Travels WithJohn and Janice

Travel blog

Every trip we've shared since 2011—filter by where we went, when we traveled, or what we explored.

Showing 236 of 236 posts

Turquoise water and a pink-sand cove on the Bermuda coast

March 22, 202614 min read2026

Dateline March 22-26, 2026, Bermuda

Twenty years after our first visit, we returned to the Pompano Beach Club for its couples' golf tournament, three courses, three formats, and a week of new friends from all over. The story of how a Massachusetts man fell for the island and built the resort, a travel day at the mercy of the weather, the famous par 3 hanging over the Atlantic at Port Royal, the history of the Royal Naval Dockyard, John's seventy-ninth birthday in the rain, and golf so bad it could only be called fun.

#Bermuda #Pompano Beach Club #Port Royal

Victory and promise, the National WWII Museum in New Orleans

May 27, 20259 min read2025

Dateline May 27, 2025, Visiting the National WWII Museum

On a Memorial Day trip to New Orleans, we brought John's father's wartime letters, photographs, and Silver Star to the National WWII Museum, the new home of Jack's Story. The curator Chase Tomlin walked us through the archives and a restored Sherman tank, the kind John's father commanded. We sat through the Tom Hanks film Beyond All Boundaries, and Derrick Strassburg took us behind the scenes to the research library, the restored PT-305, and Kilroy's Lounge. It was a day we will never forget.

#New Orleans #National WWII Museum #Jack's Story

Panorama over Lisbon's rooftops from the Senhora do Monte viewpoint

November 28, 20247 min read2024

Dateline November 28, 2024, Tour Lisbon By Tuk Tuk

Our last day in Lisbon, spent in a three-wheeled Tuk-Tuk with Salvador, a guide pulled straight from central casting. The Alfama's long history, the Cherry Liquor Queen and her homemade ginjinha, the old Jewish Quarter and its hard story, the highest viewpoint in the city with its love-locks, and a farewell at a tiny local restaurant before the ship home.

#Lisbon #Alfama #Tuk-Tuk

Pena Palace in Sintra, its colorful towers rising above the hills

November 27, 20247 min read2024

Dateline November 27, 2024, Sintra, Roca and Cascais Portugal

A day trip out of Lisbon with a tour guide and a vanful of strangers: the fairy-tale Pena Palace and the old Moorish Castle above Sintra, the guide's harrowing account of the 1755 earthquake, the windswept cliffs of Cabo da Roca at the western edge of Europe, the best fish dinner of our lives in Cascais, and the lights of Lisbon at Christmas.

#Sintra #Pena Palace #Cabo da Roca

Praça do Comércio in Lisbon, the grand riverside square

November 25, 20244 min read2024

Dateline November 25, 2024, Portugal and Transatlantic Cruising

Off on another adventure, this time with Kieran, John's daughter, who booked the whole thing on a week's notice. Three days in Lisbon before a sixteen-day crossing to Puerto Rico. The Alfama, the walk down to Praça do Comércio, the Time Out Market, and Pink Street.

#Lisbon #Alfama #Time Out Market

Bagpiper leading the opening ceremony of the Canadian Women's Senior

August 25, 20243 min read2024

Dateline August 25, 2024, Canadian Women's Senior Amateur Championship

Janice's reason for the whole trip, the Canadian Women's Senior Amateur at The Club at North Halton, just outside Toronto. A practice round with old friends, a bagpiper opening ceremony and 90-year-old Hall of Famer Marlene Streit, two hard rounds with a pair of tens, and the long drive home.

#Golf #Canadian Women's Senior #North Halton

The Adamo Estate Winery sign in Mono, Ontario

August 24, 20243 min read2024

Adamo Winery, Mono, Ontario

On Jag's recommendation we drove forty-five minutes north into the Hockley Valley to the winery that made the Sauvignon Blanc we'd enjoyed the night before. Mario Adamo's boutique Adamo Estate Winery, the trick of wintering the vines, and a tasting with Norma, whom we took to calling Norma Jean.

#Mono #Ontario #Wine

The exposed brick wall inside Uncorked on Main in Georgetown

August 23, 20243 min read2024

Uncorked on Main

The drive from Derry, New Hampshire to Georgetown, Ontario, the town just west of Toronto where Janice would play the Canadian Senior. A little of the town's history, and an evening at Uncorked on Main with its owners Jag and Sarina, a Canadian Sauvignon Blanc, and live jazz.

#Georgetown #Ontario #Wine

Bill Otis with Janice and John on Cape Cod

August 20, 20244 min read2024

Dateline August 20-24, 2024, New England

Back on the road for the first time since the Middle East, a trip to see family and play golf, with Janice bound for the Canadian Women's Senior just outside Toronto. The drive up from Pinehurst, Cape Cod and 96-year-old Uncle Bill, and a round with brother Brian at Atkinson before heading for the border.

#New England #Cape Cod #New Hampshire

The Hanging Church in Old Cairo

December 5, 20224 min read2022

John's Story

There is a part of our Middle East journey we never told at the time, the one moment of the whole trip we can explain only as the hand of God. It happened at the Hanging Church in Old Cairo, when John went suddenly faint and a priest named Father John appeared to pray over him, and it deepened into something we still cannot account for when we returned weeks later to give thanks.

#Hanging Church #Coptic Cairo #faith

John and Janice at a fresco in the courtyard of the Hanging Church

December 4, 20228 min read2022

Dateline December 4, 2022, Cairo, the Egyptian Museum and the Coptic Churches

Our last full day in Egypt, in Cairo with our guide and friend Sam. The Egyptian Museum, the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the hieroglyphs, the Narmer Palette, and the treasures of Tutankhamun. Then the old Christian quarter of Coptic Cairo: the founding of the Coptic Church by St. Mark, the cave where the Holy Family sheltered, and the Hanging Church. A blessing from Father Jacob, a goodbye to Sam, and a story we have saved for its own telling.

#Cairo #Egyptian Museum #Rosetta Stone

Carved panel over the main tomb in the catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa

December 3, 20226 min read2022

Dateline December 3, 2022, Alexandria

Back in Cairo after the cruise, we drove up to Alexandria, the Paris of antiquity, where Egyptian, Greek, and Roman worlds meet. Down in the catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, one of the Seven Wonders of the medieval world, the three cultures are carved into a single stone. Then Pompey's Pillar, and the old and new libraries of Alexandria.

#Alexandria #Kom el Shoqafa #Pompey's Pillar

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque at Muscat

November 27, 20225 min read2022

Dateline November 27, 2022, Oman, the Emirates, and Dubai

The last leg of the cruise, ashore on the Arabian coast. Muscat and the vast Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, the Sultan's Palace and the old Al Mirani Fort, and one of the largest private yachts in the world. Abu Dhabi from the top of a sightseeing bus, all gleaming and new. And Dubai, where we said our goodbyes, skipped the city over a vaccine rule, and flew back to Cairo.

#Muscat #Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque #Abu Dhabi

The six of us at the Martini Bar on the Norwegian Jade

November 22, 20223 min read2022

Dateline November 22, 2022, Aqaba and the Days at Sea

A short call at Aqaba, Jordan's one seaport, and a reminder of how glad we were to have given Petra a proper visit weeks before, while shipmates got only two rushed hours. Then four days at sea, down the Red Sea and out into the pirate waters of the Gulf of Aden: the Martini Bar that became 'our bar,' the crew's Covid stories, two fine couples, and a boat in the night that gave everyone a fright.

#Aqaba #Red Sea #Gulf of Aden

The columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak

November 20, 20226 min read2022

Dateline November 20, 2022, Luxor and the Valley of the Kings

A day off the ship at Safaga, driven inland to Luxor, the ancient Thebes. The vast temple of Karnak with its avenue of rams and its Great Hypostyle Hall, the remarkable story of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, a boat across the Nile, and the painted tombs of the Valley of the Kings, where Janice walked the ledge into the burial chamber of Merneptah.

#Luxor #Karnak #Valley of the Kings

The Suez Canal Bridge to the Sinai Peninsula

November 16, 20225 min read2022

Dateline November 16, 2022, Haifa and the Suez Canal

A new corner of Israel at Haifa: the closed Bahá'í gardens, the Byzantine mosaics at Shavei Tzion, and Rosh Hanikra, where the world's steepest cable car drops to the sea grottos on the Lebanese border. John's leg, skinned in Wadi Rum, kept us aboard rather than bound for Jerusalem. Then south to Egypt and a long day's sail through the Suez Canal, under the great bridge to the Sinai.

#Haifa #Rosh Hanikra #Shavei Tzion

John and Janice at the Library of Celsus in Ephesus

November 11, 20226 min read2022

Dateline November 11, 2022, Athens and Ephesus

The land half of the journey behind us, we flew from Cairo to Athens to begin the cruise we had planned for years, from Greece all the way to Dubai. Two days at Piraeus and its bitter orange trees, then aboard the Norwegian Jade to our first stop in Turkey: the House of the Virgin Mary, the vast Roman ruins of Ephesus with its Library of Celsus and great theater, and the lone surviving column of the Temple of Artemis.

#Athens #Piraeus #Ephesus

The Alabaster Sphinx at the open-air museum at Mit Rahina

November 10, 20225 min read2022

Dateline November 10, 2022, Saqqara, Memphis, and the Tomb of Teti

South of Giza to an older Egypt: Saqqara, with the oldest stone building complex on earth. The climb down into the tomb of Teti and its Pyramid Texts, Djoser's step pyramid and its great colonnade, then Memphis, first capital of a united Egypt, and the open-air museum at Mit Rahina with its Alabaster Sphinx and the fallen colossus of Ramses the Great.

