The Travel Journal Filled with Unforgettable Details

 

I wish I could remember how many years we owned a motor home. Less than ten, more than five is my closest guess-imate. We took it on several trips to the Deep South to visit friends, to Texas to a Romance Writer’s Convention and to Iowa, Pennsylvania and Tennessee to many gas station collector’s conventions. We also used it on day trips along Lake Michigan and on camping trips upstate a couple of times. When we traveled Out West, our most frequent destination, we took a pickup truck, leaving the RV home because my husband loved hanging out in the Rocky Mountains on the two tracks they called 'roads' back in those days.

For some of the years we had the motor home I kept a travel journal and yesterday I read through it with the end game in mind of putting it through the shredder afterward. When I finished the last page I decided it was the most boring travel journal ever written and I won’t have any trouble getting rid of it. I hope. It’s still sitting on my computer desk where I used it to pull a few quotes out of it to use as blog fodder. Those of us who keep blogs know how hard it's been to come up topics to write about during the pandemic and while my travel journal isn't insightful or as entertaining as John Steinbeck's Traveling with Charley who wrote about searching for America with his French Poodle as his companion, it's better than reading labels at the supermarket. I used to love doing that, by the way, but with the pandemic we're not encouraged to stick around inside the store any longer than necessary or to touch stuff we're not going to buy. And if you don't know it by now, I follow the Rules of life so don't expect a blog post about the most interesting food labels in aisle eight. Damn pandemic!

In May of 1993 I wrote in the travel journal: Here at Motel Walmart in Fayetteville, TN, Cooper (our dog at the time) thinks he’s died and went to heaven. They’re having a sidewalk sale and every time they call out over the loud speakers “Sidewalk Sale Today!” he only hears the word “walk” which is his favorite word in the English language. As for us, Motel Walmart was noisy last night with our own private security guards chi-chatting on their two-way radios as they watched over the merchandise that employees dragged outside at closing. At 3:00 AM I learned that one of them has an Aunt Betty with a bunion which I related to Don in the morning since he could sleep through anything. (We often stayed overnight in the parking lots of Walmart which wasn’t uncommon for RV travelers back in those days.)

June 5, 1994: We got on the road early with no coffee, no breakfast and me begging Don to get a map and some gas so we didn’t get stranded in the middle of nowhere because we were off to chase another unicorn. On a back road off the interstate---interstates, according to Don, are for people with no adventure in their souls---we stopped at a fruit and produce stand where he claimed the bearded old man wouldn’t give him directions unless he bought a watermelon. Cooper was happy to see it get plunked down on the floor of the motor home. He had a lot fun trying to hump and wrestle the last melon as it rolled back and forth. The old man’s directions were good, though, and we were able to find our destination---a tiny, over-grown and deserted gas station from the good old days of one pump and a Coke-Cola machine out front. It had one of those old screen doors that squeaked when it was opened and it slammed shut with a thud on your way out. It was nailed closed so we couldn't listen for those sounds of our youth. Where is the logic of nailing shut a screen door? If you wanted to break in you could just rip the screen. Don was in photography heaven and I was wishing it was 50 years ago so we could have bought some gas and a bottle of pop, maybe a bag of chips and called it breakfast.

August 15, 1997: This is the year of Don’s fuck-ups. Everything was going fine, great weather and we had lots of time compared to other years headed out to the Iowa Gas convention. Then Don got stubborn about the high cost of gas at the truck stop and that’s when we discovered how few (if any) stations there are between the truck stop and Moline. It was nerve racking on 80 with traffic down to one lane. Getting off the highway, we got lost looking for a station, adding drama we didn’t need---especially since we discovered on this trip that the motor home doesn’t start when it gets over-heated. When we finally found a gas station we had to put 29.30 gallons in our 30 gallon tank. After getting back on the road we developed two bad tires on the driver’s side and we are now sitting in South Amana where we’re waiting for two new tires to get delivered to a Country Bumpkin Gas Station with a one bay service garage. We’re calling this our ‘Grapes of Wrath’ trip.

September 10, 1998: We stayed in a $44 a night Motel 8 in Georgetown north of Lexington, KY. It was okay, no frills but clean and quiet. It was worth it just for the hot showers after three days of sponge baths in the motor home. We ate at a place called “Golden Girls” around mile marker 116 which was great. At least I loved my pork. Don had a t-bone. The national news last night was filled with Ken Starr and the report he just turned over to the House for possible impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton supposedly for perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering and abuse of power.

