Travels WithJohn and Janice
United States

North America

United States

90 adventures documented

All Stories

Victory and promise, the National WWII Museum in New OrleansUnited States
9 min read2025

Dateline May 27, 2025, Visiting the National WWII Museum

On a Memorial Day trip to New Orleans, we brought John's father's wartime letters, photographs, and Silver Star to the National WWII Museum, the new home of Jack's Story. The curator Chase Tomlin walked us through the archives and a restored Sherman tank, the kind John's father commanded. We sat through the Tom Hanks film Beyond All Boundaries, and Derrick Strassburg took us behind the scenes to the research library, the restored PT-305, and Kilroy's Lounge. It was a day we will never forget.

#New Orleans#National WWII Museum#Jack's Story
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The Plymouth Rock pavilionUnited States
7 min read2021

Dateline August 25, 2021, Cape Cod

North from Pinehurst to Cape Cod, to see Janice's Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret in Harwich. Along the way, Plymouth Rock and, at the Barnstable courthouse, the statues of James Otis and Mercy Otis Warren, two Founding-era figures who happen to be Janice's own ancestors. Then eye-watering lobster rolls, the Mooncussers Tavern, and a round of golf with ninety-three-year-old Uncle Bill.

#Cape Cod#Plymouth Rock#James Otis
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Will's celebration of lifeUnited States
5 min read2021

Dateline August 13, 2021, Raleigh and Family

A week in Raleigh with the family, the opening leg of a longer trip north. At its heart was a celebration of the life of John's brother Will, who passed in July, a gathering full of love, sorrow, and the kind of laughter only Willie could inspire. There was time too for Falls Lake, a round at Wildwood Green, a USGA qualifier, and a Shabbat dinner to send us on our way.

#Raleigh#family#Will Wilson
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John, Bunny, Pete, and Janice at the Old Waverly chairUnited States
10 min read2021

Dateline July 23, 2021, On the Road Again, Golf in Mississippi

Our first trip in about a year, a golf vacation through Mississippi with our friends Pete and Bunny Warenski. A stop in Troy, Alabama, then West Point for Old Waverly and Gil Hanse's remarkable Mossy Oak, then the Choctaw's Dancing Rabbit at Pearl River Resort, a place whose name carries a hard and important history. We turned for home a day early, ahead of a storm.

#Mississippi#golf#Old Waverly
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Janice first off the tee at Pinehurst No. 8 in the morning fogUnited States
5 min read2020

Dateline August 25, 2020, Pinehurst and the North-South Senior

On to Pinehurst, by way of the Donald Ross courses at Mid Pines and Southern Pines, and a shared rental mansion called Symphony. Both of us had been accepted to play the 2020 North-South Senior Championship across Pinehurst's famous numbered courses, John on the legendary No. 2, Janice first off the tee at No. 8 in the morning fog. A thrill of a tournament, however the scorecards came out.

#Pinehurst#North-South Senior#Donald Ross
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John and Janice in the masks Marilyn made for the tripUnited States
8 min read2020

Dateline August 7, 2020, Indiana Golf

The start of our masked travels, and our first trip by car after selling the Roadtrek. Four days in Indiana at a Golfweek rater retreat, playing the college campus courses, the brand-new Pfau Course at Indiana University, both of Pete Dye's layouts at Purdue, a look at Culver Academy, an afternoon at Swan Lake, and the Warren Course at Notre Dame. A small-world meeting with a fellow old-Spokane golfer along the way, and a toast to Janice's nephew at his alma mater.

#Indiana#college golf#Golfweek
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John on the Mile High Swinging Bridge at Grandfather MountainUnited States
6 min read2019

Dateline September 6, 2019, A Winery, the High Country, and Old Friends

Out of Williamsburg and down into North Carolina, where a Harvest Host stay at Grove Winery turned into a party, and a round at Linville Ridge, the highest golf course east of the Mississippi, gave us one of the most beautiful days of the whole trip. Then on to Cherokee to meet our friends Sandie and Skip for a steak dinner and a tubing run that did not go entirely to plan, and up to Grandfather Mountain and its Mile High Swinging Bridge, the first day all summer we needed a windbreaker.

#North Carolina#Grove Winery#Linville Ridge
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The four of us together at YorktownUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline September 3, 2019, Williamsburg and Yorktown

A Labor Day weekend in Williamsburg with Janice's cousin Kathy and her husband Eddie, who had just lost Kathy's mother. We walked the Saturday Farmers Market, took in a Virginia Symphony concert of cartoon music on Yorktown Beach, worshiped at one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the country for the dedication of its new organ, landed in the Colonial Williamsburg stocks, and played Kathy's father's old course at Ford's Colony, where we picked up the funniest single in Virginia.

#Williamsburg#Yorktown#Colonial Williamsburg
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Janice with Wilson Hix on the porch of the Clover Hill TavernUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline September 2, 2019, Appomattox

Following the by-ways toward Williamsburg, we came on the signs for Appomattox, where Lee surrendered to Grant and the Civil War effectively ended on April 9, 1865. We read the courthouse displays, learned the story of Ely Parker, the Seneca officer whose hand penned the surrender terms, and were taken in hand by costumed living-history players at the Clover Hill Tavern, where Emma Hix carried us back to the weeks just after the surrender. A terrific stop, and not one to be missed.

#Appomattox#Civil War#Ely Parker
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The eighteenth hole at the Pete Dye River Course with the clubhouse behindUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline September 1, 2019, The Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech

On the way east to Janice's cousin in Williamsburg, we stopped for a round at the Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech in Radford, one of the state's top courses, laid out along the New River. We met head pro John Norton, who told us how the place came to bear Pete Dye's name, and shared the story of Pete's Revenge, the howls the pros let out when Dye first unveiled his Stadium Course at Sawgrass. Small, unforgiving greens and tiny deep bunkers are the Dye signature, and the River has them in abundance.

#Pete Dye#Virginia Tech#River Course
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Osoyoos, British Columbia, seen from the mountainsUnited States
10 min read2019

Dateline August 25, 2019, Canadian and USGA Senior Women's Amateur Championships

Janice's late-summer run at two national championships, the Canadian Senior Women's Amateur at Osoyoos, British Columbia, and the USGA Senior Women's Amateur at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a twenty-seven-hour drive stitched in between. She made the Canadian cut, then gave up her spot to rest a swollen ankle for the bigger event. The road carried us over the Continental Divide, past Wall Drug, and through a good deal of Montana and South Dakota. At Cedar Rapids we watched a fifty-two-year-old newcomer play the round of the week, and two faraway companies went out of their way to keep our RV running.