#Saqqara #Memphis #Teti

John and Janice on camels in front of the Giza pyramids

November 9, 20227 min read2022

Dateline November 9, 2022, Cairo, the Pyramids of Giza

Into Cairo and across the Nile to Giza, in the shadow of the Great Pyramid, with a night at the historic Mena House. Our guide Sam at the Giza necropolis, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, a camel ride on the sand, the Great Sphinx, and Sam's own account, as a Coptic Christian, of the long story of the Christians of Egypt.

#Cairo #Giza #Great Pyramid

The sixth-century Madaba Map, the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land

November 6, 20227 min read2022

Dateline November 6, 2022, Mount Nebo and Madaba, Moses and the Mosaics

The last day in Jordan, and the one we'd had to wait for. Mount Nebo, where Moses looked out over the Promised Land he would never enter, with its ancient memorial church and Fantoni's serpent cross. Then Madaba, the city of mosaics, and its great treasure, the sixth-century Madaba Map, the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land. A mosaic table bound for home, and a warm goodbye to Hasan.

#Mount Nebo #Madaba #Madaba Map

Bedouin drivers gathered to watch the sunset in Wadi Rum

November 5, 20225 min read2022

Dateline November 5, 2022, Wadi Rum, a Night in the Valley of the Moon

South from Petra into the red desert of Wadi Rum, the Valley of the Moon, for a night in a Bedouin camp. A ride in the back of a 4x4, the ancient carvings of Khazali, a skinned leg and two good Samaritans, a fine desert sunset, and a very cold tent with no heat until next month.

#Wadi Rum #Valley of the Moon #Bedouin

One of the Royal Tombs at Petra

November 4, 20223 min read2022

Dateline November 3, 2022, Petra, the Lost City Beyond the Treasury

Past the Treasury, the canyon opens and the real scale of Petra appears: the Street of Facades, the great rock-cut theater, the Royal Tombs glowing on the eastern cliffs, and the temple of Qasr al-Bint at the far end. Most of the city is still buried, and getting back out meant a five-mile day, a long uphill climb, and a pair of donkeys.

#Petra #Nabateans #Royal Tombs

John and Janice at the Treasury in Petra

November 3, 20225 min read2022

Dateline November 3, 2022, Petra, the Siq and the Treasury

The morning we had been waiting for. Petra, the lost city of the Nabateans, rediscovered for the West in 1812, with our guide Mariam, the first Bedouin woman to guide there. We walked down the long canyon of the Siq, past the dams and carvings, to the moment everyone comes for: the Treasury revealed at the end of the slot, the rose-red facade that Indiana Jones made famous.

#Petra #Nabateans #the Siq

The Temple of Hercules at the Amman Citadel

November 2, 20225 min read2022

Dateline November 2, 2022, Amman, the Citadel and Shobak Castle

A tribal feud closed the road to Mount Nebo, so Hasan turned us toward Amman and the south. We climbed the Citadel for the Temple of Hercules and the Roman theater below it, heard a Muslim Brotherhood protest rise up the hill, then drove down to the Crusader fortress of Shobak, hidden in the rock, before a Palestinian feast on the way to Petra.

#Amman #Amman Citadel #Temple of Hercules

John and Janice in front of a temple at Jerash

November 1, 20226 min read2022

Dateline November 1, 2022, Jordan and the Roman Ruins of Jerash

The Middle East had been on our list for years, and Janice finally built the trip. Flying first and business class out of Los Angeles by way of London and Cairo into Amman, we met our guide Hasan and spent our first day at Jerash, one of the best-preserved Roman cities anywhere, often called the Pompeii of the East. Then a Jordanian feast in Amman and a night on the shore of the Dead Sea, with the lights of Israel across the water.

#Jordan #Jerash #Gerasa

Dateline: February 28, 2022—Cruising The Caribbean from Puerto Rico

February 28, 202216 min read2022

Dateline: February 28, 2022—Cruising The Caribbean from Puerto Rico

(/images/2022/ship.jpeg)The picture was taken from a Hill in St. Lucia. We left home and headed to Orlando airport to board a plane for Puerto Rico for a day of sightseeing and where we would board the Norwegian Epic ...

#12 Metre Regatta #Crusing #Norwegian Cruise Line

The Norwegian Epic seen from a hill in St. Lucia

January 30, 20229 min read2022

Dateline January 30, 2022, Cruising the Caribbean from Puerto Rico

One of the first cruises after COVID nearly sank the whole industry, which made for a comedy of dos and don'ts: three negative tests just to board, a ship built for forty-two hundred carrying a thousand, and islands where you couldn't step off the boat without a chaperone. From Old San Juan and its great Spanish fort out to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua, Barbados, St. Lucia, and St. Kitts, with monkeys, a water slide, an America's Cup memory, and a lot of shuttered shops we hope reopen soon.

#Puerto Rico #Norwegian Epic #St. Thomas

Connie and Lee

August 27, 20214 min read2021

Dateline August 27, 2021, New Hampshire

The last leg, with Janice's sister Connie and her husband Lee in Derry, New Hampshire. We outran Hurricane Henri up from the Cape, ate our way through a New England boiled dinner and the famous 'Stan potatoes,' visited Janice's parents' graves at Lake Sunapee, and played a friendly nine with Lee's buddies before the long drive home.

#New Hampshire #family #Connie and Lee

The Plymouth Rock pavilion

August 25, 20217 min read2021

Dateline August 25, 2021, Cape Cod

North from Pinehurst to Cape Cod, to see Janice's Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret in Harwich. Along the way, Plymouth Rock and, at the Barnstable courthouse, the statues of James Otis and Mercy Otis Warren, two Founding-era figures who happen to be Janice's own ancestors. Then eye-watering lobster rolls, the Mooncussers Tavern, and a round of golf with ninety-three-year-old Uncle Bill.

#Cape Cod #Plymouth Rock #James Otis

The Holly Inn

August 19, 20216 min read2021

Dateline August 19, 2021, Pinehurst

A return to the North-South Senior at Pinehurst, a redo of last year, so this time we lingered on the history: a stay at the Holly Inn, the first hotel James Walker Tufts built when he founded Pinehurst in 1895, a wander through the village, and the bronze statues by the clubhouse, the Putter Boy, Donald Ross, and Payne Stewart.

#Pinehurst #Holly Inn #Donald Ross

Will's celebration of life

August 13, 20215 min read2021

Dateline August 13, 2021, Raleigh and Family

A week in Raleigh with the family, the opening leg of a longer trip north. At its heart was a celebration of the life of John's brother Will, who passed in July, a gathering full of love, sorrow, and the kind of laughter only Willie could inspire. There was time too for Falls Lake, a round at Wildwood Green, a USGA qualifier, and a Shabbat dinner to send us on our way.

#Raleigh #family #Will Wilson

John, Bunny, Pete, and Janice at the Old Waverly chair

July 23, 202110 min read2021

Dateline July 23, 2021, On the Road Again, Golf in Mississippi

Our first trip in about a year, a golf vacation through Mississippi with our friends Pete and Bunny Warenski. A stop in Troy, Alabama, then West Point for Old Waverly and Gil Hanse's remarkable Mossy Oak, then the Choctaw's Dancing Rabbit at Pearl River Resort, a place whose name carries a hard and important history. We turned for home a day early, ahead of a storm.

#Mississippi #golf #Old Waverly

Janice first off the tee at Pinehurst No. 8 in the morning fog

August 25, 20205 min read2020

Dateline August 25, 2020, Pinehurst and the North-South Senior

On to Pinehurst, by way of the Donald Ross courses at Mid Pines and Southern Pines, and a shared rental mansion called Symphony. Both of us had been accepted to play the 2020 North-South Senior Championship across Pinehurst's famous numbered courses, John on the legendary No. 2, Janice first off the tee at No. 8 in the morning fog. A thrill of a tournament, however the scorecards came out.

#Pinehurst #North-South Senior #Donald Ross

Izzy, Liza, Collin and Finley at Lake Rodgers

August 18, 20204 min read2020

Dateline August 18, 2020, Raleigh, the Grandchildren, and a Rock Company

Days in Raleigh with the family, a day on the water at Lake Rodgers, a rock-polishing company launched by two of the grandchildren (in which Grams and Gramps took a little stock), first golf lessons, a COVID-careful day at the Museum of Life and Science, and a round on UNC's Finley course in Chapel Hill.

#Raleigh #grandchildren #family

Janice feeding the giraffe, she masked and the giraffe not

August 14, 20203 min read2020

Dateline August 14, 2020, The Columbus Zoo

A morning at the Columbus Zoo, a stop Janice had wanted to make for years, with the polar bears, a giraffe to feed, and the thin, masked crowds of that strange summer. Then the long, hot drive to Raleigh, where our new Toyota picked up right where the Roadtrek left off and lost its air conditioning along the way.

#Columbus Zoo #Ohio #grandchildren

John and Janice in the masks Marilyn made for the trip

August 7, 20208 min read2020

Dateline August 7, 2020, Indiana Golf

The start of our masked travels, and our first trip by car after selling the Roadtrek. Four days in Indiana at a Golfweek rater retreat, playing the college campus courses, the brand-new Pfau Course at Indiana University, both of Pete Dye's layouts at Purdue, a look at Culver Academy, an afternoon at Swan Lake, and the Warren Course at Notre Dame. A small-world meeting with a fellow old-Spokane golfer along the way, and a toast to Janice's nephew at his alma mater.

#Indiana #college golf #Golfweek

Our gang in Raleigh, Liza, Collin, Finley and Izzy

September 8, 20193 min read2019

Dateline September 8, 2019, Raleigh, the Grandchildren, and Home

The last leg, and the best kind, a few days in Raleigh with our son James and his family, the grandchildren far more interested in the RV than in us, a day at the natural-science museum with experiments and a butterfly house, and then the early-morning drive south to home in Flagler Beach. The close of a long, full summer.

