2 Backpacks, 2 Bikes, a Van and a plan..: May 2015

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Retracing Old Steps in MA, VT, ME & NH

Hello Friends! As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel room in Warwick, Rhode Island. It is our last night here in New England. We we will head out early tomorrow for the Mid-Atlantic for our last (and most notable) stop before heading out to Yellowstone. This Friday, our oldest son Dylan will receive his PhD in Biology from the University of Delaware. This will be our third Fighting Blue Hen commencement ceremony in 10 years, as both of our boys graduated with undergraduate degrees from U.D. and Dylan stayed on for graduate studies as well.

Although each graduation is special, and a time for parents to be proud, this one is especially poignant for us. Ten years ago, we moved Dylan into a dorm at the University of Delaware as an 18 year old boy, This week he will graduate for the second time, as an accomplished 28 year old man. We are very proud of his perseverance and dedication in reaching this challenging milestone and are very much look forward to his "hooding" ceremony on Friday morning, followed by his departmental graduation in the afternoon.

This past week has been filled with retracing old steps in New England. The weather here has been beautiful Spring weather. Cool at night and warm during the day with plenty of sunshine. As the miles passed, driving many of our old familiar rural routes through the northern New England states, there were still plenty of signs of the harsh winter just passed here.

Rough, ripped up roads made it a bumpy rides at times, with potholes galore. On some of the less traveled rural routes, particularly in NH and Vermont, you could still see the beating trees had taken from snow and ice. Branches hung where they'd snapped months ago. Stones, brush and other debris pushed aside by snowplows for months on end, still littered the roadsides in areas not yet cleaned up by Spring road crews. But amongst the debris were wildflowers and new green grass. The hope and promise that soft warms days are to come.

Over the course of this past week, we visited some of our old favorite breweries, including McNeill's in Brattleboro, Vermont, Smuttynose in Hampton, NH, Portsmouth Brewing in Portsmouth, NH, as well as 7 Barrels in West Lebanon, NH, Moat Mountain Smokehouse in North Conway, NH and Zero Gravity in Burlington, VT to name a few.

We had a lovely lunch in Williamstown, Massachusetts with our Niece Lillian to celebrate her upcoming graduation from Williams College and spent time visiting with my brother Scott and family in Grafton, NH as well.

But most of our time was spent just driving, enjoying the mountains, rivers and trees, reminiscing about the many wonderful family hiking trips and long weekends spent in the area. Here are some photos from the week.

Back on the Appalachian Trail for a hike in Western Massachusetts

An impromptu stop for a tiny Memorial Day Parade on a rural VT road

View from our motel room window in West Lebanon, NH

Behind your average NH pick-up truck, still covered in road salt and mud...

Stopped at this roadside spot and discovered some magic
hidden amongst the trees...

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

A few Photos from Newport Cliff Walk

Over this past week, Andre & I have been enjoying hitting some of our old favorite New England spots and appreciating not only the beauty of the area but the great people as well. As much as we love to travel, we also feel most at "home" with the folks from Rhode Island and Massachusetts in ways that are not always easy to define.

Clearly people here "get" our accent. They all firmly believe that the New England Patriots rule the universe and that nothing can "deflate" their support for Tom Brady. They are generally fans of logic, knowledge, reason and progressive ideas (accept the radical idea of leaving Rhode Island, of course).

They are hearty people, in the way that cold climate folks are. People who stick together in rough times and who commiserate in common through long, difficult winters like the one that just passed. As a rule, they have a strong sense of justice, a solid core of decency, and, like people everywhere, occasionally can't see the forest for the trees and act like a bunch of knuckleheads.

New England (and New Englander's) aren't perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. But their imperfections are our imperfections. And we appreciate that when we are home.

That said, we are already getting a bit antsy to start traveling again! We are excited about hitting the road again, traveling through the new-to-us states of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana and Idaho. We are really looking forward to the adventure of working in Yellowstone for the summer and once more immersing ourselves in a National Park environment. Once we get to these new and exciting places, you'll be getting lots more photos and daily posts.

For now, here are a few photos from our visit to Newport, Rhode Island last weekend. The clouds and light rain did not prevent us from enjoying a long hike on Newport's famous "Cliff Walk".

