Musings From the Road

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.
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