#Raleigh #North Carolina #grandchildren

John on the Mile High Swinging Bridge at Grandfather Mountain

September 6, 20196 min read2019

Dateline September 6, 2019, A Winery, the High Country, and Old Friends

Out of Williamsburg and down into North Carolina, where a Harvest Host stay at Grove Winery turned into a party, and a round at Linville Ridge, the highest golf course east of the Mississippi, gave us one of the most beautiful days of the whole trip. Then on to Cherokee to meet our friends Sandie and Skip for a steak dinner and a tubing run that did not go entirely to plan, and up to Grandfather Mountain and its Mile High Swinging Bridge, the first day all summer we needed a windbreaker.

#North Carolina #Grove Winery #Linville Ridge

The four of us together at Yorktown

September 3, 20195 min read2019

Dateline September 3, 2019, Williamsburg and Yorktown

A Labor Day weekend in Williamsburg with Janice's cousin Kathy and her husband Eddie, who had just lost Kathy's mother. We walked the Saturday Farmers Market, took in a Virginia Symphony concert of cartoon music on Yorktown Beach, worshiped at one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the country for the dedication of its new organ, landed in the Colonial Williamsburg stocks, and played Kathy's father's old course at Ford's Colony, where we picked up the funniest single in Virginia.

#Williamsburg #Yorktown #Colonial Williamsburg

Janice with Wilson Hix on the porch of the Clover Hill Tavern

September 2, 20195 min read2019

Dateline September 2, 2019, Appomattox

Following the by-ways toward Williamsburg, we came on the signs for Appomattox, where Lee surrendered to Grant and the Civil War effectively ended on April 9, 1865. We read the courthouse displays, learned the story of Ely Parker, the Seneca officer whose hand penned the surrender terms, and were taken in hand by costumed living-history players at the Clover Hill Tavern, where Emma Hix carried us back to the weeks just after the surrender. A terrific stop, and not one to be missed.

#Appomattox #Civil War #Ely Parker

The eighteenth hole at the Pete Dye River Course with the clubhouse behind

September 1, 20195 min read2019

Dateline September 1, 2019, The Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech

On the way east to Janice's cousin in Williamsburg, we stopped for a round at the Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech in Radford, one of the state's top courses, laid out along the New River. We met head pro John Norton, who told us how the place came to bear Pete Dye's name, and shared the story of Pete's Revenge, the howls the pros let out when Dye first unveiled his Stadium Course at Sawgrass. Small, unforgiving greens and tiny deep bunkers are the Dye signature, and the River has them in abundance.

#Pete Dye #Virginia Tech #River Course

Osoyoos, British Columbia, seen from the mountains

August 25, 201910 min read2019

Dateline August 25, 2019, Canadian and USGA Senior Women's Amateur Championships

Janice's late-summer run at two national championships, the Canadian Senior Women's Amateur at Osoyoos, British Columbia, and the USGA Senior Women's Amateur at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a twenty-seven-hour drive stitched in between. She made the Canadian cut, then gave up her spot to rest a swollen ankle for the bigger event. The road carried us over the Continental Divide, past Wall Drug, and through a good deal of Montana and South Dakota. At Cedar Rapids we watched a fifty-two-year-old newcomer play the round of the week, and two faraway companies went out of their way to keep our RV running.

#USGA Senior Women's Amateur #Canadian Senior Women's Amateur #Osoyoos

Sunset over Camp Wilson on Whidbey Island

August 18, 20193 min read2019

Dateline August 18, 2019, Camp Wilson and Old Friends

Our last days on Whidbey were all old friends: the Taylors at Diamond Knot, a friendship that goes back generations; Cathy's sister Beth and her new Langley home, near where John fished with his father as a boy; and a Friday barbecue at Camp Wilson with the Wanicks and the Hoversons. As the sun set on what Will calls one of the best views in the country, it was time to say goodbye.

#Washington #Whidbey Island #Family

The two brothers, Will and John, on Whidbey Island

August 16, 20193 min read2019

Dateline August 16, 2019, Across to Whidbey Island

We crossed Washington by way of Wenatchee, the Apple Capital of the World, and the state's astonishing farm country, then drove over the Cascades and rode the ferry to Whidbey Island and John's brother Will's place, Camp Wilson. Will fed us like kings, and we took the ferry over to Port Townsend, where uptown sits on a cliff five hundred feet above downtown.

#Washington #Whidbey Island #Family

John's grandparents' home in the Rockwood neighborhood of Spokane

August 15, 20193 min read2019

Dateline August 15, 2019, John's Spokane Roots

We spent a Spokane morning tracking down John's family. We found his grandparents' old Rockwood house, were invited in, and heard about the basement safe no one had dared open; we visited St. John's Cathedral, where his parents married and his brother Peter was baptized; and we picked out the Desert family home and the old Desert Hotel downtown. At seventy-two, John's memory held.

#Washington #Spokane #Family

The first tee at the Kalispel club, the old Spokane Country Club

August 14, 20195 min read2019

Dateline August 14, 2019, Spokane and the Kalispel

Our first Washington stop was Spokane, John's family city, and we played the old Spokane Country Club where his grandparents belonged and he took his first lessons at eight. The club, now owned by the Kalispel tribe after a long road through the courts, gave us an immaculate test of golf, three moose on the fairways, and a grand resort for two nights' rest.

#Washington #Spokane #Golf

A buck standing along the roadside in Idaho

August 12, 20192 min read2019

Dateline August 12, 2019, Big Sky and the Idaho Club

From the caverns we made for Missoula and the Big Sky Brewery, home of Moose Drool, then took the back roads into Idaho, sharing them with a fine roadside buck, to play and write up the Idaho Club at Sandpoint, a tough, beautiful course on hard times with cliffside lots running into the millions. Then a brewery for the night and on toward Washington.

#Montana #Idaho #Golf

The original entrance to the Lewis and Clark Caverns

August 10, 20195 min read2019

Dateline August 10, 2019, The Lewis and Clark Caverns

Janice found us the Lewis and Clark Caverns near Whitehall, Montana, and what a history they hold: discovered by hunters in 1892, made a national monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, fought over for decades by a tour-running quarryman named Dan Morrison, and finally, after the CCC carved its way through, Montana's first state park. The tour itself, bats and broken columns and all, was not to be missed.

#Montana #History #Caves

John Bohlinger and his grandson in Billings, Montana

August 8, 20193 min read2019

Dateline August 8, 2019, Deadwood and the Bohlingers

On the road to the Bohlingers we swung through Deadwood, hoping to see the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, only to be turned back by a road that would not take the RV. Then on to Billings and dear friends John and Nancy, a grandson's birthday with three generations on hand, cheesy eggs in the morning, and a hearing-aid fix before we rolled toward the Lewis and Clark Caverns.

#South Dakota #Montana #Deadwood

The falls at Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

August 6, 20193 min read2019

Dateline August 6, 2019, Across South Dakota

Leaving Cedar Rapids, we pointed west toward Montana and the Bohlingers, by way of South Dakota: the falls in the heart of Sioux Falls, a Harvest Host night parked on such a slope we slept with our feet below our heads, a hilly round at Red Rock in Rapid City, and a stop at the cheekily named Naked Winery, where the wines turned out as good as their names are bold.

#South Dakota #Golf #Harvest Hosts

A Missouri Star Quilt Company storefront in Hamilton, Missouri

August 4, 20194 min read2019

Dateline August 4, 2019, The Disneyland of Quilting

We crossed into Missouri for one reason: Hamilton, and the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Janice came to quilting through a bag of squares her mother and grandmother sewed in 1930, and here was a one-stoplight town remade into the 'Disneyland of quilting' by Jenny Doan and her family, with J.C. Penney's first job and a lounge called Man's Land thrown in.

#Missouri #Quilting #Missouri Star Quilt Company

The Roseman covered bridge in Madison County, Iowa

August 3, 20194 min read2019

Dateline August 3, 2019, Iowa, Looking Back at 2018

Coming back into Iowa stirred up a year of memories, so we finally told the 2018 stops the RV troubles had kept off the blog: the American Pickers store at LeClaire, the Hoover Library, the covered Bridges of Madison County, John Wayne's birthplace at Winterset, and the Amana Colonies, seven old German villages with a communal past and a refrigerator company in their future.

#Iowa #History #Road Trip

Bridges, both plain and suspension, on the Cedar Rapids Country Club course

August 2, 20193 min read2019

Dateline August 2, 2019, Cedar Rapids and Donald Ross

With Janice qualified, we drove to Cedar Rapids to get a look at the course that will host the USGA Senior Women's Amateur, and what a course: a 1915 Donald Ross design, restored to his original plans, with raised greens that shrug a ball off into the rough, wooden rakes and flagsticks, and suspension bridges over the streams. We found a county park nearby and booked it for tournament week.

#Iowa #Golf #USGA

Janice with her USGA Senior Women's Amateur qualifying letter

July 31, 20194 min read2019

Dateline July 31, 2019, Janice Qualifies

We stopped in Libertyville with Pete and Bunny, friends from the Alaska trip, and Janice picked the Chicago qualifier so we could visit a while. At seventy she opened with a double bogey, laughed it off, then came home in 37 and sank a birdie putt on the sixteenth in a playoff to make it, the oldest qualifier in Chicago and bound for the USGA Senior Women's Amateur in Iowa.

