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".

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....

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....

 

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.

Clearwater Beach with the Boys at Christmas

Leftover Cuban Sandwiches for lunch!

 

Finding the local Patriot's bar ("Boston's") to watch the Pat's games
 with fellow SUPERBOWL CHAMPION New England fans.

Saturday Afternoons at the local Record Store

 

Beautiful Parks like Honeymoon Island State Park

Enjoying the Selection at RAPP Brewing Company

A perfect Flight

And the Barrel Aging in process at Three Daughters Brewing....
 

A great time at the Florida Symphony in St. Petersburg
with the free tickets we won at a beer festival
 

Shot and a Beer at Gaspar's Grotto in Ybor City
during the boy's holiday visit
 

Enjoying the Tampa Pride Parade (Also in Ybor)
 

Sunset Cruise in Key West over New Years

Darts and Happy Hour Beer at Florida Ave Brewing

 

Okay, time to sum it all up, so here goes....
My quick recap of the good and bad of our 2015 "Tampa Experience"

Stuff I won't miss....

• Guns and Ammo
• Bicycle Fatalities
• Incessant yacking about Jameis Winston
• Hostile Drivers
• Crappy Politics
• Payday Loan Stores
• Confederate Flags
• Climate Change Deniers
• Republican Bumper Stickers on BMW's
• Dale Mabry Highway

Happy Memories I'll take with me...

• Cuban Coffee on Saturday Morning
• Condo with a pool
• Beautiful Beaches
• Lively Craft Beer Scene
• Great friends from PwC
• Sunny Days
• Close Proximity to Mom (and the countless Scrabble games...)
• Creative Loafing Magazine's 2-4-one deals
• Ybor City at night
• Cuban Sandwiches
• Cigar City Brews
• Dale Mabry Highway!!

CHEERS AND ON TO YELLOWSTONE...

Update from Tampa

HELLO FRIENDS!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. Andre & I have had our nose to the grindstone getting through the last two months of "Working Winter" here in Tampa, Florida, while trying to have a bit of fun on the side.

While we weren't looking, we passed the 2 year anniversary of our life on the road (February 23rd), which went without a post, but not without some thought and joyful reminiscence! I am in the process of gathering some fun "Stats" from our first two years on the road - a project that started out modest, but has taken on a life of it's own so it might be another few weeks before it turns into a comprehensive post.

I started out just trying to gather some fun facts about how many states we've visited, how many National Parks, how many breweries (eagerly awaiting that fun number), and a few other interesting stats, but eventually decided to widen the scope and capture a great deal more data to be potentially used down the road in a book, and in the near future, in an article or two I plan to submit for publication in a few RV-related magazines.

So I'm slugging through the data-gathering piece of it now, utilizing a spreadsheet, old blog entries, maps, financial records, the stamped pages of our National Parks passbook, and of course, good old memory (surprisingly unreliable on my part, but highly reliable on Andre's part!) It should make for interesting analysis once it's fully compiled and I look forward to sharing our perspectives on our first couple of years of "Van Life" once it's complete.

The weather has just turned the corner here in Tampa (from 60's to low 80's) and it's beginning to feel like full-on Summer. Tomorrow we are heading to Orlando for a day at EPCOT that we had originally planned for our wedding anniversary back in late January but never quite got to. The forecast is for sunny and 85 degrees so I think the unintended wait might have been inadvertent "good planning".

As of today, I have about 7 weeks left to work here and the excitement is starting to build for packing up house (or van, in our case) and hitting the road for parts unknown!  We are looking forward to another round of catching up with family and friends via visits up and down the East coast, before heading out toward Yellowstone.

Look forward to sharing that adventure with you as well...  In the meantime, here are a few quick photos to share.

Enjoying the start of Tampa Beer Week last weekend

Amused by this Armadillo during a visit to Honeymoon Island State Park
 in Dunedin, FL a few weekends back.

Andre enjoying one of his favorite weekend activities -
Checking out the used CD selection at "Old School" local record shops

Have enjoyed the Florida Orchestra in St. Petersburg twice in the last few months
 with the free tickets we won at a beer festival

Yellowstone here we come...

Well, it seems to happen the same way every year. We get past the holidays and into January and suddenly our winter work stint is halfway over and thoughts about our summer plans start to churn. When we ended our incredible summer travels late last fall and headed to Florida for a bit of "back to real life on the grid" we were of a mind to not travel extensively during the summer of 2015. We'd talked about staying on the east coast, tooling around our old haunts in New England and then perhaps a jaunt up to Maine and coastal Canada or to head toward the Great Lakes.  But as the need to solidify summer plans started to burn and we started to poke around at some options, a summer in Yellowstone, the first park in the National Park system, seemed to jump off the page at us.

It came together very quickly - shockingly so.  Last weekend we had barely begun to think about our summer travels.  Today we have a contract with a park concessionaire to live and work at Lake Yellowstone, working for Yellowstone General Stores in the Southern section of the park! We will be living and working in Grant Village, on the shores of Lake Yellowstone in the southern half of the park (see below) from early June to early September.

Many retired full time RVers work for park concessionaires, taking gigs in one park after another as a way to experience the beauty and awe of these natural wonders, while becoming part of a park community and making enough money to fund their travels for another few months.  The pay is minimal - but it usually includes some kind of housing (paid RV site, dorm housing or other type of subsidized accommodations), store discounts, sometimes a food plan and often special deals with park outfitters, etc. It will be the first time we work in a National Park, rather than volunteer, and it's something we've wanted to try for a while.

Now it seems we are about to do it!  We'll share more details as we have them. For now, we just wanted to share the excitement....