Friday, May 15, 2015

7 More Days, 10 More States

OH, WV, PA, MD, DC, DE, NJ, NY, CT, Rhode Island!

Arrived in Rhode Island this morning after 7 more days of travel and 10 more states! Don't have many photos to share this time; we have been moving rapidly through familiar states and a good part of our days have been just driving. We did, however, have a couple of great stops along the way. We spent two great days visiting with our son Nick in Pittsburgh over mother's day weekend. Our visit included some Pittsburgh touring, some car repair, drinks at a few beer hot spots and some late afternoon biking on a portion of the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail. The weekend culminated with a great Mother's Day breakfast that Nick cooked for us before we took off on Sunday.

Andre & Nick replacing the battery on Nick's 2009 Prius
200,000 miles+ and still going strong!

Next, it was on to a couple of great days visiting Andre's sister Rose and her husband Terry in Washington, DC. While there, we watched some exciting DC sports (Sorry about the Capitals guys!), took some long walks around their Mt. Pleasant neighborhood and visited some of our regular DC haunts, including the National Zoo, which is within walking distance. As always, we enjoyed great accommodations at "Chez Audette/Lynch", especially sitting out, enjoying the early mornings in their lovely patio garden haven. This would be a great place to insert a photo wouldn't it? So sorry I neglected to take one!

I do have this cute photo of their dog "Zorro", though
who accompanied us on many walks!

Our final stop before heading north toward Rhode Island was Wilmington Delaware to visit our son Dylan and his girlfriend Vicki. We enjoyed visiting with them in the evenings and kept ourselves occupied and out of their hair during the day so as not to interrupt their very busy professional lives. Dylan is finishing up writing his doctoral dissertation, and Vicki (an MD) is working long hours at a nearby hospital where she is finishing her first year of medical residency.

We spent one of the mornings going to a nearby lab to complete our mandatory pre-employment drug screening for the Yellowstone job that starts on June 8th. On the second day, we managed to sneak in a drive to the Dogfish Head brewery in Milton, DE and of course, just happened upon a special (Free) beer tasting event that was part of American Craft Beer Week. Honest, we don't plan these things - they just happen to us!

The tasting room at Dogfish Head Brewery

We said goodbye to Dylan and Vicki after dinner last night and headed north. Driving a few hours then stopping to sleep in a rest area for a few hours before getting up again to cross through New York while traffic was relatively quiet. We caught a few more hours of sleep in Connecticut and then finished the drive to Rhode Island - crossing the state line around 9 Am. We will do some much anticipated visiting with friends and family in New England for the next 10 days or so, then head back to Delaware to celebrate Dylan's graduation before finally heading to our summer jobs at Yellowstone National Park.

One funny surprise - Andre got a call asking if he would be available to go back to Florida to complete one more assignment, so his job that we thought was finished was not quite finished yet. He will fly to Miami on Monday, do a school visit on Tuesday and fly back to Rhode Island late Wednesday morning. I guess it really isn't over until the fat lady sings....

Thursday, May 7, 2015

On the Road Again - 6 States, 7 Days

FLORIDA - ALABAMA - MISSISSIPPI - ARKANSAS - TENNESSEE - KENTUCKY - Oh My!!

Well, we've been gone for exactly seven days and I already feel like Tampa is a million miles back and a lifetime ago. Six states in seven days will do that to a person. It feels great to be on the road again - like an old friend - and as interesting, eye-opening, and endlessly amusing as it has ever been. After leaving Tampa as planned on Thursday night after my last day of work, we headed to New Port Richey for the night to get in one last visit with my Mom before we took off into the wild blue yonder (well, the deep south anyway...).

We took Mom out to a fancy dinner at Five Guys Burgers (that's sarcasm, for any of you who don't know me well), then headed to the nearby Big Storm Brewery for a few beers before heading back to her Mom's for the night. Mom & I settled in for one last evening of tea and Scrabble (y
es, we're a couple of Wild and Crazy girls). In the morning we headed out early and arrived around dinner time in Pensacola, Florida for a great couple of days visiting with Andre's sister Joanne and her husband Jim.