#USGA Senior Women's Amateur#Canadian Senior Women's Amateur#Osoyoos
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Sunset over Camp Wilson on Whidbey IslandUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline August 18, 2019, Camp Wilson and Old Friends

Our last days on Whidbey were all old friends: the Taylors at Diamond Knot, a friendship that goes back generations; Cathy's sister Beth and her new Langley home, near where John fished with his father as a boy; and a Friday barbecue at Camp Wilson with the Wanicks and the Hoversons. As the sun set on what Will calls one of the best views in the country, it was time to say goodbye.

#Washington#Whidbey Island#Family
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The two brothers, Will and John, on Whidbey IslandUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline August 16, 2019, Across to Whidbey Island

We crossed Washington by way of Wenatchee, the Apple Capital of the World, and the state's astonishing farm country, then drove over the Cascades and rode the ferry to Whidbey Island and John's brother Will's place, Camp Wilson. Will fed us like kings, and we took the ferry over to Port Townsend, where uptown sits on a cliff five hundred feet above downtown.

#Washington#Whidbey Island#Family
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John's grandparents' home in the Rockwood neighborhood of SpokaneUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline August 15, 2019, John's Spokane Roots

We spent a Spokane morning tracking down John's family. We found his grandparents' old Rockwood house, were invited in, and heard about the basement safe no one had dared open; we visited St. John's Cathedral, where his parents married and his brother Peter was baptized; and we picked out the Desert family home and the old Desert Hotel downtown. At seventy-two, John's memory held.

#Washington#Spokane#Family
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The original entrance to the Lewis and Clark CavernsUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline August 10, 2019, The Lewis and Clark Caverns

Janice found us the Lewis and Clark Caverns near Whitehall, Montana, and what a history they hold: discovered by hunters in 1892, made a national monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, fought over for decades by a tour-running quarryman named Dan Morrison, and finally, after the CCC carved its way through, Montana's first state park. The tour itself, bats and broken columns and all, was not to be missed.

#Montana#History#Caves
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John Bohlinger and his grandson in Billings, MontanaUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline August 8, 2019, Deadwood and the Bohlingers

On the road to the Bohlingers we swung through Deadwood, hoping to see the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, only to be turned back by a road that would not take the RV. Then on to Billings and dear friends John and Nancy, a grandson's birthday with three generations on hand, cheesy eggs in the morning, and a hearing-aid fix before we rolled toward the Lewis and Clark Caverns.

#South Dakota#Montana#Deadwood
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The falls at Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South DakotaUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline August 6, 2019, Across South Dakota

Leaving Cedar Rapids, we pointed west toward Montana and the Bohlingers, by way of South Dakota: the falls in the heart of Sioux Falls, a Harvest Host night parked on such a slope we slept with our feet below our heads, a hilly round at Red Rock in Rapid City, and a stop at the cheekily named Naked Winery, where the wines turned out as good as their names are bold.

#South Dakota#Golf#Harvest Hosts
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A Missouri Star Quilt Company storefront in Hamilton, MissouriUnited States
4 min read2019

Dateline August 4, 2019, The Disneyland of Quilting

We crossed into Missouri for one reason: Hamilton, and the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Janice came to quilting through a bag of squares her mother and grandmother sewed in 1930, and here was a one-stoplight town remade into the 'Disneyland of quilting' by Jenny Doan and her family, with J.C. Penney's first job and a lounge called Man's Land thrown in.

#Missouri#Quilting#Missouri Star Quilt Company
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The Roseman covered bridge in Madison County, IowaUnited States
4 min read2019

Dateline August 3, 2019, Iowa, Looking Back at 2018

Coming back into Iowa stirred up a year of memories, so we finally told the 2018 stops the RV troubles had kept off the blog: the American Pickers store at LeClaire, the Hoover Library, the covered Bridges of Madison County, John Wayne's birthplace at Winterset, and the Amana Colonies, seven old German villages with a communal past and a refrigerator company in their future.

#Iowa#History#Road Trip
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Bridges, both plain and suspension, on the Cedar Rapids Country Club courseUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline August 2, 2019, Cedar Rapids and Donald Ross

With Janice qualified, we drove to Cedar Rapids to get a look at the course that will host the USGA Senior Women's Amateur, and what a course: a 1915 Donald Ross design, restored to his original plans, with raised greens that shrug a ball off into the rough, wooden rakes and flagsticks, and suspension bridges over the streams. We found a county park nearby and booked it for tournament week.

#Iowa#Golf#USGA
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Janice with her USGA Senior Women's Amateur qualifying letterUnited States
4 min read2019

Dateline July 31, 2019, Janice Qualifies

We stopped in Libertyville with Pete and Bunny, friends from the Alaska trip, and Janice picked the Chicago qualifier so we could visit a while. At seventy she opened with a double bogey, laughed it off, then came home in 37 and sank a birdie putt on the sixteenth in a playoff to make it, the oldest qualifier in Chicago and bound for the USGA Senior Women's Amateur in Iowa.

#Illinois#Golf#USGA
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The 2011 Alaska RV group at Mile Marker One in Dawson CreekUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline July 27, 2019, The Road to Chicago

Leaving the family at Lake Sunapee, we drove west through Vermont and New York to a Harvest Host winery on Seneca Lake, then on to Cleveland for lunch with Janice's niece Kim and a fine evening in Fremont with Ari and Hedi, friends from our 2011 Alaska RV trip. A morning round at Swan Lake in Indiana, and we pointed the rig toward Chicago.

#New York#Ohio#Indiana
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Sailboats racing against Sunapee MountainUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline July 25, 2019, Sunapee Golf and Goodbyes

With the generator finally reinstalled and a fine breakfast with our Flagler Beach neighbor Frank behind us, we played Lake Sunapee Country Club, a Donald Ross course and Gene Sarazen's old home club where Janice's family once held a membership. The last days on the lake brought sailing and sculling, Connie's chicken legs, a farewell dive, and John's ribs, before we packed up Friday for a winery in New York.

#New Hampshire#Lake Sunapee#Golf
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The rented family house on Lake SunapeeUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline July 21, 2019, Lake Sunapee with the Family

Brian rented a house right on Lake Sunapee for the whole family, and we raised the traditional martini toast at Janice's parents' grave. We won the Sunday match, then watched an oak come down across the rented pontoon boat with Steve and Marilyn aboard, mercifully unhurt. There was a wet boat ride to a closed restaurant, good food in spite of it all, and the loons calling morning and night.

#New Hampshire#Lake Sunapee#Family
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The 17th hole at the Country Club of New HampshireUnited States
6 min read2019

Dateline July 18, 2019, Into New Hampshire

Getting into New Hampshire meant first chasing down a generator that wouldn't start, then a fine stretch of family and country: Connie and Lee in Derry, where Janice retold her 1986 Corvette adventure; the Sunapee mill and Jeff Trow, keeper of the town's cemeteries; a stream-side site at Northstar; and a glorious morning at the Country Club of New Hampshire under Mount Kearsarge.