#Illinois #Golf #USGA

The 2011 Alaska RV group at Mile Marker One in Dawson Creek

July 27, 20195 min read2019

Dateline July 27, 2019, The Road to Chicago

Leaving the family at Lake Sunapee, we drove west through Vermont and New York to a Harvest Host winery on Seneca Lake, then on to Cleveland for lunch with Janice's niece Kim and a fine evening in Fremont with Ari and Hedi, friends from our 2011 Alaska RV trip. A morning round at Swan Lake in Indiana, and we pointed the rig toward Chicago.

#New York #Ohio #Indiana

Sailboats racing against Sunapee Mountain

July 25, 20193 min read2019

Dateline July 25, 2019, Sunapee Golf and Goodbyes

With the generator finally reinstalled and a fine breakfast with our Flagler Beach neighbor Frank behind us, we played Lake Sunapee Country Club, a Donald Ross course and Gene Sarazen's old home club where Janice's family once held a membership. The last days on the lake brought sailing and sculling, Connie's chicken legs, a farewell dive, and John's ribs, before we packed up Friday for a winery in New York.

#New Hampshire #Lake Sunapee #Golf

The rented family house on Lake Sunapee

July 21, 20195 min read2019

Dateline July 21, 2019, Lake Sunapee with the Family

Brian rented a house right on Lake Sunapee for the whole family, and we raised the traditional martini toast at Janice's parents' grave. We won the Sunday match, then watched an oak come down across the rented pontoon boat with Steve and Marilyn aboard, mercifully unhurt. There was a wet boat ride to a closed restaurant, good food in spite of it all, and the loons calling morning and night.

#New Hampshire #Lake Sunapee #Family

The 17th hole at the Country Club of New Hampshire

July 18, 20196 min read2019

Dateline July 18, 2019, Into New Hampshire

Getting into New Hampshire meant first chasing down a generator that wouldn't start, then a fine stretch of family and country: Connie and Lee in Derry, where Janice retold her 1986 Corvette adventure; the Sunapee mill and Jeff Trow, keeper of the town's cemeteries; a stream-side site at Northstar; and a glorious morning at the Country Club of New Hampshire under Mount Kearsarge.

#New Hampshire #Golf #Family

Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret's back porch at sunset on Cape Cod

July 14, 20193 min read2019

Dateline July 14, 2019, Cape Cod

On the way to the Cape we played the Rees Jones layout at Pinehills and fell in with a friendly twosome, then settled in at Harwich for our yearly visit with Janice's Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret. Bill, ninety-one and still walking the hills, nearly shot his age at Cranberry Valley. We left not with goodbye but see you next summer, and pointed the rig toward New Hampshire.

#Massachusetts #Cape Cod #Golf

Blackwater Falls, a sixty-two-foot cascade in West Virginia

July 12, 20195 min read2019

Dateline July 12, 2019, Blackwater Falls and Hershey

From the West Virginia highlands we hiked to Blackwater Falls in its morning sun and out the muddy mile to Lindy Point, then took the back roads north to Hershey. We played the West Course in the shadow of the chocolate factory, where Byron Nelson won his first PGA Championship in 1940, and spent our first Harvest Host night at a farm winery and brewery, with a Friday band and the Gellatly family's story.

#West Virginia #Pennsylvania #Blackwater Falls

The Slab Fork headquarters building at the Exhibition Coal Mine

July 10, 20196 min read2019

Dateline July 10, 2019, Beckley and the Coal Mine

Having loved the Soudan mine last year, we went down into the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine in West Virginia, riding the mantrip five hundred feet in behind a guide who spent twenty years underground. He showed us the thirty-inch seams worked on hands and knees, the rats that meant the air was safe, and twenty cents a ton for a brutal day's labor. Above ground, a whole company town, homes, church, school, and the store that kept a man in debt, told the rest of the story.

#West Virginia #Beckley #Coal Mining

On the road again, heading north for the summer

July 8, 20193 min read2019

Dateline July 8, 2019, Tallulah Gorge, Georgia

We pointed the Roadtrek north on July 8, John's new VA hearing aids freshly installed, and put in eight hours to reach Tallulah Gorge in the Georgia mountains. We hiked to the 1913 dam and down to L'eau d'Or Falls, passed on the twelve hundred stairs to the bottom, and crossed into West Virginia, where getting an EZ-Pass proved anything but easy.

#Georgia #Tallulah Gorge #State Parks

John and Janice celebrating their 20th anniversary at The Cellar

July 7, 20195 min read2019

Dateline July 7, 2019, Innisbrook and the Summer Ahead

A June shakedown weekend of golf at Innisbrook turned up a flat that was really a second cracked Sprinter wheel, just like Billings last year, but five new wheels later the Roadtrek is finally sound. We met fun playing partners, launched a new chapter writing up courses around the country, and marked our twentieth anniversary at The Cellar in Warren Harding's old winter home. Monday morning we point north, bound for New England and then British Columbia.

#Florida #Innisbrook #Golf

The sign at Otsego Golf Club

July 24, 20183 min read2018

Dateline July 24, 2018, Saratoga and the Road Home

Our last day around Cooperstown brought Ellen's folks and their stray cat Hobo, a campsite beside firefighters traveling with their foster children, and a morning round on the little course where Janice once golfed with her father. Then it was over to Saratoga for a round ahead of the rain, a night at the firehouse, and the long, happy turn toward home, by way of family in New Hampshire and friends all the way down to Florida.

#New York #Saratoga #Cooperstown

Otsego Golf Club on the shore of Otsego Lake

July 23, 20187 min read2018

Dateline July 23, 2018, Janice's Cooperstown

Cooperstown holds a special place in Janice's heart; she summered here as a girl, water skiing and golfing on Otsego Lake with her father. We came back to play the old course and to look up John's boyhood friend Steve Mahlum, unseen in thirty years, who with his wife Ellen brought the town alive, the Clark fortune and the Singer sewing machine, the Dakota, and the tall tale that made Cooperstown the home of baseball though Doubleday never had a hand in the game.

#New York #Cooperstown #Baseball Hall of Fame

Dateline June 3, 2018: Utah - A Beautiful State

June 3, 201810 min read2018

Dateline June 3, 2018: Utah - A Beautiful State

Our attitude about RV problems, is "forget it!" Tomorrow, as they say, is another day! We left Sedona and headed n...

#glen canyon #hell's backbone road #hole in the rock

The view from Herbert Hoover's birthplace to his gravesite

July 12, 20189 min read2018

Dateline July 12, 2018, Herbert Hoover

We have always loved the presidential libraries, and Herbert Hoover's, at his birthplace in West Branch, Iowa, asks a fair question: how did a brilliant humanitarian who fed millions come to be remembered as a failure? We set out to tell his whole story, the Quaker orphan who made a mining fortune, organized the rescue of starving Belgium and Russia, and then had the Great Depression land on his desk within months of taking office. It is a fuller and more generous picture than the schoolbooks give.

#Herbert Hoover #West Branch #Iowa

John and Janice with their guide deep in the Soudan mine

July 8, 20186 min read2018

Dateline July 8, 2018, Soudan Underground Mine

We drove up into the north woods of Minnesota to tour the Soudan Underground Mine, the old iron mine on the Vermilion Range that helped build and arm America. Our guide James took us down a loud, dark cage to the twenty-seventh level, 2,341 feet under and nearly 700 below the sea, then by ore train into the workings. It is the story of the high-grade iron, and the hard-working people, that fed the nation's steel.

#Minnesota #Soudan #Iron Range

Joe Wiegand performing as Theodore Roosevelt

July 5, 20185 min read2018

Dateline July 5, 2018, A Roosevelt Salute and the Medora Musical

In a tiny old theater, an actor named Joe Wiegand stepped out as Theodore Roosevelt and held us spellbound, and afterward, since John's family had lived near Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill, we traded notes with him over a Maker's Mark at the Rough Rider. We learned the true story of the teddy bear, ate a pitchfork-fondue steak we would not order again, and took in the Medora Musical, which opened on the sad news that a thirty-year cast member had died the night before.

#North Dakota #Medora #Theodore Roosevelt

A lone bull buffalo in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

July 4, 20182 min read2018

Dateline July 4, 2018, Medora and the National Park

Medora was the brainchild of a French marquis who, in 1883, set out to ship refrigerated beef east by rail and built a whole town to do it, named for his wife; the scheme failed but the town endured as cattle country, and Roosevelt's 1903 visit left it a Rough Rider Hotel. The next day we drove the badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, green for once after the rains, past prairie dog towns and buffalo, and a lone bull who posed beside the road.

#North Dakota #Medora #Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Janice at the Bully Pulpit Golf Course

July 3, 20184 min read2018

Dateline July 3, 2018, The Bully Pulpit and Theodore Roosevelt

We came to Medora for a golf course, the Bully Pulpit, one of the country's top hundred public courses, set in the badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and green as Ireland after a rainy year. The name is Roosevelt's, and so is the place: it was here in the Dakota Territory that a grieving young man found himself and the love of wild country he carried into a conservation legacy still with us. Our RV neighbor, it turned out, parked his winter ice house right beside us.

#North Dakota #Medora #Theodore Roosevelt

John and Nancy Bohlinger in Billings

June 26, 20184 min read2018

Dateline June 26, 2018, Evel Knievel and Old Friends

A wrong turn into a Butte cemetery to wash the mud off the RV put us, of all places, at Evel Knievel's grave. We spent a thrifty night at the Bozeman Walmart, nursed a cracked wheel rim into Billings, and passed a wonderful evening with John Bohlinger, an old friend of John's family, and his new bride Nancy, of a Montana ranching clan a hundred years deep.

