2966 miles on the road will do funny things to you. After only a few miles, you start letting your mind wander and take great pleasure in small things you see out the window. On our cross-country adventure, we decided to collect some of these random thoughts and sights to share with those of you traveling vicariously with us.

First off, it may help you to know our route. http://www.mapquest.com/embed?hk=PuKnub
As you can see, it is a rural route for most of the trip—even if it does travel on Interstate highways.  We plan to take a different route back, as we won’t be meeting up with friends in Colorado on the way home. This route avoids most major cities, and ALL of the east coast toll highways. We paid only an $11.00 toll on the International Bridge in Sault Ste. Marie.

This route allowed for much animal watching. Paul and Kyle…we kept the cow streak alive. (For those who don’t know, on our first cross country trip it became a game to see who could find cows first each day. We NEVER have had a travel day where we didn’t find cows in any trip across the country.) Here is the animal count for this trip (minus the little squished ones we didn’t count, and domestic cows, horses, etc.)

1 eagle
2 herons
5 deer
1 large turtle
1 baby bunny
1 coyote
3 donkeys
1 marmot
3 birds that flew into our camper and died (including a large crow in the upper peninsula of Michigan)
1 eagle eating a deer carcass
1 dead moose
5 dead deer
1 dead badger

We crossed the Mississippi River in Ontario. Yes, we know. There must be more than one Mississippi River. We could have gone swimming in Tea Lake or even Ink Lake. And that led us to look at the town names as we went through them. We went through many towns that shared names with Maine towns, including Madawaska.  But some names were so unique that we imagine they are one-of-a kind. We traveled through Germfask, MI (held our breath). We could have taken an exit to No Name, CO. But some of our favorites were in Nebraska. Anyone want to live in Wahoo, NE?  Wouldn’t it be fun when someone asked you where you were from? You could shout out, “Wahoo!”  Or, you could live in Worms, NE. That could also stimulate some interesting conversation….

We listened to random radio stations from all over the country and played over 500 songs on the ipod. Our sing-along skills are all honed up now, so we will be all set if we see a karaoke contest in the area.  Come to think of it, there IS a karaoke contest in town this coming weekend.

Billboards and advertisements provided another form of entertainment. Besides being the focal point for playing the alphabet game….which lasted from the middle of Nebraska until about 60 miles from our campground in Utah…..Darn Q and Z….they also were quite amusing at times. We found out that Renfrew, Ontario was the birthplace of the NHA/NHL.  One for a butcher shop (we think) in Minnesota had the slogan, “You Never Sausage A Place”. One was advertising Dick Farms….. (we didn’t stop).  And a billboard for some brand of motorcycle encouraged you to “Throw Your Leg Over An Italian in Sudbury”.   This particular billboard also pictured a very attractive young lady, who we can assume is making the aforementioned statement.  Maybe it is good that Maine doesn’t have billboards.

While driving and seeing sights, we want you to know that many of you were in our thoughts as well. We know we will leave most of you out, so if you don’t see your name listed, you can imagine we thought of you as well. It is PROBABLY true! No pouting allowed.

Carl- We kept passing and getting passed by the big tractor trailers hauling support crew for Nascar

Vaughn- We needed you to tell us about the crops we were passing. And we knew which sections of mountain roads you would have needed to close your eyes on. 

Kyle, Emily, and Celia- We passed a shop that made tipis just after we passed a shop that made life-sized metal horse sculptures. We figured we could be the grandparents of the century if we had a horse and a tipi in the backyard! (But we didn’t stop)

David B.-The Canadian sign for information will forever make me say, “Information, HUH?” when I see it.

Paul- Dad commented every time we went through interesting rock formations that he needed you around to tell him about them. Mom said you would have been under the table playing video games and not seen any of them.

Martha and Ed- We kept thinking about our trip to Niagara with you and how Dad really liked the campground with the waterfalls. We are hoping to be able to have an opportunity sometime to travel with you and your new fifth wheel. We checked out all kinds of rvs on our way out. Fun to compare them.