#New Hampshire#Golf#Family
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Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret's back porch at sunset on Cape CodUnited States
3 min read2019

Dateline July 14, 2019, Cape Cod

On the way to the Cape we played the Rees Jones layout at Pinehills and fell in with a friendly twosome, then settled in at Harwich for our yearly visit with Janice's Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret. Bill, ninety-one and still walking the hills, nearly shot his age at Cranberry Valley. We left not with goodbye but see you next summer, and pointed the rig toward New Hampshire.

#Massachusetts#Cape Cod#Golf
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Blackwater Falls, a sixty-two-foot cascade in West VirginiaUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline July 12, 2019, Blackwater Falls and Hershey

From the West Virginia highlands we hiked to Blackwater Falls in its morning sun and out the muddy mile to Lindy Point, then took the back roads north to Hershey. We played the West Course in the shadow of the chocolate factory, where Byron Nelson won his first PGA Championship in 1940, and spent our first Harvest Host night at a farm winery and brewery, with a Friday band and the Gellatly family's story.

#West Virginia#Pennsylvania#Blackwater Falls
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The Slab Fork headquarters building at the Exhibition Coal MineUnited States
6 min read2019

Dateline July 10, 2019, Beckley and the Coal Mine

Having loved the Soudan mine last year, we went down into the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine in West Virginia, riding the mantrip five hundred feet in behind a guide who spent twenty years underground. He showed us the thirty-inch seams worked on hands and knees, the rats that meant the air was safe, and twenty cents a ton for a brutal day's labor. Above ground, a whole company town, homes, church, school, and the store that kept a man in debt, told the rest of the story.

#West Virginia#Beckley#Coal Mining
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John and Janice celebrating their 20th anniversary at The CellarUnited States
5 min read2019

Dateline July 7, 2019, Innisbrook and the Summer Ahead

A June shakedown weekend of golf at Innisbrook turned up a flat that was really a second cracked Sprinter wheel, just like Billings last year, but five new wheels later the Roadtrek is finally sound. We met fun playing partners, launched a new chapter writing up courses around the country, and marked our twentieth anniversary at The Cellar in Warren Harding's old winter home. Monday morning we point north, bound for New England and then British Columbia.

#Florida#Innisbrook#Golf
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The sign at Otsego Golf ClubUnited States
3 min read2018

Dateline July 24, 2018, Saratoga and the Road Home

Our last day around Cooperstown brought Ellen's folks and their stray cat Hobo, a campsite beside firefighters traveling with their foster children, and a morning round on the little course where Janice once golfed with her father. Then it was over to Saratoga for a round ahead of the rain, a night at the firehouse, and the long, happy turn toward home, by way of family in New Hampshire and friends all the way down to Florida.

#New York#Saratoga#Cooperstown
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Otsego Golf Club on the shore of Otsego LakeUnited States
7 min read2018

Dateline July 23, 2018, Janice's Cooperstown

Cooperstown holds a special place in Janice's heart; she summered here as a girl, water skiing and golfing on Otsego Lake with her father. We came back to play the old course and to look up John's boyhood friend Steve Mahlum, unseen in thirty years, who with his wife Ellen brought the town alive, the Clark fortune and the Singer sewing machine, the Dakota, and the tall tale that made Cooperstown the home of baseball though Doubleday never had a hand in the game.

#New York#Cooperstown#Baseball Hall of Fame
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The view from Herbert Hoover's birthplace to his gravesiteUnited States
9 min read2018

Dateline July 12, 2018, Herbert Hoover

We have always loved the presidential libraries, and Herbert Hoover's, at his birthplace in West Branch, Iowa, asks a fair question: how did a brilliant humanitarian who fed millions come to be remembered as a failure? We set out to tell his whole story, the Quaker orphan who made a mining fortune, organized the rescue of starving Belgium and Russia, and then had the Great Depression land on his desk within months of taking office. It is a fuller and more generous picture than the schoolbooks give.

#Herbert Hoover#West Branch#Iowa
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John and Janice with their guide deep in the Soudan mineUnited States
6 min read2018

Dateline July 8, 2018, Soudan Underground Mine

We drove up into the north woods of Minnesota to tour the Soudan Underground Mine, the old iron mine on the Vermilion Range that helped build and arm America. Our guide James took us down a loud, dark cage to the twenty-seventh level, 2,341 feet under and nearly 700 below the sea, then by ore train into the workings. It is the story of the high-grade iron, and the hard-working people, that fed the nation's steel.

#Minnesota#Soudan#Iron Range
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Joe Wiegand performing as Theodore RooseveltUnited States
5 min read2018

Dateline July 5, 2018, A Roosevelt Salute and the Medora Musical

In a tiny old theater, an actor named Joe Wiegand stepped out as Theodore Roosevelt and held us spellbound, and afterward, since John's family had lived near Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill, we traded notes with him over a Maker's Mark at the Rough Rider. We learned the true story of the teddy bear, ate a pitchfork-fondue steak we would not order again, and took in the Medora Musical, which opened on the sad news that a thirty-year cast member had died the night before.

#North Dakota#Medora#Theodore Roosevelt
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A lone bull buffalo in Theodore Roosevelt National ParkUnited States
2 min read2018

Dateline July 4, 2018, Medora and the National Park

Medora was the brainchild of a French marquis who, in 1883, set out to ship refrigerated beef east by rail and built a whole town to do it, named for his wife; the scheme failed but the town endured as cattle country, and Roosevelt's 1903 visit left it a Rough Rider Hotel. The next day we drove the badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, green for once after the rains, past prairie dog towns and buffalo, and a lone bull who posed beside the road.

#North Dakota#Medora#Theodore Roosevelt National Park
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Janice at the Bully Pulpit Golf CourseUnited States
4 min read2018

Dateline July 3, 2018, The Bully Pulpit and Theodore Roosevelt

We came to Medora for a golf course, the Bully Pulpit, one of the country's top hundred public courses, set in the badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and green as Ireland after a rainy year. The name is Roosevelt's, and so is the place: it was here in the Dakota Territory that a grieving young man found himself and the love of wild country he carried into a conservation legacy still with us. Our RV neighbor, it turned out, parked his winter ice house right beside us.

#North Dakota#Medora#Theodore Roosevelt
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The drive to Whitefish, MontanaUnited States
4 min read2018

Dateline June 24, 2018, Whitefish and the Bison Range

Back in the States, we skirted Glacier on Highway 2, the Going-to-the-Sun Road still snowed shut up top, and made for Whitefish, where John's family had come by train from Seattle for a high-school ski trip in 1962. We played Whitefish Lake under the ski runs, then swung south to the National Bison Range, a 1908 sanctuary, to bump along nineteen thousand acres of muddy road among bison, mule deer, and a lone elk.