#Montana #Evel Knievel #Billings

The drive to Whitefish, Montana

June 24, 20184 min read2018

Dateline June 24, 2018, Whitefish and the Bison Range

Back in the States, we skirted Glacier on Highway 2, the Going-to-the-Sun Road still snowed shut up top, and made for Whitefish, where John's family had come by train from Seattle for a high-school ski trip in 1962. We played Whitefish Lake under the ski runs, then swung south to the National Bison Range, a 1908 sanctuary, to bump along nineteen thousand acres of muddy road among bison, mule deer, and a lone elk.

#Montana #Whitefish #Glacier

A brown bear and her cub on the golf course at Waterton

June 23, 20183 min read2018

Dateline June 23, 2018, Into Canada, Waterton Lakes

Crossing into Canada gave us our one sour note of the trip, a border agent who'd plainly gotten up on the wrong side, and a thirty-minute search of the RV down to the dirty laundry. Then British Columbia and Alberta opened up beautiful all the way to Waterton Lakes, the Canadian half of Glacier, where cottonwood snow drifted through town, ground squirrels chirped from every hole, and a round of golf was cut short by a brown bear and her cub on the 16th fairway.

#Waterton Lakes #Alberta #British Columbia

Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River

June 21, 20183 min read2018

Dateline June 21, 2018, The Great Dams of the Columbia

Eastern Washington is dam country, and we could not get over the scale of it. Chief Joseph alone powers metropolitan Seattle; Grand Coulee, a mile of concrete on the Columbia, is one of the largest things people have ever built, and the Columbia Basin Project it anchors waters a vast stretch of the West. We spent a night at Steamboat Rock, a state park the project left behind, and stopped at Box Canyon Dam on a rare north-flowing river before turning for Canada.

#Grand Coulee Dam #Chief Joseph Dam #Columbia River

Ross Lake in the North Cascades

June 17, 20184 min read2018

Dateline June 17, 2018, Family and the North Cascades

Washington was family before it was scenery. We stayed with old friends the Wanicks, Janice played a USGA senior qualifier at Renton, and we sat with John's brother Will, on the mend after surgery, while the family gathered on Whidbey Island; John's boyhood friend Lee Taylor came for a barbecue and twenty years fell away. Then we crossed Deception Pass and drove Highway 20 through the North Cascades, the American Alps, past Ross Lake and a roadside plaque to a 'Jack Wilson' who happened to share John's father's name.

#Washington #Whidbey Island #North Cascades

John and Janice in Oregon wine country

June 15, 20185 min read2018

Dateline June 15, 2018, Oregon and a Touch of Washington Wine

Across Oregon we stopped in Union for the Eastern Oregon Livestock Show, where four farm kids from Medford were showing their pigs, and played an empty morning course at Buffalo Creek. We browsed the wool at Pendleton, tasted our way through the Walla Walla valley with new friends Jim and Robin, and finished with a day in Hillsboro at the home of John and Sandy, the couple we'd met on the South America cruise, wine, dinner, and a shuffleboard rematch left unsettled.

#Oregon #Union #Walla Walla

A rainbow over Shoshone Falls

June 12, 20183 min read2018

Dateline June 12, 2018, Idaho, Twin Falls and Boise

Idaho meant potato country, and a couple of family memories: a Flagler neighbor who farmed red potatoes, and John's father trucking Idaho spuds to Seattle for fresh-cut fries before frozen took over. We golfed in the Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls under the BASE-jumping Perrine Bridge, caught the morning rainbow at Shoshone Falls, the Niagara of the West, and finally got the Roadtrek set right in Boise.

#Idaho #Twin Falls #Shoshone Falls

John and Janice setting off in the Roadtrek

May 21, 20185 min read2018

Dateline May 21, 2018, Off in Our 22 Foot Yacht on Wheels

After South America we were home barely long enough to repack before climbing back into the Roadtrek, our 'twenty-two foot yacht on wheels,' for a summer on the road. We ran west from Florida to Sedona to see Marty and Jeff, by way of a Gulf beach, the back roads of the Deep South, the Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, and a canyon night at Palo Duro, with the RV's batteries and refrigerator doing their best to keep things interesting.

#Roadtrek #Sedona #Palo Duro Canyon

On a boat beneath Iguazu Falls

March 14, 20183 min read2018

Dateline March 14, 2018, The Last Days and Iguazu Falls

The cruise wound down hard: a lovely afternoon in Montevideo, then the flu swept the ship, Janice was quarantined, and Buenos Aires slipped away unseen. Still we kept our plans and flew to Iguazu, one of the seven natural wonders, 245 waterfalls on the Argentine and Brazilian border. We walked the Brazilian overlooks, took a boat right under the cascades on the Argentine side, dodged the cheeky Coati, and, sick as could be, made it home. Back in the USA.

#Iguazu Falls #Montevideo #Buenos Aires

King penguins at Volunteer Point, Falkland Islands

Falkland Islands

March 10, 20183 min read2018

Dateline March 10, 2018, The Falkland Islands

A small set of islands with a big history. In the harbor, Chinese squid boats, the catch that earns the Falklands much of their living; on the land, the wreckage of 1982 kept as remembrance, and a people firmly British and glad to be. Janice took a rough two-hour drive across roadless country, past cowboys working the sheep, to Volunteer Point and a colony of King penguins balancing their eggs on their feet. John, under the weather, had to take this one on faith.

#Falkland Islands #King Penguins #Volunteer Point

Among the Magellanic penguins on Isla Magdalena

March 8, 20182 min read2018

Dateline March 8, 2018, Penguins and Cape Horn

Off Punta Arenas we went ashore on Isla Magdalena, where 120,000 Magellanic penguins nest in the heart of the Strait of Magellan, and walked among them past a lighthouse from 1902. Then the ship carried us around Cape Horn, calm and kind to us for once, though the old shipwreck stories were never far from mind. The Falklands were next.

#Magellanic Penguins #Isla Magdalena #Punta Arenas

The Amalia Glacier in Chilean Patagonia

March 5, 20182 min read2018

Dateline March 5, 2018, Chile and the Patagonian Fjords

From Peru we flew to Santiago and, with Steve and Marilyn, boarded a Princess ship at San Antonio for fourteen days around the bottom of the continent. Our balcony looked out on the Chilean coast as we sailed south: a day among the volcanoes and falls near Puerto Montt, and a slow, breathtaking pass by the Amalia Glacier off the Patagonian ice field. The Horn and the penguins lay ahead.

#Santiago #Patagonia #Amalia Glacier

The first view down at Machu Picchu

February 12, 20185 min read2018

Dateline February 12, 2018, Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu, top of so many bucket lists, was ours at last. We rode the glass-roofed Vistadome up the Urubamba, climbed the breathless steps at 8,000 feet, and got that first look down at the lost city that no photograph can match. With Edgar we walked it until evening, heard how Hiram Bingham was led to it in 1911, eyed the peaks we'd have climbed twenty years younger, and rode back to Cusco with costumed dancers working the train. One of the great days of our lives.

#Machu Picchu #Inca #Hiram Bingham

The circular terraces of Moray

February 10, 20184 min read2018

Dateline February 10, 2018, Into the Sacred Valley

The second day took us into the Sacred Valley itself, the green corridor the Urubamba River carves between the Andes, which the Inca saw mirrored in the Milky Way overhead. We climbed breathless to the temple above Ollantaytambo, marveled at Moray, the Inca crop laboratory of circular terraces, ate guinea pig cooked in the ground, and watched the weavers of Chinchero turn berries and leaves into color. Edgar saw us through it all, and Machu Picchu waited for morning.

#Sacred Valley #Ollantaytambo #Moray

John with a baby llama at Pisac

February 9, 20185 min read2018

Dateline February 9, 2018, Cusco and the Inca World

Our Peru tour was a group affair, four busloads sorted out in Cusco, and ours became a happy little 'Mob' for days. With our guide Edgar we took in the Inca world: stonework so fine it needs no mortar, the Sun temple the Spanish buried under a convent, the Cathedral's Last Supper set over a plate of guinea pig, the great fortress of Sacsayhuaman, and the children of Pisac Market with their baby llamas, one of which John nearly brought home for the grandchildren.

#Cusco #Inca #Koricancha

Steve, Marilyn, and John at the start of the trip

February 8, 20185 min read2018

Dateline February 8, 2018, Lima, Peru

A bucket-list trip to South America began in Lima, with Janice's brother Steve and his wife Marilyn along for the whole adventure: a land tour of Peru's Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, then a cruise around Cape Horn to the Falklands and Buenos Aires, and finally Iguazu Falls. Our first day downtown brought the changing of the guard, a wonderful free-tour guide named Alejandro, the square where Peru declared independence, a bar with a heart, the unloved Pizarro statue, and a Pisco Sour or two.

#Lima #Plaza Mayor #Pizarro

Dateline December 11-14, 2017 - Christmas in New York City

December 11, 201712 min read2017

Dateline December 11-14, 2017 - Christmas in New York City

Arriving in New York City With the Christmas season upon us we decided that a trip to New York City was in order. We he...

#9/11 memorial #federal hall #fraunces tavern

Looking out over the water from the Bell grounds at Baddeck

August 22, 20172 min read2017

Dateline August 22, 2017, Alexander Graham Bell

Our last stop in Nova Scotia was the Alexander Graham Bell site at Baddeck, where the great inventor summered. We knew him for the telephone; we did not know he was Scottish-born and a longtime Canadian, nor that he chased the Wright Brothers into the air with the Silver Dart, built a record-setting hydrofoil, and gave his deepest passion to teaching the deaf, work for which Helen Keller said he carried her from darkness to light. In the morning, the six-hour ferry to Newfoundland and the heart of our trip.