And probably the most boring travel entry into the journal was the day I wrote: We planned to leave town at noon, but as usual with our trips, we were late. It was 3:00 before we headed up north for a long weekend at the Buckley Steam Engine Show, which they say is the largest show of its kind in the world with 50 thousand plus people going through their gates each of the four days its open. We took our time getting there. 1^st stop: gas $24.82. 2^nd stop: yard sale in Bailey where I picked up another Sterling diner dish. 3^rd stop: the Trade-a-Rama in Grant where we bought two jars of Vidalia onions for $6.00. Around White Cloud Cooper, Don and I sang a couple of versus of All My ex’s Live in Texas. You know Don has reset his body clock to Vacation Time when he and the dog start singing duets. Do we know how to have a good time, or what! ©

All my ex's live in Texas
And Texas is the place I'd dearly love to be
But all my ex's live in Texas
And that's why I hang my hat in Tennessee

 

Photo Note: The photo at the top is not our motor home but it’s close. We had an awning on ours. Below is my favorite travel photo. That's Cooper greeting Punxsutawney Phil. Cooper was fascinated by that statue's butt. He probably thought his nose was broken because he couldn't smell anything. That photo wasn't staged, by the way. He was a great traveler. He took his first trip in the motor home when he was eight weeks old and he played in a dishpan of water all the way from Michigan to Iowa. On the way home we stopped at a beach on Lake Michigan, thinking if he liked splashing water in a pan that he'd love the waves on the big lake but he was scared of them. He had more sense than we did. He didn't even weigh five pounds back then and the undertow would have killed him had he waded in. 

Day Trips, Long Trips and Super Powers

Wouldn’t you know it, the one day this week when I was supposed to go on a day trip to a tourist town on Lake Michigan the weather report included rain, snow, sleet and ice. When the alarm clock rang this morning I got up and turned on the TV, looking for that crawler at the bottom of the screen that announces cancellations. There was none for the school district where our senior citizen hall bus driver comes from. The trip was still on. But the traffic at my bird feeders was extra heavy, indicating they expected to be spending the rest of the day huddled under the tree branches trying to avoid having a crust of ice hanging from their tiny wings. It was snowing hard---3 to 5 inches predicted---and the temperature was creeping up toward the freezing mark where the snow would turn over to freezing rain. The counties south of here where our bus would be heading were already reporting soppy sleet and slide-offs. I made a decision. It might be an adventure to be out in the thick of bad weather but it was an adventure I could do without. I emailed my regrets.

And that decision makes me wonder why I’m seriously considering signing up for the 14 days trip to Alaska the summer of 2016. I went to the monthly travelogue recently and as I sat there looking at slides of Alaska I got nostalgic over the fact that going to Alaska was on Don’s and my Bucket List. I’m not getting any younger, I thought, and going with a bunch of people from the senior hall will likely be the only chance I’ll ever get to go. All day long I thought about the pros and cons of going. I certainly have the time and money to go. On my cons list I only have three things listed one of which is I have to pee about every hour and a half. How’s that going to work out on the planes, trains, buses and cruise ships we’d be on? I could bring a bunch of corks but that would probably earn me a body cavity search at an airport, if they use one of those x-ray screeners. Nope, I’d have to quit drinking liquids but that could earn me a heart attack or stroke. I could try bladder “stretching” again but it didn’t work when I was a kid, so I doubt it would now. 

A bigger problem, though, would be Levi. Fourteen days is a long time to be at a kennel when we’ve only been separated for two days at a time in his entire life. I could put him in a kennel for a five day stretch this summer and see how that goes. I’ve made it a point to take him there every summer for two days, even when I wasn’t going anywhere just so he’d understand that he gets picked back up again, should I have an emergency. I started doing that because of Hurricane Katrina.  Seeing all those stressed out dogs, many who’d never been in a cage before---they said---drove the point home to me that dogs need to be cage trained. I bought one for Levi but I never close the door. He goes in there when he takes his afternoon naps, when I leave the house and when I have workmen around. I’m afraid to close the door for fear I’ll die and he’d starve to death before I’m found. He’s got a self-feeder that will keep him alive for five days, after that he can start eating my fingers. 

The third con on my list is I wonder if the emotions of going alone on a trip that Don dreamed about for so many years would get to me. I’d hate to pay that much money just to see the place through a veil of tears. Would it even be fun without his spirit of adventure and curiosity mixing us up with the locals? 