Andre and Joanne enjoying a beer at Hopjacks in Pensacola

By 7am on Sunday we were packed up and saying goodbye to Pensacola, heading out on the long drive to Jonesboro, Arkansas that would take us all of the day. Andre was scheduled for three days of work in the Jonesboro schools - his last assignment for the seasonal survey job he's done for the past two winter/spring seasons. It wasn't long before we'd left Florida behind us, for the quiet two lane roads of rural Alabama and Mississippi.

Mike Cooley of the Drive-by-Truckers refers to them as "mean 'ole highways" - and anyone whose been on them knows just what he means. Desolate stretches of nothing, interspersed with the occasional boarded up-town or rusting service station; the kind of small highways that take you from where you don't want to be to where you don't want to go.

At least it felt that way until we hit the flowers. Long lines of yellow, pink and purple wildflowers lining the sides of the road and along the middle divide. They went on for miles in Alabama and continued crossing into southern Mississippi - Spring in full bloom. And an instant reminder of one of the funny aspects of wintering in Florida and heading north in April. It's like traveling backwards through the seasons.

We stopped for lunch in Meridian, Mississippi, the 6th largest city in MS and the birthplace of Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music, as well as Dennis "Oil-Can" Boyd, the baseball player who many of our Red Sox fan friends will remember fondly. We spend a half hour or so walking around the small town - which also boasts Weidmann's Restaurant, the oldest restaurant in the state - then headed back out of town. It turns out we were one day late for the annual Jimmie Rodgers Music Festival, and the town didn't have much else to offer on a quiet Sunday.

We found this sign in a rural store window rather disheartening.
Clearly, some parts of the south still cling to their racist roots.

We arrived in Jonesboro and spent three nights at a very nice Holiday Inn Express. Andre worked for just few hours each day with one longer day and I enjoyed some quiet time alone, catching up on some writing projects, some paperwork, using the nice gym facilities and basically de-compressing from 6 months of working (I know, boo hoo me...).

Jonesboro was a large, fairly sedate, bible-belt town of about 65,000 people and the home of Arkansas State University. We spent the first afternoon driving around looking for the "hot spots", hoping for perhaps a brew pub or even a good beer bar. Two hours in we figured out that Jonesboro was a "dry" town! Needless to say, it was not a very exciting Cinco De Mayo. We did, however, discover a great local park and enjoyed a long hike around a lake that was full of turtles.

A few of Craighead Forest Park's Turtles

A real "family" park...

They had some great "old school" playground equipment.
We hadn't seen one of these in years!

After Jonesboro, we loaded up the van once more and started heading generally North and East, spending one night in Memphis, Tennesee and one night (tonight) in Louisville, Kentucky, after a great visit and tour of the Maker's Mark distillery in Loretto, KY. Tomorrow we will head to Pittsburgh to visit with Nick for the weekend. Here are some photos from the last two days in Memphis and Kentucky. Enjoy!

Memphis's newest attraction - the Pyramid Bass Pro Shop

Beale Street in Memphis - We enjoyed drinks and a great
traditional blues band "The Professor and the Eclectic"

At the Maker's Mark Distillery, all the shutters have a
bottle-shaped cut-out to match their bourbon bottles

Beginning the Maker's Mark Tour

Hand-dipping the bottle tops in their trademark red wax

The bottle line

Finally, on to the tasting room

Andre's favorite kind of school....

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Florida Retrospective - Year Two

Goodbye Tampa...

As we drive away from our second winter working in Tampa and ponder our varied experiences over the last two seasons, I realize that we come away this year with many more positive memories than the previous stint here in the Sunshine State, and even a handful of things that we will look forward to coming back and experiencing again.

I could attribute the change to many factors;

- We knew what to expect this time, so it wasn't such a Southern culture shock.
- I was returning to a job I really liked, with people I'd come to enjoy and respect.
- With two "road" years behind us, we'd gotten better at adapting and accepting each new place, despite the aspects of it that didn't fit us.
- Unlike last year, we had the time (and the funds) to get to know and enjoy some of the nicer aspects of Florida life.
- We worked less, and we went out and explored more.

Sure, we still hated the politics (Sorry Governor Scott, we do actually believe in Global Warming), and the generally nasty drivers, among other things, but overall, we found ways to enjoy our surroundings and some of the good things Tampa had to offer. Here are just a few.