Day 62 (Wednesday, August 25th) Returning Home

We finally returned home this afternoon after our 62-day journey around America. We didn't stop to visit anything today and nothing spectacular happened, but we'd like to thank all our readers and give you a little synopsis or our trip.

We were gone for 62 days (a day less than 9 weeks),

We drove just over 11,500 miles (at just under 11 miles per gallon......),

We visited 27 states in the U.S. and British Columbia, in Cananda. The states were Maryland, Virginia, North & South Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

We have a black vinyl outline map on one of the storage doors on the side of our trailer. After every new state we

visit, we place the colored-vinyl state inside the outline. Adding this trip to our previous trips, our trailer has now been in 31 states. These pictures respresent the before and after of our trip map.

We left two days after our boys got out of school and got back with only four days remaining before they have to be back in school again.

Here are the high points of our journey this summer:

In Charleston, South Carolina we saw Fort Sumter and Patriot Point; in Georgia we visited Stone Mountain; in Louisiana we toured New Orleans; in Texas we saw the Alamo, the Riverwalk and the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio, in Austin we saw the evening flight of the Congress Avenue Bridge bats; in New Mexico we spent a day and a half at Carlsbad Caverns then visited the White Sands National Monument with a side trip to the White Sands Missile Base Museum and then drove up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings; in Arizona we toured the Pima Air and Space Museum, the museum at the last remaining Titan ICBM Missile Base, and then did a tour of Taliesin West (Frank Lloyd Wright's home and school), and then drove up to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon; in Nevada we drove across the top of the Hoover Dam, toured the dam, survived engine trouble, and toured Red Rock Canyon and Las Vegas; in San Francisco we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge, saw Lombard Street, toured Muir Woods NP (redwood trees), and visited Fisherman's Wharf and the San Francisco Maritime Historic Park, then we toured the Sonoma and Napa valleys (and bought a little wine); in Oregon we visitied with family, drove some of the coastline and went to the Evergreen Air and Space Museum (the Spruce Goose); in Washington we did the whole Mt. St. Helens experience, visited with family and went into Seattle for the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and also toured the Boeing Factory; we crossed in British Columbia, Canada to visit Vancouver and watch the final night of a fireworks competition; in Montana we toured Glacier NP; in Wyoming we toured Yellowstone NP and Grand Teton NP; in South Dakota went to Mount Rushmore (spending time with about a half million motorcyclists from Sturgis), drove through Badlands NP, toured Wind Cave NP, and visited the amazing Wall Drug; in Missouri we visited Kansas City, went up in the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, and toured the Anheiser-Busch factory; in Tennessee we stopped in Memphis at Elvis Presley's Graceland, the Mud Island Museum and scale model of the Mississippi River, took a ride on a stern-wheeler riverboat, watched the parade of the Peabody Ducks, and spent some time down on Beale Street; also in Tennessee we visited Nashville to take in a show at the Grand Ole Opry, see the Parthenon, and check out the honky-tonks on Broadway; in Kentucky we toured Mammoth Cave NP, visited with relatives in Lexington, and toured the Kentucky Horse Park; we visitied more relatives in West Virginia and finally made our way back to Maryland.

I left a lot of detail out, but you can always go back and read the blogs if you want. It was a whirlwind tour, but now Kim and I know where we want to go back to and spend more time. We also know a few places we don't need to see again..........for example, we're pretty much done with the Nevada desert.........five days in that heat was enough for one lifetime.

If you followed our blog, we all hope you enjoyed riding along with us!

John, Kim, Jake and Tyler

Day 61 (Tuesday, August 24th) West Virginia

We left Lexington, Kentucky this morning and headed for central West Virginia. Kim has relatives in Buckhannon so we found a campground not too far from them. The campground was beautiful with plentiful views of Stonewall Jackson Lake. As we were setting up, three deer wandered through the edge of our campsite. What a treat for us but Holly was beside herself. She never barked but she sat quivering from head to tail as the deer approached to within 40 feet.

After setting up and taking a brief walk through the campground, we cleaned up and drove into Buckhannon to visit with Kim's aunt and uncle. We relaxed and caught each other up on the activities of our families and then enjoyed a wonderful meal. It was nice to relax and visit with family again.