#Montana#Whitefish#Glacier
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Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia RiverUnited States
3 min read2018

Dateline June 21, 2018, The Great Dams of the Columbia

Eastern Washington is dam country, and we could not get over the scale of it. Chief Joseph alone powers metropolitan Seattle; Grand Coulee, a mile of concrete on the Columbia, is one of the largest things people have ever built, and the Columbia Basin Project it anchors waters a vast stretch of the West. We spent a night at Steamboat Rock, a state park the project left behind, and stopped at Box Canyon Dam on a rare north-flowing river before turning for Canada.

#Grand Coulee Dam#Chief Joseph Dam#Columbia River
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Ross Lake in the North CascadesUnited States
4 min read2018

Dateline June 17, 2018, Family and the North Cascades

Washington was family before it was scenery. We stayed with old friends the Wanicks, Janice played a USGA senior qualifier at Renton, and we sat with John's brother Will, on the mend after surgery, while the family gathered on Whidbey Island; John's boyhood friend Lee Taylor came for a barbecue and twenty years fell away. Then we crossed Deception Pass and drove Highway 20 through the North Cascades, the American Alps, past Ross Lake and a roadside plaque to a 'Jack Wilson' who happened to share John's father's name.

#Washington#Whidbey Island#North Cascades
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John and Janice in Oregon wine countryUnited States
5 min read2018

Dateline June 15, 2018, Oregon and a Touch of Washington Wine

Across Oregon we stopped in Union for the Eastern Oregon Livestock Show, where four farm kids from Medford were showing their pigs, and played an empty morning course at Buffalo Creek. We browsed the wool at Pendleton, tasted our way through the Walla Walla valley with new friends Jim and Robin, and finished with a day in Hillsboro at the home of John and Sandy, the couple we'd met on the South America cruise, wine, dinner, and a shuffleboard rematch left unsettled.

#Oregon#Union#Walla Walla
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A rainbow over Shoshone FallsUnited States
3 min read2018

Dateline June 12, 2018, Idaho, Twin Falls and Boise

Idaho meant potato country, and a couple of family memories: a Flagler neighbor who farmed red potatoes, and John's father trucking Idaho spuds to Seattle for fresh-cut fries before frozen took over. We golfed in the Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls under the BASE-jumping Perrine Bridge, caught the morning rainbow at Shoshone Falls, the Niagara of the West, and finally got the Roadtrek set right in Boise.

#Idaho#Twin Falls#Shoshone Falls
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John and Janice setting off in the RoadtrekUnited States
5 min read2018

Dateline May 21, 2018, Off in Our 22 Foot Yacht on Wheels

After South America we were home barely long enough to repack before climbing back into the Roadtrek, our 'twenty-two foot yacht on wheels,' for a summer on the road. We ran west from Florida to Sedona to see Marty and Jeff, by way of a Gulf beach, the back roads of the Deep South, the Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, and a canyon night at Palo Duro, with the RV's batteries and refrigerator doing their best to keep things interesting.

#Roadtrek#Sedona#Palo Duro Canyon
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The Mount Washington HotelUnited States
6 min read2017

Dateline August 12, 2017, New Hampshire and Maine

From Connie and Lee's we wound through the White Mountains: golf with our friend Maurica, the Flume gorge at Franconia Notch, and the grand Mount Washington Hotel, where forty-four nations built the postwar financial order in 1944. We stayed with Janice's cousin Brian and his Donna in their light-filled forest home, then crossed into Maine for Castine, older than Plymouth, and a campsite supper of two-pound lobsters delivered for twenty-seven dollars. In the morning, the Canadian border.

#Franconia Notch#The Flume#Mount Washington Hotel
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The four of us at Hidden Lake Golf ClubUnited States
3 min read2017

Dateline August 9, 2017, Connie and Lee and the Car Show

We pulled into Derry to stay with Janice's sister Connie and her husband Lee, where Happy Hour keeps its own clock and Connie served flank steak with Stan's potatoes, her late father's recipe. Janice came a stroke shy of qualifying for the USGA Senior, we played Hidden Lake, and Connie and Lee took us to Pipe Dream, a brewery two former Marines built. Then the big day: a Make-A-Wish car show at the Budweiser plant, Lee's '66 Biscayne, the Clydesdales up close, and a brewery tour. On toward Newfoundland, with a promise to see them again at Sunapee.

#Derry#Hidden Lake#Pipe Dream
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The fourth hole at Cape Ann, looking toward GloucesterUnited States
3 min read2017

Dateline August 8, 2017, A Little Golf

With the Cape behind us, we made an early Sunday run north of Boston for a few rounds of golf. Cape Ann in Essex gave us a Golf Digest hole looking out to Gloucester and two friendly local couples to play with. We camped on the ocean at Salisbury Beach and played the Sagamore-Hampton course in New Hampshire, good enough to come back for, and there met Dean and Melissa Rascoe, who bought us beers after Janice gave Melissa a tip or two. Then on toward Janice's sister's.

#Cape Ann#Gloucester#Sagamore-Hampton
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Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret on Cape CodUnited States
3 min read2017

Dateline August 7, 2017, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill

Off the road north, we spent a couple of days on Cape Cod with Janice's Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill, who turns ninety in October and hasn't slowed a step. Janice's cousin's wife Karen Otis was there too, and we got to talking about the family's deep roots: the Otises of the Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren and her brother James, whose statues stand in Barnstable. There were wild turkeys to debate, three-mile walks in the rain, and dinners out. Visits like this are the heart of why we travel.

#Cape Cod#Aunt Margaret#Uncle Bill
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Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode IslandUnited States
5 min read2017

Dateline July 28, 2017, North Carolina and Rhode Island

North up the coast, we skipped the stops we'd shown you before and kept to the new ones and the good golf. We leveled the RV on a hillside near Asheville and played Black Mountain, sweated through a 99-degree round on Arnold Palmer's Lonnie Poole with our daughter Kieran in Raleigh, and got a four-year-old's dawn hug at our son James's in Wind Gap. Then Rhode Island: golf at Winnapaug, and Newport's Trinity Church, where Marty and Jeff were married, leaning six degrees until steel set it straight. A good day, and on to Janice's aunt and uncle.

#Black Mountain#Lonnie Poole#Winnapaug
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The Welcome to Plains, Georgia signUnited States
4 min read2017

Dateline July 18, 2017, Plains and the Jimmy Carter Library

From Georgia Veterans we made a day of Jimmy Carter's Plains, a whole town inside a single square mile: the depot that ran his campaign, a downtown mural of the landmarks, a memorabilia man with buttons dating back to Woodrow Wilson, and fried peanuts and peanut ice cream. Then on to his presidential library in Atlanta, the energy crisis and Janice's 21% mortgage, the Camp David Accords, and a humanitarian record after office that puts most presidencies to shame. We left, as we always do at these libraries, grateful to all who served.