Georgia- We wanted to bring you a metal horse sculpture, too. (Sorry, too big) You’ll just have to be happy with your riding lessons. Have fun.

Janet- The billboards were for you. 🙂

John- The wildlife count was for you. Especially the squished ones.

Marge- Every time we stopped for lunch or supper on the road and ate in the camper, we remembered our trip to PEI where you agreed to camp….but only if we ate out. No cooking allowed. Some meals we were really wishing you were here to enforce that rule. 🙂 Cold sandwiches lost their allure really quickly, but ONE of us didn’t want to waste any time sitting down for a real meal.

Alyssa, Ryan, Ashleigh, Jenna, Tyler, Matthew, David G., Naomi, Katie, Jenny, Karen, Gordon, Mackie, Linda, Jon, Amy, Lori, Denise, Kevin….sorry. No specifics come to mind right now. But we love you all.

We managed to plan one of our longest travel days when the west was having a record heat day. Picture the air conditioner in your car trying to cool off a 30 foot rv. Then make the temperature over 100 degrees. (109 was the hottest point) Picture us melting in the seats, drinking bottle after bottle of water and Gatorade. Then ask us why we didn’t just run the generator and turn on the big rooftop air conditioner. Well…..when we FINALLY thought of it, we did. And it worked for about 30 minutes. Then stopped. Generator flashed error messages. We melted again. Only after reading several manuals did we figure out that we needed to turn the circuit breaker for the AC off and on again, even though it wasn’t actually tripped. Some strange mechanical reason why…. would have been nice to know it before we melted. Ah….those lessons learned the hard way tend to stick though, so maybe it was meant to happen.

We really enjoyed meeting up with Doug and Kirsten Thompson,  Kirsten’s sister Megan, and Megan’s husband Tom. We connected with them in Grand Junction, CO and went out for breakfast and a quick chance to catch up. We shared some laughs, some hugs, and some well-wishes. We are really glad we had a chance to catch them while they were home in the USA. Friendships make the world a better place to be.

Today we are settled in our new campground home, meeting our fellow workers and the owners, and getting the local procedures learned. We went grocery shopping, and are doing laundry. We will find out later what the schedule will look like and when we might get away for some adventures.

First up…this weekend in Panguitch there is a big hot air balloon rally.  The balloons will be launching from a field directly adjacent to our campground, so we’ll get a front row seat!   Should be lots of fun. We’ll update you again when something exciting has happened. Take care, everyone!

Glen and Terry

Photo: Sunrift Gorge

Just so this is complete, we’ll tell you about our last week in Montana and our drive home. We don’t have a lot of photos from that time period, so we’ll share some of the ones we didn’t get to tease you with before.

On our last days off, we decided to try to hike to Hidden Lake, which is a pretty tame hike but one of the “famous” ones. We hadn’t done it before because it had been snowcovered for most of the time we were there. This hike begins from Logan Pass and we can’t take the RV there so we needed to catch a shuttle. This is where the adventure began.

There were some mechanical issues with the larger shuttle buses, so the company had brought some of the smaller buses to the east side of the park. We went to the visitor center and prepared to take a shuttle, knowing it may be a longer wait than usual. That was okay because the hike was a short one. We were pleasantly surprised to find a shuttle waiting at the curb with only two other people aboard. We climb on and carry on a pleasant conversation with the couple onboard (a pastor and his wife that were staying at the KOA). The bus fills up, but no driver has come onboard yet. We wait….go ask the rangers who say that the driver is on break and that one should come in 10-15 minutes. We wait…another shuttle arrives. We ask that driver if we can get on his shuttle, but he states that he will be going to lunch and won’t be leaving for 35 minutes. We stay put. We wait…and still no driver. In the meantime, the other shuttle fills up with people. We wait…and the OTHER driver is done lunch and takes his shuttle up the mountain. At this point we ask again. Still no answer on where a driver is or when this shuttle will move. We all give up and change plans. Some carpooled with each other, some decide to do something else. We decide to go to lunch.