#Alexander Graham Bell #Baddeck #Cape Breton

Janice firing a musket at the Fortress of Louisbourg

August 21, 20176 min read2017

Dateline August 21, 2017, The Fortress of Louisbourg

Everyone said not to miss Louisbourg, and they were right. The great French fortress, once guarding the third-busiest port in the New World, has been brought back to life a quarter at a time, its streets full of costumed soldiers and storytellers. We pulled on wool uniforms, stood up as new recruits before a crowd, heard how a recruit chose each month between shoes and wine, and fired the muskets ourselves. Down the road stood the first lighthouse site in Canada. A day we won't forget.

#Louisbourg #Fortress of Louisbourg #Cape Breton

The Lakes Golf Club at Ben Eoin

August 20, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 20, 2017, Golf in Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia gave us three rounds and a new friendship. At Amherst we drew Spud and Patty from Truro, Spud raised on PEI potatoes, thirty-one years a sailor, and we liked them enough to follow Spud to his home club. A roadside repair set us back eighty-five dollars and not much time, a lakeside campground tried to park us beside two Porta Potties and lost our business, and The Lakes at Ben Eoin turned out one of the prettiest, toughest courses we've played. On to Louisbourg.

#Amherst #Truro #The Lakes at Ben Eoin

A waterfall and barn at St Martin, New Brunswick

August 19, 20172 min read2017

Dateline August 19, 2017, New Brunswick and the Bay of Fundy

We crossed into Canada and picked up the Fundy Coastal Drive, the road that hugs the Bay of Fundy and its tides, the highest on earth. We started at pretty Saint Andrews, bought sausage and sourdough at a Legion hall market in Saint George, and wound up the coast through Saint John and Fundy National Park to postcard-pretty Alma, with a waterfall and an old barn at St Martin along the way. Next, Nova Scotia and some golf.

#Bay of Fundy #Fundy Coastal Drive #Saint Andrews

The Mount Washington Hotel

August 12, 20176 min read2017

Dateline August 12, 2017, New Hampshire and Maine

From Connie and Lee's we wound through the White Mountains: golf with our friend Maurica, the Flume gorge at Franconia Notch, and the grand Mount Washington Hotel, where forty-four nations built the postwar financial order in 1944. We stayed with Janice's cousin Brian and his Donna in their light-filled forest home, then crossed into Maine for Castine, older than Plymouth, and a campsite supper of two-pound lobsters delivered for twenty-seven dollars. In the morning, the Canadian border.

#Franconia Notch #The Flume #Mount Washington Hotel

The four of us at Hidden Lake Golf Club

August 9, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 9, 2017, Connie and Lee and the Car Show

We pulled into Derry to stay with Janice's sister Connie and her husband Lee, where Happy Hour keeps its own clock and Connie served flank steak with Stan's potatoes, her late father's recipe. Janice came a stroke shy of qualifying for the USGA Senior, we played Hidden Lake, and Connie and Lee took us to Pipe Dream, a brewery two former Marines built. Then the big day: a Make-A-Wish car show at the Budweiser plant, Lee's '66 Biscayne, the Clydesdales up close, and a brewery tour. On toward Newfoundland, with a promise to see them again at Sunapee.

#Derry #Hidden Lake #Pipe Dream

The fourth hole at Cape Ann, looking toward Gloucester

August 8, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 8, 2017, A Little Golf

With the Cape behind us, we made an early Sunday run north of Boston for a few rounds of golf. Cape Ann in Essex gave us a Golf Digest hole looking out to Gloucester and two friendly local couples to play with. We camped on the ocean at Salisbury Beach and played the Sagamore-Hampton course in New Hampshire, good enough to come back for, and there met Dean and Melissa Rascoe, who bought us beers after Janice gave Melissa a tip or two. Then on toward Janice's sister's.

#Cape Ann #Gloucester #Sagamore-Hampton

Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret on Cape Cod

August 7, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 7, 2017, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill

Off the road north, we spent a couple of days on Cape Cod with Janice's Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill, who turns ninety in October and hasn't slowed a step. Janice's cousin's wife Karen Otis was there too, and we got to talking about the family's deep roots: the Otises of the Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren and her brother James, whose statues stand in Barnstable. There were wild turkeys to debate, three-mile walks in the rain, and dinners out. Visits like this are the heart of why we travel.

#Cape Cod #Aunt Margaret #Uncle Bill

Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island

July 28, 20175 min read2017

Dateline July 28, 2017, North Carolina and Rhode Island

North up the coast, we skipped the stops we'd shown you before and kept to the new ones and the good golf. We leveled the RV on a hillside near Asheville and played Black Mountain, sweated through a 99-degree round on Arnold Palmer's Lonnie Poole with our daughter Kieran in Raleigh, and got a four-year-old's dawn hug at our son James's in Wind Gap. Then Rhode Island: golf at Winnapaug, and Newport's Trinity Church, where Marty and Jeff were married, leaning six degrees until steel set it straight. A good day, and on to Janice's aunt and uncle.

#Black Mountain #Lonnie Poole #Winnapaug

The Welcome to Plains, Georgia sign

July 18, 20174 min read2017

Dateline July 18, 2017, Plains and the Jimmy Carter Library

From Georgia Veterans we made a day of Jimmy Carter's Plains, a whole town inside a single square mile: the depot that ran his campaign, a downtown mural of the landmarks, a memorabilia man with buttons dating back to Woodrow Wilson, and fried peanuts and peanut ice cream. Then on to his presidential library in Atlanta, the energy crisis and Janice's 21% mortgage, the Camp David Accords, and a humanitarian record after office that puts most presidencies to shame. We left, as we always do at these libraries, grateful to all who served.

#Jimmy Carter #Plains #Presidential Libraries

A hole lined with flowers at Georgia Veterans State Park

July 17, 20173 min read2017

Dateline July 17, 2017, Let the Summer Begin

Summer set us off again, north this time, aiming for Newfoundland and Janice's place in the Canadian Women's Golf Championship in August, with golf, family, and good country all the way up. First, the Saga of the Cabinet, the cherry cabinet we designed and built ourselves after our carpenter quit on us, with brother Brian's help to finish. Then our first stop, Georgia Veterans State Park on Blackshear Lake, a campsite on the water and a fine morning round. In the afternoon we waved at Plains, Jimmy Carter's hometown, with his library to come.

#Georgia Veterans State Park #Blackshear Lake #Cordele

The old train bridge lit at night in Little Rock

May 28, 20173 min read2017

Dateline May 28, 2017, The Clinton Presidential Library

The last stop of our Spring Fling was Little Rock and the Clinton Presidential Library. We found a city RV spot right on the Arkansas River for $12.56, with an old train bridge, lit up beautifully at night, that walked us straight across to the library in the morning. Reclaimed from an environmental ruin, it is one of the handsomest presidential libraries we have seen, and a fine experience whatever your politics. Then we said goodbye to Little Rock and turned for home, with a summer up north already on the horizon.

#Clinton Library #Little Rock #Presidential Libraries

A hoodoo in Palo Duro Canyon

May 24, 20173 min read2017

Dateline May 24, 2017, Santa Fe and Palo Duro Canyon

Heading east for home, we stopped in Santa Fe, the oldest state capital in the country, for a local lunch our friends Sandie and Skip had tipped us to, a walk by the old cathedral, and Native American singers in the square. Then it was on into the Texas panhandle and Palo Duro Canyon, the second-largest canyon in the United States, carved by a fork of the Red River. We gave it an afternoon and knew at once it deserved days. With the canyon behind us, we turned toward Little Rock.

#Santa Fe #Palo Duro Canyon #Cathedral Basilica

The Petrified Forest National Park sign

May 23, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 23, 2017, The Arizona Parks

Leaving Sedona, we were two Floridians astonished to meet May snow at Flagstaff. The day's drive home was a string of wonders: Meteor Crater, where NASA trained the astronauts who would walk on the moon, and the Petrified Forest, whose stone logs look sawn but split themselves clean. We stood among the 650 petroglyphs of Newspaper Rock and the impossible colors of the Painted Desert, and found an old Studebaker parked where Route 66 once ran through the park. A night in Holbrook, and Santa Fe ahead.

#Meteor Crater #Petrified Forest #Painted Desert

The four of us in Sedona

May 20, 20173 min read2017

Dateline May 20, 2017, Sedona with Marty and Jeff

The far end of our Spring Fling was three days in Sedona with Janice's lifelong friend Marty and her husband Jeff. Four years had passed, but Janice and Marty, friends since their freshman year of high school, picked up like it was yesterday, over Marty's wonderful cooking. Jeff, a pilot and an artist, took us into the desert to fly his drone and showed us his beautiful bronzes, one of which now lives in our house. Then, too soon, it was time to point the Roadtrek home.

#Sedona #Marty Skelley #Jeff Skelley

The Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas

May 17, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 17, 2017, West Texas and Hueco Tanks

The long road west across Texas took us past a Fredericksburg grown too touristy to keep us, through a windy night in Fort Stockton, and on to the Guadalupe Mountains, an ancient sea reef pushed up into the four highest peaks in the state. We watched the oil and gas country roll by, miles of new pipeline and drilling rigs, and reached Hueco Tanks near El Paso, a state park that is really a preserved historic site. There among its great granite hollows are pictographs left over ten thousand years, geometric designs and more than two hundred painted masks in the rock. We camped quietly at the foot of it and turned, at last, toward Sedona.

#West Texas #Hueco Tanks #Guadalupe Mountains

The Alamo in San Antonio

May 16, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 16, 2017, The Alamo and San Antonio

An afternoon in San Antonio took us first to the Alamo, smaller in person than a boyhood of Davy Crockett movies had led John to expect, and to the stirring story of fewer than two hundred men who held it to the last against Santa Anna. We read Colonel Travis's famous letter, ending Victory or Death, and we have kept it here in full. Then we crossed to the River Walk for lunch at the rowdy Dick's Last Resort, and the next morning played the Quarry, a beautiful course laid into an old rock quarry. Then we pointed the Roadtrek west.