#Jimmy Carter#Plains#Presidential Libraries
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A hole lined with flowers at Georgia Veterans State ParkUnited States
3 min read2017

Dateline July 17, 2017, Let the Summer Begin

Summer set us off again, north this time, aiming for Newfoundland and Janice's place in the Canadian Women's Golf Championship in August, with golf, family, and good country all the way up. First, the Saga of the Cabinet, the cherry cabinet we designed and built ourselves after our carpenter quit on us, with brother Brian's help to finish. Then our first stop, Georgia Veterans State Park on Blackshear Lake, a campsite on the water and a fine morning round. In the afternoon we waved at Plains, Jimmy Carter's hometown, with his library to come.

#Georgia Veterans State Park#Blackshear Lake#Cordele
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The old train bridge lit at night in Little RockUnited States
3 min read2017

Dateline May 28, 2017, The Clinton Presidential Library

The last stop of our Spring Fling was Little Rock and the Clinton Presidential Library. We found a city RV spot right on the Arkansas River for $12.56, with an old train bridge, lit up beautifully at night, that walked us straight across to the library in the morning. Reclaimed from an environmental ruin, it is one of the handsomest presidential libraries we have seen, and a fine experience whatever your politics. Then we said goodbye to Little Rock and turned for home, with a summer up north already on the horizon.

#Clinton Library#Little Rock#Presidential Libraries
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A hoodoo in Palo Duro CanyonUnited States
3 min read2017

Dateline May 24, 2017, Santa Fe and Palo Duro Canyon

Heading east for home, we stopped in Santa Fe, the oldest state capital in the country, for a local lunch our friends Sandie and Skip had tipped us to, a walk by the old cathedral, and Native American singers in the square. Then it was on into the Texas panhandle and Palo Duro Canyon, the second-largest canyon in the United States, carved by a fork of the Red River. We gave it an afternoon and knew at once it deserved days. With the canyon behind us, we turned toward Little Rock.

#Santa Fe#Palo Duro Canyon#Cathedral Basilica
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The Petrified Forest National Park signUnited States
4 min read2017

Dateline May 23, 2017, The Arizona Parks

Leaving Sedona, we were two Floridians astonished to meet May snow at Flagstaff. The day's drive home was a string of wonders: Meteor Crater, where NASA trained the astronauts who would walk on the moon, and the Petrified Forest, whose stone logs look sawn but split themselves clean. We stood among the 650 petroglyphs of Newspaper Rock and the impossible colors of the Painted Desert, and found an old Studebaker parked where Route 66 once ran through the park. A night in Holbrook, and Santa Fe ahead.

#Meteor Crater#Petrified Forest#Painted Desert
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The four of us in SedonaUnited States
3 min read2017

Dateline May 20, 2017, Sedona with Marty and Jeff

The far end of our Spring Fling was three days in Sedona with Janice's lifelong friend Marty and her husband Jeff. Four years had passed, but Janice and Marty, friends since their freshman year of high school, picked up like it was yesterday, over Marty's wonderful cooking. Jeff, a pilot and an artist, took us into the desert to fly his drone and showed us his beautiful bronzes, one of which now lives in our house. Then, too soon, it was time to point the Roadtrek home.

#Sedona#Marty Skelley#Jeff Skelley
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The Guadalupe Mountains in west TexasUnited States
4 min read2017

Dateline May 17, 2017, West Texas and Hueco Tanks

The long road west across Texas took us past a Fredericksburg grown too touristy to keep us, through a windy night in Fort Stockton, and on to the Guadalupe Mountains, an ancient sea reef pushed up into the four highest peaks in the state. We watched the oil and gas country roll by, miles of new pipeline and drilling rigs, and reached Hueco Tanks near El Paso, a state park that is really a preserved historic site. There among its great granite hollows are pictographs left over ten thousand years, geometric designs and more than two hundred painted masks in the rock. We camped quietly at the foot of it and turned, at last, toward Sedona.

#West Texas#Hueco Tanks#Guadalupe Mountains
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The Alamo in San AntonioUnited States
4 min read2017

Dateline May 16, 2017, The Alamo and San Antonio

An afternoon in San Antonio took us first to the Alamo, smaller in person than a boyhood of Davy Crockett movies had led John to expect, and to the stirring story of fewer than two hundred men who held it to the last against Santa Anna. We read Colonel Travis's famous letter, ending Victory or Death, and we have kept it here in full. Then we crossed to the River Walk for lunch at the rowdy Dick's Last Resort, and the next morning played the Quarry, a beautiful course laid into an old rock quarry. Then we pointed the Roadtrek west.

#The Alamo#San Antonio#Travis Letter
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John and Janice in TexasUnited States
4 min read2017

Dateline May 15, 2017, The Presidential Libraries of Texas

The next leg of our Spring Fling was a two-day tour of the Texas presidential libraries. At the George W. Bush library in Dallas we walked through his Portraits of Courage paintings of wounded veterans and the sobering Nation Under Attack room, where Janice still keeps her old World Trade Center badge. We took in George H.W. Bush's library at Texas A&M, where John remembered meeting the man himself years before, and Lyndon Johnson's at the University of Texas, with his taped phone calls and a robot reciting his speeches. Whatever your politics, each one is a piece of history.

#Presidential Libraries#George W. Bush#George H.W. Bush
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Royal Street in the French Quarter of New OrleansUnited States
6 min read2017

Dateline May 10, 2017, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana

After a winter of golf at our home course we set off in the Roadtrek on a month-long Spring Fling, aimed west at golf, presidential libraries, and a visit with Janice's lifelong friend Marty in Sedona. The first leg took us across the Gulf South: a two-day tournament in Panama City, golf and a winning night at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, and John's first taste of New Orleans, the Carousel Bar and lovely Royal Street. We pressed on to a floating casino in Shreveport and the tales of a security guard who had seen it all. An honest tire shop in Bossier City sent us on toward Dallas.

#New Orleans#Royal Street#Carousel Bar
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An osprey at its nest in the EvergladesUnited States
7 min read2016

Dateline December 10, 2016, Everglades National Park

For a pre-Christmas adventure we took the Roadtrek down to Everglades National Park with our neighbors Frank and Linda Ruff. We braved a forty-mile drive and a world-class mosquito welcome to camp at Flamingo, watched ospreys building nests and coots flying in long lines across a lake, and walked trails through pinelands and grasslands. We posed with a panther, held our breath at the mighty Rock Reef Pass, and toured a Cold War Nike missile base hidden in the park, once aimed at Cuba a hundred and sixty miles away. Another wonderful trip.

#Everglades#National Parks#Flamingo
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The washed-out A1A beach road in Flagler BeachUnited States
8 min read2016

Dateline October 11, 2016, Hurricane Matthew and Flagler Beach

Back home in Flagler Beach, we watched Hurricane Matthew strengthen into a category four and aim for the Florida coast. Having ridden out Wilma in 2005, we packed the new Roadtrek and ran west to a little RV park in Carrabelle, where we found a fishing dock, a rum and Diet Coke, and a porch full of fellow evacuees. We spent the long night fearing for our old beach house and woke to the relief that the storm would pass just offshore. We came home to find the house fine but the beach road, our A1A, half washed away by a ten-foot surge.