New topic: On Super Bowl weekend I had gone to the grocery store and I wrote about how busy it was and how it would be nice if they’d move the sample food people over to the checkout lanes to keep us all from fainting from missing lunch. This week I was at the store again when their cash register system went down for seven minutes and the checkout lines got back up again. Lo and behold, a couple of girls walked around those of us waiting in line and they were handing out sugar cookies from their bakery and sample sized cups of Starbuck’s cappuccinos. I love that store! If I ever get homeless I’m going to find a way to live there. They’re open 24/7/365 days a year, it should be do-able.

I have to be careful about what I wish for...I think I’ve accumulated some super powers. Recently I was bemoaned that fact that I wanted a new blender for no other reason than I wanted to change colors. But I couldn’t justify a purchase for that reason, I’m too old school to start that mindset. Less than a month later my trusty white blender broke right in the middle of a making a shake. It wouldn’t crush ice anymore and it made sick noises on some of the other speeds and it was leaving what looked like black sand where the top and the bottom connected. To the trash it went and I now I have the stainless steel model I had lusted after. Hum-mm…what should I wish for next? I know! “I really do want world peace,” to quote Sandra Bullock in Miss. Congeniality. Not going to happen, though, I fear my super powers are confined to things like getting free cookies at the super market and breaking blenders. ©

The Mini Trip

Go to the bank. That was the first errand on my To-Do list to get ready for my mini trip to the shores of Lake Michigan with two bus loads of senior citizens. When I go to the bank, I usually pick a branch that doesn’t have a good escape route for would-be robbers---and with good reason. A few years ago a pair of bank robbers was hitting banks in the area and they were all located next to highway entrance ramps. After seven or eight successful banks jobs and a high speed chase involving state, county and local police, the robbers were both killed in a nasty shoot-out. But I still pick-and-choose my bank branches carefully. God forbid I should be inside one when a robbery is in progress because I’m too old and out of shape to get down on the floor and do a spread eagle in a timely manner. I’d be the first one to get shot for not cooperating. Seriously, do you think the elderly old lady card would work on guys hell-bent on stealing the rings off your fingers and the cash that’s neatly piled up inside a bank’s vault? I vote 'no.'

Second on my list was packing the dog’s stuff up for his adventure at the boarding kennel. I’ll bet the one I use requires more paper work than the average daycare does for kids---five pages worth of temperament and schedule questions along with contact information and copies of Levi’s medical and vaccination records, etc., etc. On the dog’s packing list: Don’t forget to take his security blanket, food, his bed, bedtime treats, the paper work and his favorite toy. Don’t forget to brush him before he goes and walk him before loading him in the car. Am I forgetting anything?

Third on my To-Do list: Decide what to take with me. What’s the weather going to be like? Do I really have to take an umbrella to a fish boil on the beach? Do I really need four layers of clothing for the sand dune ride? What am I, a dang boy scout? I don’t need to be prepared for chilling rain, a blazing hot sun, hurricane force winds, mosquitoes and building a campfire should I get lost along the way. Do I?  The wine tasting part of the trip is easy. Just show up thirsty and bring plenty of Wipes for all those cherry stains we’ll acquire after stopping at the cherry market next door to the winery. It’s all about cherries in that part of Michigan---cherry jam, tarts, wine, salsa, pies, dried, fresh and my personal favorite, chocolate covered cherries.

I liked traveling with my husband much better than with a bunch of women in my peer group but as a widow, I take what comes along. Don and I had a motor home and I could pack for any scenario without worrying about limited space. One thing I never left behind was my copy of Travels with Charley: in Search of America by John Steinbeck. It’s a travelogue of sorts that he wrote in 1960 and Charley was his French poodle. Re-reading the book was always a vacation ritual. For years I wanted to be John Steinbeck but the closest I ever came was John and I both loved to travel the back roads with our poodles along for the ride. On the senior citizen bus trips, now, its rest stop and coffee break at 10:00 and be back to the bus by 10:30 or it leaves without you. No time to find colorful characters and places off the beaten tourist track. Don and I once took six days to travel to the same place as our friends did in 13 hours of straight-through driving. "What the heck took you guys so long?” they wanted to know.

I could have told them that exit and entrance ramps on expressways might be good for bank robbers but if you’re trying to be John Steinbeck, then you have to boycott them in your travels. Instead I smiled and told him about the mama poppa restaurant we found that served cinnamon buns the size of Texas and Don told them about a lady we met who took a shine to us and shared her secret for living on the streets. “Never, buy food,” she told us. “Once you start you can’t stop!” Now you’ve got to admit, you can’t learn things like that walking your dog at an expressway rest stop.  ©