Tomorrow is the last day of our journey and we all have mixed emotions about getting home. We'll be glad to be home but we're sad that our wonderful summer experience has come to an end.

Day 59/60 (Sunday/Monday, August 22nd/23rd) Mammoth Cave/Lexington

Today we drove from Nashville, Tennessee to Lexington, Kentucky. Along the way, we stopped at Mammoth Cave. We've already been in Carlsbad Caverns N.P and Wind Cave N.P. so we thought we'd finish by touring the longest cave system in the world. Mammoth Cave was carved by an underground river (which is still there in the deeper parts) and the explored parts total 392 connected miles. If you combined the 2nd and 3rd longest caves in the world Mammoth would still be bigger by quite a ways. This was the first cave system we toured where you actually had to be a bit flexible to get through. The cave has parts called "Tall Man's Agony" and "Fat Man's Misery" and they were aptly named; even Kim hit her head on one part and we all had to crouch and twist to get through those parts. The boys both enjoyed our contortions because they were small enough to fit through most places. We covered a couple of miles during the tour and marveled at the differences in the formations and appearances of cave systems we'd visited. When we got back to the surface, we finished our day's travel to Lexington and made camp. Kim's family has relatives in Lexington so we made contact and agreed to meet for dinner tomorrow night.

We were camped at the Kentucky Horse Park. It turned out that the campground was one of the nicer ones in Kentucky and it had a huge swimming pool that the guys put to good use. The nice thing about the campground was that it's attached to the actual Horse Park. On Monday, we bought tickets to the horse park and went to tour the grounds. We got a horse-drawn trolley ride of the grounds to get familiarized and then walked around looking at the exhibits. There was a special on-loan exhibit about Arabian horses and a parade of breeds where the riders were dressed in period-clothes to represent the riders of those breeds. For example, the rider of the Percheron was dressed as Joan of Arc and the rider of the Thoroughbred was dressed as a jockey. After that we watched Hall of Champions, where they paraded past great champion race horses past the audience. It was obvious that the horses still enjoyed the attention and applause! There were memorials for some great champion race horses and the grave and memorial for Man-O-War, the greatest race horse that ever lived. He was only beaten once in his career and that was a fluke of position. He defeated the horse that beat him in seven other races. It was a fun day that we capped off by driving into Lexington for dinner with family. We were in for a surprise because we'd expected dinner with a few people, but instead, it was almost the whole Kentucky clan that gathered to have dinner with us. We ended up with 14 people at dinner!

We had a wondeful time, but we've also begun to realize that our wonderful trip is drawing to an end. Tomorrow, we'll head out for West Virgina, our last stop before returning home.

Day 58 (Saturday, August 21st) Nashville, Tennessee

We almost skipped Nashville. It had been raining really heavily and the National Weather Service was predicting floods that might rival the ones that did so much damage in May of this year. Two of the three campgrounds we were looking at had been devastated by that flooding and we weren't keen on parking just in time to get flooded out. As we were planning an alternate route, the Weather Service canceled it's flood warnings and stated that the flood waters had not gone as high as they'd worried and would begin to recede at 1:00 am on the day we were driving to Nashville. We decided to keep our original schedule and got into Nashville early yesterday afternoon.

The "new" Grand Ole Opry that was built in the 70s had been badly damaged in the May flooding so they're using the original Ole Opry House; the Ryman Theater. Our campground had discount tickets to the Friday show, headlined by Kathy Mattea and Blake Shelton, so we went to the show and saved having to see the building on a paid tour, the next day. The whole place was built in 1897. It's all wood on the inside and the stage is the same as we used to see on the old Hee Haw TV show. It was really interesting to watch because the whole 2-hour show is done live, just like they used to do TV shows in the 50s. Even the commercials are done by an announcer at a podium on the corner of the stage. Everyone there, 4 hosts, 8 acts, back-up bands, and the announcer were incredibly smooth, polished, and professional. The boys will probably best remember Blake Shelton's rendition of "Hillbilly Bone," but Kim and I will also remember watching the original group play "Rocky Top." The lead mandolinist was 81 years old but still played amazingly well.