#Hurricane Matthew#Flagler Beach#Carrabelle
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Pinehurst clubhouse from the 18th hole of Number 2United States
9 min read2015

Dateline August 28, 2015, Pinehurst, Niagara on the Lake and Forest, Ontario

The family leg gave way to the tournament trail. We based ourselves at Pinehurst for Janice's North and South Senior, played the Donald Ross masterpiece that is Number 2, and shared a rented house with good friends. From there we worked north to the Niagara River for the history of Old Fort Niagara, a round at Niagara Falls Country Club in the company of a golfing chaplain, and the oldest nine-hole course in North America at Niagara-on-the-Lake. The trip finished across the border at the Canadian Women's Senior Amateur near Forest, Ontario, where Janice carded her 7th hole in one and a second-place finish in the Super Senior division.

#Pinehurst#Donald Ross#North and South Senior
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John relaxing on the Cape May ferryUnited States
5 min read2015

Dateline August 14, 2015, Summer Travels Begin, Family and Friends

After a beautiful spring and early summer at home in Flagler Beach and at our golf course, The Riv, the time came to pick up our travels again. We packed the car for six-plus weeks on the road, beginning with a long loop of family and friends up the East Coast. From a Cape May ferry crossing and a boat night on Huntington Bay to a martini toast at Lake Sunapee, golf in New Hampshire, and grandchildren in Wind Gap, this was the family leg before the tournaments began.

#Flagler Beach#Long Island#Lake Sunapee
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The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum on the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park, New YorkUnited States
9 min read2013

Dateline August 13, 2013, The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

After the JFK Library in Boston, we drove west across Massachusetts and into New York to Hyde Park, on the Hudson, for our sixth and final presidential library of the year: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The library sits on the old Roosevelt estate, dedicated by FDR himself in 1941, the original of the model every other presidential library has followed since. A $35 million renovation had just been completed, with the first major overhaul of the permanent exhibition in seventy years. Twelve thousand square feet of interactive video tables and digital flip-book screens walk you through the most consequential presidency of the twentieth century: Hyde Park, Harvard, the Navy under Wilson, polio at Campobello in 1921 (the cottage we had visited only the year before on our way through New Brunswick), the New York governorship, the inaugural at the bottom of the Depression with the line about fear itself, the fireside chats, the New Deal, the Arsenal of Democracy, Pearl Harbor and the Day of Infamy speech, the unprecedented third and fourth terms, Yalta, and Warm Springs.

#new-york#hyde-park#franklin-d-roosevelt
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The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on Columbia Point, Boston HarborUnited States
9 min read2013

Dateline August 12, 2013, The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

After a few days on Cape Cod with Janice's Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill, we drove into Boston for the JFK Library on Columbia Point. The fourth of our presidential library visits this year. The welcome at the door was more reserved than the others had been, worth noting only because it was so different. The library walks you through Kennedy's life in proper sequence: PT-109 in the Solomon Islands, Harvard, the House, the Senate, the 1960 race against Nixon that included the first televised presidential debate in American history, the inauguration and 'Ask not,' the Bay of Pigs lesson three months in, the Berlin Wall and 'Ich bin ein Berliner,' the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights, the moon program, the Test Ban Treaty, Robert Kennedy at Justice, Jackie's White House restoration, and Dallas. In the morning we drive west to Hyde Park for the FDR Library.

#massachusetts#boston#john-f-kennedy
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Hearst Castle on the California coast, 165 rooms and 127 acres of gardens, terraces, and poolsUnited States
8 min read2013

Dateline July 23, 2013, Monterey, Carmel, and the California Coast

Out of Yosemite to the coast and the Monterey Peninsula. The Monterey Fair Grounds RV park, set up among the horse stalls (the 'Don't Wash Horses Here' sign at our water hookup was a nice touch). A walk through Monterey, with a memory or two from a Citrix Systems conference there years ago before we were married, the night they hosted a dinner inside the aquarium. Golf at the Bayonet Course, where the PGA Championship had played in 2012. Phil's Fish Market in Moss Landing, oysters on the half shell and a snapper sandwich big enough to defeat the two of us together. Carmel, the lodge at Pebble Beach, and the bagpiper walking out of the fog on the patio at Spanish Bay at sunset. Then the Pacific Coast Highway south through Big Sur, the elephant seals at their July haul-out, the Hearst Castle, the wines at Adelaida Cellars in Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and an overnight high above the Malibu beach. The Reagan Library was waiting for us in the morning.

#california#monterey-peninsula#monterey
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A par 3 at Torrey Pines South Course, the green sitting on a cliff above the PacificUnited States
5 min read2013

Dateline July 30, 2013, Long Beach to Torrey Pines, Closing the Trip

Out of Simi Valley after the Reagan Library, down the 405 (the freeway only one person in modern history has ever been able to drive fast on, and even he was crawling). Long Beach for a city park overnight near the Queen Mary, then a Mercedes brake job that ate the whole next day. Huntington Beach, with the campsites taken by the US Open Surfing crowds, so a Marriott Courtyard instead. Janice's practice round at Sea Cliff Country Club for the USGA Senior Women's Amateur qualifier, with John caddying. A Safeway chicken eaten next to the rig in the hotel parking lot. Breakfast with Gigi Kimball at Ruby's on the pier. Monday over to Yorba Linda for the Nixon Library. Tuesday Janice's qualifier, a four-putt on the par-three 17th that pushed her into a six-way playoff, and a brutally tough second-year-in-a-row playoff loss. Then Ann and Ruth in Oceanside (who turn out to live in a beach house on the Pacific). And finally Torrey Pines, the South Course, the closing round of more than 1,600 miles down the California coast. Then east toward Arizona, with Lelia and Betty Lou waiting for us.

#california#long-beach#queen-mary
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The Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, where Nixon was born and is buriedUnited States
8 min read2013

Dateline July 29, 2013, The Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library

Out to Yorba Linda for the Nixon Library, on the grounds where Nixon was born and where he and Pat were eventually buried. A personal note for John: this was the library of the first president he ever voted for, in 1968, when you still had to be 21 to cast a ballot. The library handles Watergate up front and well, then walks you through the rest of a long, consequential life: Whittier, Duke Law, the South Pacific in World War Two, the Hiss case, the Checkers speech, eight years as Eisenhower's VP, the loss to Kennedy, the loss for Governor of California, and the comeback that landed him in the White House in 1968. The opening to China. The Brezhnev treaties. The Paris Peace Accords. The Hanoi Hilton POW flag. The long, slow post-resignation work of rebuilding. And the 1994 funeral where every living president attended, with Bill Clinton's eulogy doing the difficult work of asking the country to consider an entire life rather than only its lowest point.

