being on the road for all of April, May, and part of June.

          We start from Texas and arrive two days later at Tomboy Farm, that sprawling southwest Colorado ranch, home to my daughter Lorelyn and her husband Travis, along with all of our critter friends that we’ve kept watch over in the past. (Read “Lunch at 18,000 Ft” November 2021)

          After about a week there we will proceed into the unknown territories, namely Nevada, where the fortunes (?) of Las Vegas await us and our paltry spending habits.

          I am sure that the Casinos will be trying to out-do each other with complimentary stays in their Presidential Suites and many other perks reserved only for the Big Rollers, but we will politely decline as we will have our home-on-wheels with us, so no need to succumb to their temptations.

          A few days (and a few shows?) later we will head down the I-15 and arrive in Long Beach, California where we will be for about 5 days. I used to live just over the hill from Long Beach, in Palos Verdes, and even through that was back in 1963/64, I still know my way around and cannot wait to get there. Southern California sightseeing and a trip to Catalina Island are on our itinerary while we are there.

          Next up is Sequoia National Park, (where, back in the day,  Lorelyn was a Ranger). I’ve been there before and cannot wait to get back! You cannot fathom the size of these trees until you see them and feel their massiveness in person. It’s fun to drive up the access road with someone who has never been there before because the trees that you encounter along the way are gigantic in their own right,

          “Wow! Are these them?”

          “Nope, those are Douglas Firs,”

          “But they are huge!”

          “I know, but just wait.”

          “How about that one? Is that a Sequoia?”

          “Wrong again Mr. Bunyan, That’s a Ponderosa Pine.”

          “But it’s gigantic!”

          “I know, just wait….”

          It’s going to be fun  😊

          From the heights of the incredible Sierra Nevada, where Sequoia is located, we head down and westward towards the coast where we will be staying at several wineries in the Caso Robles area. Similar to its northern cousins, Sonoma and Napa, this region has many fine wineries and is adjacent to the mid-California Coast where the plan is  to get to William Randolph Hearst’s palatial home in San Simeon.

          Next we travel back across the state to visit Yosemite National Park, again in the Sierra Nevada. Luckily we are attempting this voyage while school is still in session as the sights that we are planning to visit are among the most popular in the Country. With any amount of luck, we’ll be able to experience them without too much of the crowd. It’s a good thing that we don’t mind getting early starts! But not everything that we are going to is travel-frenzied, so having just regular days mixed in will be nice.

          After that our next destination is Monterey and its famous peninsula on the Coast.

          So now you’re saying to yourself, “Hold on, who’s planning this journey? A blind man? They were just on the Coast a few days ago!”

          Right you are Columbus! But there is a road closure on the Coast Highway that precludes us from traveling directly there. It’s like being in Maine where they say, “Ya can’t get theah from heah.”

          So we do the next best thing and crisscross the state  in order to work our way north to San Francisco and its environs.

          It’s at this point of our sojourn that we do not have any planned stays yet. We need to leave some room for changes that may be necessary because we want them to be necessary! But, no worries, there are plenty of Harvest Host places to overnight in and as long as we can visit a campground once  week to dump the holding tanks we will be just fine.

          The rest of the trip is as follows, not too many details yet as we still need to research some things, but it will basically follow this route:

          Northern California

          Oregon and the Coast

          Washington State, Seattle, Mt. St Helens

          Montana, Yellowstone,

          North Dakota

          Minnesota

          Wisconsin

          Upper Michigan Peninsula and Mackinaw Island

          Michigan regular

          Ohio, Air Force Museum, Dayton

          Pittsburg, Frank Lloyd Wright House “Falling Water”

          Niagara Falls

          Finger Lakes and Cooperstown

          Finally, New Jersey, sometime in mid-June.

          The opportunities for writing about all of this is quite exciting for me, and of course, photographing everything along the way.

          So, as they say in travel parlance, “Fasten your seatbelts!”

          It should be a good ride, happy to have you along!