Today we went in to see the sights of Nashville and walk along Broadway. The honky-tonks were in full swing and except for a huge rainstorm that went through we had a wonderful time. The weather map on my phone warned us about the approaching cell with just enough time to duck into a barbecue restaurant for dinner. We waited the storm out and finished our walking tour of the downtown area of Nashville.

We've altered our route home slightly to visit with relatives in Kentucky and West Virginia. Tomorrow we'll be camping at the Kentucky Horse Park and visiting in Lexington.

Day 56 (Thursday, August 19th) Memphis, Tennessee

We're sorry about the gap in our blog, but we'd like to thank those who noticed and called to ask if we were alright. We're fine, but we broke the card-reader that reads the card from John's camera. That was more than half of our photos, so we decided to pause until we replaced it. We're back up and running so here goes..........we'd already written the text so we'll just add the photos and pretend that we're still on schedule.

With memories of Graceland still fresh in our minds, we headed out today to see what Memphis had to offer. We started our day by taking the momorail out to Mud Island. There is a wonderful museum of the Mississippi River on the island. We spent a couple of hours wandering through the museum and then went outside to walk along the scale model of the Mississippi. The models is hundreds of yards long and shows great detail. You can even see where the river is wide and shallow and where it gets narrow and deep. It's full of water and Jake and Tyler had a great time wading through the water and racing leaves on the current. The various cities along the river are akso created (to scale) on the deck. We had fun finding where our camper was parked, both in Memphis and in New Orleans, weeks earlier. Near the end of the island the model river spills out into models of the delta and the Gulf of Mexico. Even Laker Ponchartrain is there at the side of New Orleans.

After we left Mud Island, we walked over to the riverboat tours that run nearby. We spent about 90 minutes on a narrated tour of the river on a stern-wheeler paddle-boat. I'm pretty sure it had propellers underneath, but the paddle wheel did turn as we went along. The narrator provided us with interesting history of Memphis and the Mississippi River and made it worth our time. We learned about the greatest maritime disaster that ever occurred in the U.S. We'd never known that is was a riverboat (the Sultana) returning repatriated Union Civil War soldiers after the war ended. One of it's boilers exploded and more than 1,500 Union soldiers were killed or drowned as it sank.

For the highlight of our day we walked up to the Peabody Hotel in down town Memphis. That's right! We attended the parade of the Peabody Ducks. It's quite a grand presentation with a "Duck Master" and a red carpet that gets rolled out from the fountain to the elevator that takes the ducks to the duck palace on the roof. Right on time, the ducks climbed out of the lobby fountain that they'd been swimming in since their morning parade and waddled down the carpet to the elevator. After a short while we followed to the roof and got some excellent looks at the city as well and a brief "gander" at where the ducks live when they're not on display in the fountain.

By the time the ducks were safety in their palace, it was time to head down to Beale Street. A short walk had us strolling along the birthplace of the "blues." We listened to some of the live music and found a barbecue place to have dinner. After another lap of Beale Street we headed home for the night. Tomorrow, we'll head for Nashville and country music.

Day 55 (Wednesday, August 18th) Graceland

We managed to reserve a space in the Memphis/Graceland RV Park and Campground which is right behind Heartbreak Hotel and across the street from Graceland. We were luckier here than we were with Sturgis. Elvis Week was last week and the anniversary of his death was just 2 days ago, on the 16th. There were only a few straggling, non-English-speaking impersonators left and the area had almost returned to normal......although "normal" isn't really a word you'd usually use around Graceland.

We thought it would be neat to introduce the boys to the mystique of Elvis. They knew who Elvis was and even knew some of his songs but weren't really familiar the whole Elvis story. John and I visited Memphis about 10 years ago but never toured Graceland so we were looking forward to it as well.