While eating a great lunch at the park cafe, we decide that we don’t think anyone had rented the van that the KOA has for people to use. We head to the campground and ask if we can use the van. We head up the mountain (45 minute trip) and get to Logan Pass. Parking lot is full. Circle, curse, circle, curse…circle…decide to give up and go back down the mountain. Hidden Lake will have to stay hidden from the Holyoke clan.

We drive to the Many Glacier section of the park and decide to pick up a few souvenirs we had been eyeing all summer. After a successful shopping trip we head back to the campground for the evening.

Our last day off we decide to spend with our friends, Dan and Rena. We drove to the west side of the park, did a bit of shopping, went out to eat together and just talked about the summer and what was coming up in the future for all of us. We will really miss them, and hope to connect again in the future. They cooked us a great steak dinner for a farewell treat, too!

The drive home was four long days. St. Mary to Minot, ND…..Minot to Marquette, MI….Marquette to Ogdensberg, NY via Ontario….and Ogdensberg to home. We were all ready to be up and moving by the time we got home! I don’t think I would make a good long-haul trucker.

Now we need to get some photos printed, but that will have to wait just a bit while we get Paul off to college and get our classrooms ready. Here are a few more to give you a taste of Glacier. Enjoy.

This is the ranger station at Goat Haunt, and you can see the border patrol checking passports. No line of cars here, but as you can see it is used by lots of hikers and people on the tour boats.


This is the view from Granite Park Chalet where we had lunch on one of our hikes. You can see the trail off to the left.
One of the many wildflower fields we encountered while hiking.
We hope to see you all in person, soon. Thanks for taking the time to share in our summer vacation. We loved it, and the answer to everyone…”Yes, we would do this type of thing again in a heartbeat.” We hope to do it at another national park area to allow us the chance to explore somewhere else. Yosemite is high on our list of places to visit in more depth, but we are also open to other opportunities as well. Who knows where we will wander next!
The Holyokes

As a review for most, we traveled across America for the summer of 2004 in our Class C rv. This was a first for us, as we had no rv experience, and relatively little travel experience outside of New England. But, with a sense of adventure and a few places in mind to visit, we headed out for 52 days of fun.

We spent the first night in New Hampshire at a small campground.
Next, we were off to Mt. Holyoke in Massachusetts. We had wanted to climb it, and had quite an adventure in parking at the mountain. The signs weren’t exactly clear, so we had a last minute decision to make at an intersection. We chose a place that said “bus parking” even though it really didn’t look like any such thing. Scraped the back end of the rv on the way in as it was a bit steeply pitched. It was a good thing we made this choice! After hiking up the mountain to the facilities on top, we looked at the parking area up there. If we had chosen to continue, we might still be there. No way would we have been able to navigate the tight turns in the parking areas. In this case, way better to be lucky than good (as Glen is always saying).We enjoyed great views of the Connecticut River from the top and learned that the building at the summit used to be a gentlemen’s club where much drinking would occur. Paul decided to sit on the edge of every cliff he found, and Kyle started his mission of the trip–not to smile in any photos.

After the climb, and lunch in the rv, we headed on to New York. We stayed at a little place that was repairing the pool. They sent us down the road to a pond to swim. Let’s just say…yuck! The guys did go in, but I opted to watch from shore. Later, we see a “No Swimming” sign. Looks like Mom was the smart one!

One overnight, and we head off to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We camp at Artillery Ridge Campground, and break out the bikes to travel to and from the park. We took a tour with a ranger that was a great way to really put what we were seeing in proper perspective. I am amazed that any of the soldiers had energy to fight after the heat and humidity they experienced in their wool uniforms. We saw the location of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, Little Round Top, and many other places we have studied in history class.

At the time, the boys were just as happy that we finally found a campground with a pool!

I had great feedback from the people I sent frequent emails to when we did our 2004 cross-country trip. Since then, we have traveled a bit, and we plan to go to Montana for the summer of 2008. This blog is intended to allow for family and friends to share our experiences, and for an easier way for us to update everyone. It will eliminate the problem of files being too large to email, and won’t clog up your inboxes.

Be patient for awhile as I learn the ropes on how this blog works. Maybe it will inspire some of you to make a blog about your family.