#california#yorba-linda#richard-nixon
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Air Force One (SAM 27000), the Boeing 707 that served seven presidents, suspended in the three-story atrium at the Reagan LibraryUnited States
7 min read2013

Dateline July 26, 2013, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum

From Malibu over the coastal mountain roads to Simi Valley, sometimes at 15 MPH around the curves. The drive up to the Reagan Library has a portrait of each president lining the entrance, opening out at the top of the hill onto an extraordinary view across the valley. Inside, a chronological walk through Reagan's life: Eureka College, sports announcer making up the play from a ticker tape, Hollywood, Knute Rockne and the Gipper, World War Two training films, the Screen Actors Guild, the GE Theater years, the slow turn toward conservatism, the 1964 'Time for Choosing' speech, two terms as Governor of California, and on to the presidency. The 'are you better off than you were four years ago' debate, the Hinckley assassination attempt, PATCO, Beirut, Grenada, Reykjavik, the INF Treaty, 'trust but verify.' And the Air Force One pavilion, a Boeing 707 that served seven presidents from Nixon to George W. Bush, suspended in a three-story atrium overlooking the valley. The chocolate cake stories, the Jelly Bellys, the shining city farewell. A long, well-told life.

#california#simi-valley#ronald-reagan
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The west entrance to Yosemite National Park, with two rocks leaning together over the roadUnited States
5 min read2013

Dateline July 21, 2013, The Redwood Forest and Yosemite

The introduction pictures say it all. These parks are some of God's greatest accomplishments. Out of Crescent City and down through the Redwoods. The BenBow Inn for a night, with a great chance meeting at the bar with a Southern California golf pro and a kindergarten teacher, who handed us a list of courses and restaurants. The Redwood Forest itself, where a slice of wood on display tells you how many hundreds of years it takes to grow ten feet in diameter, and the Roadtrek was too tall for the famous drive-through tree (John walked it for us). Cache Creek for golf and a stop at the tribal casino, where Janice discovered the California-specific roulette they run, and pocketed a $25 gas card. Then Yosemite, the west entrance with its two leaning rocks, Lower Falls, the Wawona Tunnel View, and Saturday morning at Glacier Point, looking straight down into the valley we had driven through the day before. Then back on the road for Monterey.

#california#redwood-national-forest#redwood-forest
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Sunset over Camp Wilson, Will and Cathy's place on Whidbey Island, WashingtonUnited States
8 min read2013

Dateline July 17, 2013, Washington to the Redwood Forest

Out of Coeur d'Alene, twenty miles through the rest of Idaho, then on to Spokane, where both of John's parents grew up before meeting in Seattle at the University of Washington. The Ginkgo Petrified Forest at Vantage, a stop John remembered from family drives between Seattle and Spokane as a boy. A Columbia River campsite, Snoqualmie Pass where John learned to ski in first grade, across Lake Washington into Seattle for Pike Place Market and chowder at Lowell's. The Mukilteo ferry to Whidbey Island and three days with John's brother Will and his wife Cathy: salmon, mussels, the family deer, and Janice doing the actual RV repair herself with Will helping. Then ferry to Port Townsend, Hurricane Ridge above Port Angeles for a few snowballs in July, down the Olympic Peninsula and Highway 101, across the Columbia to Astoria. Down the Oregon coast in rain, Bandon Dunes too cold to play, and on to Crescent City and the start of the Redwoods.

#washington#spokane#seattle
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The Floating Green at the Coeur d'Alene Resort, the world's only movable floating golf green, on underwater cablesUnited States
3 min read2013

Dateline July 11, 2013, Coeur d'Alene and the Floating Green

Pulling into Coeur d'Alene to look for a campground, we noticed we were right next to the famous golf course, so we turned in just to take a look. One conversation with the assistant pro later, we had an 8:50 tee time the next morning. The course was in impeccable condition, hand-watered, divots filled in by staff walking the fairways with buckets. Two fawns played across the 6th hole until their mother called them back into the woods. Then the 14th: the floating green, the world's only one, movable on underwater cables to play anywhere from 100 to 200 yards. Janice hit it and made par. Janice's verdict, after lunch: better than Pebble Beach, which she has played a number of times. On to Seattle.

#idaho#coeur-dalene#coeur-dalene-resort
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Bill Fairweather's grave on Boot Hill, Virginia City, Montana, with the sign noting his discovery of gold at Alder Gulch in 1863United States
8 min read2013

Dateline July 9, 2013, Montana, Big Sky Country

South out of Yellowstone into Teton National Forest, the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Parkway with the Tetons all the way down the right side, and into Jackson, where the farmers' market was in full swing on a Saturday morning. Then north to Virginia City, Montana, a real ghost town with deep family weight: John's mother's great uncle, Bill Fairweather, was the prospector who discovered gold at Alder Gulch in May 1863 and effectively founded the place. John had last stood at Bill's grave in 1958, at age eleven. Then over to Big Sky to spend a couple of days with old family friend John Bohlinger, Lt. Governor of Montana from 2005 to 2013, the Republican half of Brian Schweitzer's bipartisan ticket. Lunch at the Montana Club in Helena. Spruce River Campground outside Kalispell, an electrical problem on the Roadtrek that needed a part to be picked up in Seattle. On to Lake Coeur d'Alene.

#wyoming#tetons#jackson-hole
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Old Faithful erupting, Yellowstone National ParkUnited States
6 min read2013

Dateline July 4, 2013, Yellowstone National Park

Out of Cody on the morning of the 4th, the short drive west into Yellowstone. Through Shoshone National Forest, in past Yellowstone Lake with its hot pools steaming along the shore, an elk in the trees. Two days of southern loop and northern loop with everything Yellowstone is famous for: Old Faithful erupting (Artemisia Geyser around the corner, easily as beautiful), a grizzly on the road, a 5:00 AM Janice drive up to Hayden Valley with John still asleep in the back, a bison herd that brought their late-season babies right past the rig within touching distance, Tower Falls, a pair of black bears crossing the road, and a Saturday morning so quiet that you could see a female elk just grazing alongside the lake. Then south to the Tetons.

#wyoming#yellowstone-national-park#yellowstone
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The Eisenhower family home on the grounds of the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KansasUnited States
6 min read2013

Dateline June 29, 2013, The Eisenhower Library and Museum

Saturday afternoon at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, about three hours west of Kansas City. From the library wall: 'Dwight David Eisenhower was born the year the US census pronounced the frontier closed and died the year man walked on the moon. In between those milestones he planned and led the greatest amphibious military assault in history and waged eight years of peace and prosperity as President.' The Eisenhower story: West Point 1915, Fox Connor's mentorship in Panama, first in his class at the Command and General Staff School, the Philippines under MacArthur, Marshall's call to the War Department after Pearl Harbor, D-Day, VE-Day, NATO. Then eight years as President, two terms, two losses for Stevenson. Korea ended. The interstate highway system. The 1957 Civil Rights Bill. Three balanced budgets. Eight hundred rounds of golf, and a 'Truman and Eisenhower 2012' t-shirt in the gift shop that we both stopped to look at.