We started the day by buying a tour package and then began with a tour of the mansion and grounds. Graceland was actually built in 1935 and was only purchased and modified by Elvis. We couldn't believe he bought the whole place for $200,000, but then again, that was in 1957. Elvis was 22 and was already a millionaire. The audio-enhanced tour included the main level and basement of the house (including the notoriously outrageous Jungle Room), the trophy room and a commemorative room that was in his racquetball court in the backyard. We each had a small audio tour-helper that told us all kinds of details about Elvis and his life. We were surprised by his philanthropy involving a wide array of charities. It also surprised us that Elvis only attended one award ceremony in his honor in his entire life. When RCA wanted to present him with a multiplatinum record, they had to meet him as he came off the plane after a flight because they knew he wouldn't come to any ceremony they arranged. When viewed in hindsight there are many admirable traits that he exhibited during his life. He never got over his stage-fright, he never forgot that each new audience was probably seeing his act for the first time, he seemed to remain humble, and he never stopped helping other people; not with a philanthropic orgaization, but with his own hands, a little at a time.

The tour of the mansion and grounds ended at the gravesite of Elvis and his parents and maternal grandmother. They weren't originally buried on Graceland's grounds, but some problems at the public cemetary caused Elvis' father to get permission for a family burial site on the grounds. There were tons of flowers all around the area. Many such tokens are received at Graceland almost daily and they display them until they are faded or wilted to the point of being no longer attractive. Of course, they were overwhelmed last week with stuff from around the world.

Our ticket included self-guided tours of several other exhibits, including a collection of his cars, motorcycles, and other motorized toys. There were collections of his clothes, two of his airplanes, a ton of gift shops and other stuff across the street from Graceland. Tyler thought it was very cool that Elvis' logo was TCB (Taking Care of Business), which are his initials.

We got to look into his Falcon business jet and his converted airliner. It was a plane that carried 96 passengers for Delta before Elvis bought it (sight unseen) and converted it to a 600 mph recreational vehicle. That's travelling in style!

We essentially spent the whole day soaking up Elvis-lore and looking at the stunning amount of Elvis-kitsch that is for sale in the shops in the complex. We walked home, tired, but ready for a full day exploring Memphis, tomorrow.

Day 53 (Monday, August 16th) St. Louis, MO

Today, we drove into downtown St. Louis to see the Gateway Arch. While we were there, we also took a short detour to the Anheiser Busch brewery tour. The Mississippi River was so flooded that the riverwalk was completely underwater, but the things we wanted to see were still high and dry.

None of us had ever seen the Gateway Arch before and it was impressive. It's made from stainless steel that is filled with concrete and it stands 630 feet tall. We saw a video on it's three- year construction and we were duly impressed. It sits in a 40 block park on the river which is dedicated to Thomas Jefferson's decision to send Lewis and Clark to explore lands in the Louisiana Purchase, and beyond. We all learned a great deal about the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the underground museum beneath the arch. We spent hours watching educational videos on the construction of the arch and on Lewis and Clark and in the museum before we took the tram to the top of the arch. The tram is an amazing elevator. It consists of 8 small linked cars, each holding five people. We felt like we were inside the back of cement mixer truck. The cars periodically rotate slightly to stay level as they go up the curved legs of the arch. At the top is an observation area with small windows that provide views of the city and the Mississippi River. With a decent pair of binoculars, you could even watch the St. Louis Cardinals play baseball in their stadium. After getting our fill of the tremendous views from the top, we decended to admire the arch from the park surrounding it.

We ate a late lunch and headed for the brewery. We explained to the boys that the bottling process we would see is similar to that of their favorite root beer so that piqued their interest a bit. We also mentioned that we'd be visiting the Clydesdale stables so they were happy to tag along - also with the hopes of spotting one of the famous Dalmations.

The brewery is truly an immense place and the tours are free! And they give you free beer at the end!! The tour guide took us through the Clydesdale stables where we saw several of the famous Clydesdale horses and two of the Budweiser beer carts that they pull. We also saw two Dalmations wandering around the stable but they stayed to themselves and avoided the crowd. The boys were a little bummed they didn't get to pet them. The guides gave us a lot of history of how they survived during 13 years of prohibition and how they have grown since the repeal. They showed us through the entire brewing process, to the canning/bottling process at the end.

The tour ended in the tasting room where those over 21 were able to taste 2 beers each. Amazingly, since the tour was free, they were quite generous with their samples. The boys had sodas and pretzels while we tasted several new beers that they're now brewing. Although Kim isn't a beer drinker, she even found one she likes.

Tomorrow we head for Memphis to see Beale Street and Graceland.