#The Alamo #San Antonio #Travis Letter

John and Janice in Texas

May 15, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 15, 2017, The Presidential Libraries of Texas

The next leg of our Spring Fling was a two-day tour of the Texas presidential libraries. At the George W. Bush library in Dallas we walked through his Portraits of Courage paintings of wounded veterans and the sobering Nation Under Attack room, where Janice still keeps her old World Trade Center badge. We took in George H.W. Bush's library at Texas A&M, where John remembered meeting the man himself years before, and Lyndon Johnson's at the University of Texas, with his taped phone calls and a robot reciting his speeches. Whatever your politics, each one is a piece of history.

#Presidential Libraries #George W. Bush #George H.W. Bush

Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans

May 10, 20176 min read2017

Dateline May 10, 2017, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana

After a winter of golf at our home course we set off in the Roadtrek on a month-long Spring Fling, aimed west at golf, presidential libraries, and a visit with Janice's lifelong friend Marty in Sedona. The first leg took us across the Gulf South: a two-day tournament in Panama City, golf and a winning night at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, and John's first taste of New Orleans, the Carousel Bar and lovely Royal Street. We pressed on to a floating casino in Shreveport and the tales of a security guard who had seen it all. An honest tire shop in Bossier City sent us on toward Dallas.

#New Orleans #Royal Street #Carousel Bar

An osprey at its nest in the Everglades

December 10, 20167 min read2016

Dateline December 10, 2016, Everglades National Park

For a pre-Christmas adventure we took the Roadtrek down to Everglades National Park with our neighbors Frank and Linda Ruff. We braved a forty-mile drive and a world-class mosquito welcome to camp at Flamingo, watched ospreys building nests and coots flying in long lines across a lake, and walked trails through pinelands and grasslands. We posed with a panther, held our breath at the mighty Rock Reef Pass, and toured a Cold War Nike missile base hidden in the park, once aimed at Cuba a hundred and sixty miles away. Another wonderful trip.

#Everglades #National Parks #Flamingo

The washed-out A1A beach road in Flagler Beach

October 11, 20168 min read2016

Dateline October 11, 2016, Hurricane Matthew and Flagler Beach

Back home in Flagler Beach, we watched Hurricane Matthew strengthen into a category four and aim for the Florida coast. Having ridden out Wilma in 2005, we packed the new Roadtrek and ran west to a little RV park in Carrabelle, where we found a fishing dock, a rum and Diet Coke, and a porch full of fellow evacuees. We spent the long night fearing for our old beach house and woke to the relief that the storm would pass just offshore. We came home to find the house fine but the beach road, our A1A, half washed away by a ten-foot surge.

#Hurricane Matthew #Flagler Beach #Carrabelle

John and Janice at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul

June 25, 201610 min read2016

Dateline June 25, 2016, Istanbul and the End of Ten Weeks

The last leg of our ten weeks took us ashore in Taormina with Gordon and Karen, then off the ship at the port near Rome, where the four of us shared a car to the airport and said our goodbyes. From Rome we flew on to Istanbul, our final stop and the city that was once Constantinople, the Christian capital of the East. We raced the Grand Bazaar before it closed, were welcomed into the Blue Mosque, walked Topkapi and the spice market, and learned afterward that we had stood at the Ataturk Airport checkpoint barely a day before the bombing there. Ten weeks, seventeen countries, and home in time for our anniversary.

#Istanbul #Taormina #Sicily

Outside the Church of the Nativity

June 20, 20163 min read2016

Dateline June 20, 2016, Bethlehem

Our three days in Israel ended in Bethlehem, just across the line on the Palestinian side, where an Israeli guide handed us to a local Palestinian Muslim guide who walked us into the Church of the Nativity ahead of the lines. We knelt where Jesus is said to have been born, browsed the olive-wood carvings in his little shop, and then ran into trouble leaving: a fire on the road, a backed-up crossing, and a long walk on foot through tunnels and checkpoints to get back into Israel, with our guide telling us to keep it to ourselves. Standing where Christ was born, and the day before where he was crucified, left us with chills we still feel.

#Bethlehem #Church of the Nativity #West Bank

The Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock

June 19, 20166 min read2016

Dateline June 19, 2016, Jerusalem, the Old City

Our last full day in Israel was a long walk through the Old City of Jerusalem, the kind of day you do not forget. We started at the Zion Gate and the room of the Last Supper, passed the Roman Cardo and the golden menorah, and took in the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. Then we followed the Via Dolorosa, station by station, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and ended on the Mount of Olives looking across at the sealed Eastern Gate. Holy ground for three faiths, layered one century atop another.

#Jerusalem #Old City #Temple Mount

The fortress of Masada

June 18, 20164 min read2016

Dateline June 18, 2016, Masada and the Dead Sea

On our second day in Israel a new guide drove us two and a half hours south into the desert, to Herod's mountaintop fortress at Masada, where 960 Jewish zealots made their last stand against Rome. From there we floated in the Dead Sea, muddy and crowded and unforgettable, then drove up to Jerusalem to spend the night inside the Old City. That evening we stumbled into a Palestinian Christian restaurant for a wonderful lamb shank, and learned at the front desk that we had gone to the wrong place, our first lesson in how finely the divisions are drawn here.

#Masada #Dead Sea #Herod

The Wedding Church at Cana

June 17, 20164 min read2016

Dateline June 17, 2016, Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee

Our three days in Israel began on a free Friday we had not planned for. We talked Gordon and Karen into joining us, hired a driver named Haim, and set off for Nazareth, where it all began. We saw the two great Churches of the Annunciation, heard an Arab Christian family in Cana describe living as neighbors with their Jewish countrymen, and dipped our hands in the Jordan where Jesus was baptized. The day ended with the four of us over Lebanese food on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

#Nazareth #Cana #Sea of Galilee

A cliffside restaurant in Oia, Santorini

June 14, 20167 min read2016

Dateline June 14, 2016, Greek Isles on the Oceania Sirena

Chapter four began with a gut-punch: a memo at check-in telling us the Egypt stops were cancelled, the very reason we had booked the cruise. We swallowed our disappointment, met a couple named Gordon and Karen over lunch who would become lifelong friends, and set off to see the Greek isles. Over four days we rode the cable car above Santorini's caldera, hunted a wine pitcher in Crete, were thoroughly ruined out in Cyprus, and walked the medieval streets of Rhodes. Then came a day at sea we will never forget, with a galley fire and fighter jets buzzing the ship off the coast of Syria.

#Santorini #Oia #Heraklion

The Acropolis lit up at night

June 12, 20165 min read2016

Dateline June 12, 2016, Athens

Athens opened the last leg of our journey, the part we would spend at sea. We landed from Rome to a hotel right below the Acropolis, watched it glow at night with a glass of wine in hand, and spent a full day climbing through its ruins with a guide named Stavros. We wandered Plaka, made friends over Greek wine with a couple named Cathy and Dino, and then took a city bus to the port to board the Oceania Sirena for twelve days, unpacked at last.

#Athens #Acropolis #Temple of Olympian Zeus

The Colosseum in Rome

June 11, 20166 min read2016

Dateline June 11, 2016, Rome

Rome was the grand finish to our weeks of Italy by rail. We threw our coins in the freshly cleaned Trevi Fountain, stood before Michelangelo's Pieta and under the Sistine ceiling, walked the Forum and Palatine Hill, and looked down into the tunnels beneath the Colosseum floor. We caught a bishop's service by luck at the oldest church in Rome, paid our respects to Raphael in the Pantheon, and went back twice to a tiny family restaurant we loved. Then, in the morning, on to Athens.

#Rome #Trevi Fountain #Vatican

The boat houses at Herculaneum

June 8, 20164 min read2016

Dateline June 8, 2016, Pompeii and Herculaneum

We gave our one full day from Sorrento to Pompeii and Herculaneum, and a guide named Rosanna turned it into one of the best days of the whole trip. She made the dead cities live again: the shops and bakeries, the wagon ruts worn into the stone, the picture signs for people who could not read, and the plaster casts of those caught by the eruption. At Herculaneum we stood by the boat houses her own professor helped excavate.

#Pompeii #Herculaneum #Mount Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius at night from Sorrento

June 7, 20164 min read2016

Dateline June 7, 2016, Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast

Sorrento gave us a beach apartment with Mount Vesuvius framed in the window, reached only after our phone tried to march us off a cliff. From there we drove the hair-raising switchbacks of the Amalfi Coast with our guide Julia, through Positano, Ravello and Amalfi, and made a friend of a Polish cafe host named Gabriella we hated to leave. Pompeii fell in the middle of it all, but that day earned a page of its own.

#Sorrento #Amalfi Coast #Positano

The Leaning Tower of Pisa and the basilica

June 5, 20164 min read2016

Dateline June 5, 2016, Pisa, Siena and Cinque Terre

With Florence as our base, we took three days out into Tuscany and beyond. We went to Pisa to see the leaning tower everyone told us to skip, and were glad we didn't; to Siena and its astonishing shell-shaped square, just ahead of the afternoon rain; and to the cliffside fishing villages of Cinque Terre on a perfect blue day. Along the way a laid-off engineer turned taxi driver, and two young Chinese executives, taught us a thing or two about the world.

#Pisa #Leaning Tower #Siena

Michelangelo's David in the Accademia

June 3, 20165 min read2016

Dateline June 3, 2016, Florence

Florence was the heart of our Italy, with the local wine flowing at six dollars a half-liter. Our hosts met us with a map and a bottle of red, and from there we walked it all: the great Duomo and Brunelleschi's dome, the Piazza della Signoria with its turtle searching for Utopia, the Uffizi and its two da Vincis, and the Ponte Vecchio with its centuries of shops. But the moment we will never forget was standing in front of Michelangelo's David, far larger and finer than we had ever imagined.