#kansas#abilene-kansas#dwight-eisenhower
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Sunset behind the arena at the Cody Stampede Rodeo, July 4, 2013United States
6 min read2013

Dateline July 3-4, 2013, Cody, Wyoming, as in Buffalo Bill Cody

Into Cody after the long drive across Wyoming. Fuel for the Roadtrek, fuel for the body (a local butcher with the best black rye we have ever had), and an early bed. The Stampede Parade on the 3rd is led by the only mounted Marine Color Guard in the entire US military, based in Barstow, California. A breakfast at Pete's Cafe that could have been a Norman Rockwell drawing. A drive out twenty miles to the McCullough Peaks Wild Horse Management Area to find a hundred wild mustangs on BLM land. And the Cody Stampede Rodeo on the 4th, running since 1919, with the sun going down behind the arena. Then on to Yellowstone.

#wyoming#cody#buffalo-bill
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Camped outside Centennial, Wyoming, at the edge of the Snowy RangeUnited States
7 min read2013

Dateline July 3, 2013, Traveling from Missouri to Cody, Wyoming

Out of Missouri toward Cody. The golf course we had on the schedule was hosting a Missouri Golf Association tournament, so we adjusted, did the Truman Library, then headed west past the Eisenhower Library in Abilene. John could not drive past Manhattan, Kansas without stopping at Kansas State University, his old college, to see the fraternity house and a couple of other old haunts. Then across Kansas to Lake Waconda in the wheat country, the largest community ball of twine in Cawker City, Ft. Collins for golf, Cheyenne for RV light repairs, and into the Medicine Bow National Forest. The Ames Monument at the highest point of the original transcontinental railroad. A campsite outside Centennial, Wyoming, found through the kindness of a bartender and a woman named Jenny. The Snowy Range at sunrise. A pronghorn antelope, the last surviving member of its family. Split Rock on the Oregon Trail. Saratoga's hot springs. And the dinosaur museum at Thermopolis, with one of twelve known Archaeopteryx specimens in the world. Then on to Cody.

#kansas#manhattan-kansas#kansas-state-university
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The 'Buck Stops Here' sign from Harry Truman's desk, on display at the Truman LibraryUnited States
5 min read2013

Dateline June 28, 2013, The Truman Library

Our stop at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri was one of those pleasant, unexpectedly educational mornings. Most of us studied World History and US History in school, but unless we became serious students of the subject, the details of any one president's tenure tend to fade. Truman's tenure does not deserve to fade. The atomic bomb decision. The Truman Doctrine and the start of the Cold War. The Marshall Plan. The recognition of Israel eleven minutes after the declaration. The Berlin Airlift. NATO. Korea. The firing of MacArthur. The Buck Stops Here. And the small silver piano sent by a Holocaust survivor with her thanks. A wonderful museum, and a wonderful country.

#missouri#independence-missouri#harry-s-truman
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The Grand National sign at the Robert Trent Jones Trail course in Opelika, AlabamaUnited States
3 min read2013

Dateline June 29, 2013, Leaving Flagler Beach, Going West

Heading out west for the summer. National Parks, family, friends. The first leg runs from Flagler Beach to Cody, Wyoming for the Stampede on July 4th, then on to Yellowstone. Out of Florida, a stop in Orlando to swap a glow plug sensor, a KOA in Perry. Then a round at Grand National at Opelika, the one RTJ Trail course we did not get to with Pete and Bunny last May. Wind Creek State Park on Lake Martin. The drive through Alabama up to Memphis and on to Jonesboro, Arkansas, where Doris at Craighead Forest Park rented us a lakeside site for $10. The open country of Arkansas and Missouri, the kind that reminds you how big the country still is. Cooper's Landing on the Missouri River was flooded out, so we backed into Binder Park outside Jefferson City for the night. Independence, Missouri and the Truman Library in the morning.

#florida#alabama#arkansas
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The Rio Grande crossing at El Paso, Texas, on the drive westUnited States
4 min read2013

Dateline May 15, 2013, On the Road Again, Janice Traveling in the RV

John became a realtor over the winter, and his first deal landed the week we were supposed to leave for the Roadtrek Corporate Rally in Branson, Missouri. He stayed home to work it. I went west on my own and added a stop that was not exactly on the way: my oldest friend Marty and her husband Jeff, in Cottonwood, Arizona. Marty and I have known each other since high school. From Flagler Beach to Biloxi (with a small detour through the Beau Rivage Casino), an overnight at a Walmart, San Antonio, Las Cruces with a fuel scare in a ghost town, a tethered surveillance blimp out in the desert, and the long beautiful drive through Tonto National Forest and Roosevelt Lake. Written by Janice.

#mississippi#biloxi#beau-rivage-casino
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Bob Bittner at the DJ console of WJTO, his Bath, Maine AM radio stationUnited States
3 min read2012

Dateline July 25, 2012, Bath, Maine, and the Radio Guy

Out of Acadia and south down the Maine coast to Bath, to visit Bob Bittner, who has known Janice since grade school. They had not seen each other since high school, until Facebook reconnected them. Bob and his wife Raisa, an architect who redesigned their place themselves, live on a stretch of water acreage with a great room and a view from the back porch. Bob has been in the radio business for twenty years and owns two AM stations playing adult standards from the 1930s through the 1960s, drawing from a library of more than 5,400 records. We toured the studio (78s, 33s, and 45s for the youngsters), and the garage, where Bob's lifetime license-plate collection runs into the thousands. And then we waved goodbye, and headed home, the long summer through four Canadian provinces and a slice of Maine quietly closing behind us.

#maine#bath-maine#bob-bittner
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The view of Bar Harbor and Frenchman Bay from the summit of Cadillac Mountain, the tallest peak on the Atlantic seaboardUnited States
6 min read2012

Dateline July 25, 2012, Acadia National Park

From Campobello across the FDR Bridge into Maine, and on to Mount Desert Island for Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor. The island is the second largest on the US east coast, with 26 mountains on it, including 1,530-foot Cadillac, the tallest along the Atlantic seaboard. Bar Harbor itself, a Gilded Age resort that once rivaled Newport, was largely lost to a fire in 1947 that smoldered underground through the winter, then was rebuilt. Plus a stop at the Desert Mountain Oceanarium for a hatchery tour with lobsterman David Mills, who explained how Maine's lobstermen voluntarily protect their own brood stock with size minimums, size maximums, and notched females, and why the catch has been growing year over year because of it. Then the history of Acadia itself, George Dorr's 43-year campaign, John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s carriage roads, and the long story of how 47,000 acres got preserved.

#maine#acadia-national-park#bar-harbor
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