Wow…not sure we have ever spent this many days in a row with both warm temps and lack of clouds!  We were raised near Buffalo and most of our adult life was spent in Rochester NY where cloudy, gray days are just a way of life.  We have enjoyed the sun and blue skies so much.  This was one of the principal reasons we planned so much time in the…

After our “real winter” weather adventures in Charleston and Dallas, we headed west and while we did NOT take the road to Abilene, we settled for a week outside Carlsbad, NM.  It was a nice respite to end up in 60-70 degree days and sunny, blue skies.  The drive through western Texas and New Mexico is almost like being on another planet.  The wide open spaces, lack of traffic congestion,…

We spent 9 days in Charleston at the beginning of December prior to our journey back north for the holidays. We intended, and largely succeeded, to catch a bit of “Charleston Christmas glow” in the form of theatre, light shows, parades, and shopping. The Black Fedora Comedy Mystery Theatre put on a Santa Claus mystery entitled “Kris Kross”.  There were only 4 actors and no stage.   They took “volunteers”…

This week was a potpourri of pursuits and included our 1st extended stay at bad campground.  We parked ourselves in Lothian, MD because it was centrally located between Annapolis, central Washington DC, and Mount Vernon.  We spent a lot of time in the car – the lesson learned was to limit the physical circumference of your activities to have reasonable drive times, especially where the traffic is really heavy. The…

Our week in Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown was a busy tour-filled week steeped in history and politics of the late 17th and 18th century.  We spent 3 entire days in Colonial Williamsburg and could have spent more.  My teenage memory of CW did not prepare me for the impressive restoration of the town all done in authentic construction of the period.  We attended multiple re-enactments of discussions between the…

We spent a week at the Endless Caverns RV park about a half hour drive from Shenandoah National Park in late October.  The primary intent of this stop was to tour and hike the park.  It ended up as a bit more than that as Jessie, Damon, and the kids joined us for the Halloween weekend. So far we’ve found each of the National Parks we visited to be unique…

When Suzanne for was very young she read the book “Misty” which was centered on the wild ponies of Chincoteague.  When we started planning our “Chesapeake Fall”, she wanted to visit it.  Chincoteague is actually an island on the Atlantic cost due east from Richmond, VA.  Also, the Chincoteague Ponies actually live on Assateague Island which is next to Chincoteague.  The most exciting apart of getting there is a trip…

It took about a week to get our RV out of mothballs and get it organized before we left the Islands on September 7th for Maine.  This trip had four notable destinations: Boothbay, Maine, Acadia National Park, Boston, and Connecticut.  We hadn’t been to Maine and wanted to hit it in good weather. We met up with my cousin Mary Evanofski and her husband Connie in Boothbay.  They bought a…

The Smoky Mountain stop was our first “real adventure”.  It followed two weeks in Myrtle Beach that was more like a vacation. The RV park we stayed at was only for RVs – no bathrooms, waterslides, mini-golf and the like.  After the site compression, volume of golf carts, and sheer magnitude of human activity in Ocean Lakes in Myrtle Beach it was a welcome respite. Smoky Mountain National Park is…

Our visit in April was our RV maiden voyage and was notable because it was the official start of our new life.  On Friday March 31st Suzanne retired from the University of Rochester, on Saturday she turned 60, on Sunday we left Rochester, and on Tuesday we closed on our house of 26 years.  Suzanne thinks that “perhaps we shouldn’t have made 4 major life changes in less than a…