#Florence #Duomo #Michelangelo

St. Mark's Square in Venice

June 1, 20164 min read2016

Dateline June 1, 2016, Venice

Venice was the start of our first trip to Italy, and the start of a happy lesson: order the house red, it is always excellent. We ducked our way through a rustic little flat with five-foot doorways, talked ourselves out of an eighty-euro gondola ride, got turned away from Hemingway's Harry's Bar for John's shorts, and were serenaded at five in the morning by an opera singer under our window. St. Mark's Square was every bit as magnificent as promised.

#Venice #Grand Canal #St. Mark's Square

Leonardo's Last Supper in Milan

May 30, 20166 min read2016

Dateline May 30, 2016, Vienna, Switzerland, Milan, Hello Italy

From Budapest the trains carried us west into a different world, where the prices doubled and the mountains began. Vienna gave us St. Stephen's and Schonbrunn, and a hundred-dollar dinner that reminded us we had left the cheap East behind. Then came the Bernina Express, the highest railway crossing in Europe, over the Alps and down into Italy, a calzone in Tirano, soccer mayhem in Milan, and fifteen unforgettable minutes in front of Leonardo's Last Supper.

#Vienna #St. Stephen's Cathedral #Schonbrunn

The three of us on Castle Hill, with Hal

May 26, 20165 min read2016

Dateline May 26, 2016, Budapest

Budapest gave us the warmest ending we could have asked for behind the Iron Curtain, because we had Hal. Our friend from an Alaska trip kept a flat in the city and arranged to be there for our visit, and he gave us two days of what he called his forced march: Heroes' Square, the Opera, St. Stephen's and its strange holy relic, a ruin pub, Langos at the great market, and Castle Hill by day and by lights. This post is for him.

#Budapest #Heroes' Square #St. Stephen's Basilica

The entrance to Auschwitz I

May 25, 20163 min read2016

Dateline May 25, 2016, Auschwitz

Of everything we saw in ten weeks across Europe, one morning stands apart. From Krakow we were driven out to Auschwitz, and what we found there was beyond anything a history book had prepared us for. This is a short, plain account of what we witnessed, and of the guide's parting words, that the world knew, and that we must stay watchful.

#Auschwitz #Birkenau #Holocaust

The great market hall in Krakow's Old Town

May 24, 20164 min read2016

Dateline May 24, 2016, Krakow

Krakow was the warm stop before the hard one. We talked Soviet times with a forthright Polish woman on the train, ate kielbasa for six dollars in the square, slipped into St. Mary's Church the moment a bomb scare cleared, and toasted the city with freezer vodka poured by a barkeep named Ania. The next day took us deep into the Wieliczka salt mine, hundreds of steps down to chapels, a chandelier and a Last Supper all carved from salt. That same day took us to Auschwitz, which we give a page of its own.

#Krakow #Old Town Krakow #St. Mary's Church

The rebuilt Old Town square in Warsaw

May 23, 20163 min read2016

Dateline May 23, 2016, Warsaw

We reached Warsaw on an overnight train that turned out to be a private room with bunk beds, rolling worse than any ship. Our Airbnb host Ada met us at the station and led us up five flights to a lovely flat in the Old Town, a quarter the Germans leveled in 1944 and the Poles rebuilt brick by salvaged brick. We met the Warsaw Mermaid and the story of Solidarity, and stood at the edge of the old Jewish Ghetto, a place John had carried in his head since reading John Hersey's The Wall as a young man.

#Warsaw #Old Town #Warsaw Mermaid

Inside St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague

May 21, 20163 min read2016

Dateline May 21, 2016, Prague

Prague was our first taste of how far a dollar goes in Eastern Europe, and our introduction to its beauty. We settled into our first Airbnb, found our way to the Old Town Square and its famous Orloj clock, crossed the Charles Bridge, and climbed a long flight of steps to Prague Castle and the magnificent interior of St. Vitus Cathedral. We also learned to mind the taxi meter, and ate two meals and an appetizer for about twenty-five dollars.

#Prague #Old Town Square #Orloj

The Brandenburg Gate today

May 19, 20167 min read2016

Dateline May 19, 2016, Berlin

The overland half of our trip began behind what we grew up calling the Iron Curtain, and our first stop was Berlin, where we spent nearly all our time on the old East side. We rode the public buses and subways, bought a new lens to finish off our 'International' camera, and shared a table and a few fiery plum snaps with two German businessmen, one of whom asked us to make sure America takes care of them. We walked from the Brandenburg Gate to the stelae of the Holocaust memorial, to the parking lot over Hitler's bunker, to the matched cathedrals of Gendarmenmarkt. It was a day of seeing, up close, the things that were off limits when we were young.

#Berlin #East Berlin #Brandenburg Gate

The Nyhavn canal lined with restaurants in Copenhagen

May 17, 20166 min read2016

Dateline May 17, 2016, The Baltic Capitals

With St. Petersburg given its own post, this is the rest of the Baltic cruise. Copenhagen was our hub, a city we came to love over three partial days, with its Nyhavn canal, the surprisingly small Little Mermaid, and a memorable dinner of smorrebrod and snaps. From there the Norwegian Star carried us to Warnemunde and the old town of Rostock, the medieval streets of Tallinn, and the rock-hewn church of Helsinki, before bad weather cost us Stockholm and we said our goodbyes to the ship and turned to the trains.

#Copenhagen #Nyhavn #Little Mermaid

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

May 14, 20167 min read2016

Dateline May 14, 2016, St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg was the stop we had most looked forward to, and we drew two rare sunny days to see it with our guide Marianna. Peter the Great's city gave us Peterhof, his answer to Versailles; the Hermitage, the third largest art museum on earth, with its Peacock Clock and its Rembrandts; the mosaic-clad Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood; the Romanov tombs in the Peter and Paul Fortress; and a room of imperial Fabergé eggs. Two centuries of Romanov history, a city rebuilt stone by stone after the siege of Leningrad, and a guide who calls Putin a rock star.

#St. Petersburg #Hermitage #Winter Palace

Entering Geirangerfjord at dawn

May 8, 20165 min read2016

Dateline May 8, 2016, The Norwegian Fjords

From Copenhagen the Norwegian Star carried us north along the west coast of Norway through four ports in a row. We toured art nouveau Aalesund, rebuilt after a 1904 fire with materials sent by Kaiser Wilhelm II; rose at four in the morning to watch the cliffs of the Geirangerfjord slide past; rode the Flam Railway, the steepest in the world, up through tunnels cut by hand; and climbed Mount Floyen above old Bergen. A jammed camera, a fisherman playing chicken with our ship, and new friends from Germany rounded out the week.

#Norwegian Star #Norwegian fjords #Aalesund

The twin crater lakes of Sete Cidades in the Azores

April 17, 20166 min read2016

Dateline May 1, 2016, Crossing the Atlantic, Tampa to Copenhagen

The first leg of our ten week European adventure was the crossing itself, thirteen days on the Norwegian Star from Tampa to Copenhagen. Between long stretches at sea we paused in Bermuda and spent a glorious day touring Sao Miguel in the Azores with our guide Josef, from the twin crater lakes of Sete Cidades to a mountain lake the wind unveiled just for us. We rode out a storm with waves as high as forty-five feet, sailed up the English Channel past the White Cliffs of Dover, and made friends with three couples we hope to see for years. Crossing the Atlantic, as we found out, is not for sissies.

#Norwegian Star #transatlantic crossing #Azores

Dateline April 1, 2016 - Planning our New Adventure - Europe

April 1, 20162 min read2016

Dateline April 1, 2016 - Planning our New Adventure - Europe

On April 17th we start a ten week adventure, first boarding the Norwegian Star in Tampa for a transatlantic cruise that will make two stops on our way to Copenhagen, Denmark. The planning has been a lot of fun and we ...

Kobus at Knysna

April 1, 20066 min read2006

Our Guide and Friend in South Africa, Kobus de Jonge

Years before we started this blog, in the South African autumn of 2006, we took a trip we have never stopped talking about, planned and guided by a remarkable man named Kobus de Jonge. From Table Mountain and the Cape wineries to an Easter dinner with local farmers, the steam train to Knysna, and the Big Five at Kruger, Kobus showed us the South Africa the locals love. This is the story of the guide who became a lifelong friend, with much more of the trip still to come from Janice.

#South Africa #Kobus de Jonge #Jewel of Africa Safaris

An ocean hole at Teeth of the Dog

Dominican Republic

November 21, 20156 min read2015

Dateline November 21, 2015, Casa de Campo

Forty years after Janice first played Casa de Campo as a young programmer on a golf vacation, we returned to the Dominican Republic for the resort's annual Senior Golf Week. A week of Pete Dye golf followed: the famous ocean holes of Teeth of the Dog, the cliffside views of Dye Fore above the Altos de Chavón village, and a turn on the Links. Old friends turned up by surprise, the pool bar did its work after each round, and when the credits were tallied Janice won the women's division and John the men's.

#Casa de Campo #Pete Dye #Teeth of the Dog

Pinehurst clubhouse from the 18th hole of Number 2

August 28, 20159 min read2015

Dateline August 28, 2015, Pinehurst, Niagara on the Lake and Forest, Ontario

The family leg gave way to the tournament trail. We based ourselves at Pinehurst for Janice's North and South Senior, played the Donald Ross masterpiece that is Number 2, and shared a rented house with good friends. From there we worked north to the Niagara River for the history of Old Fort Niagara, a round at Niagara Falls Country Club in the company of a golfing chaplain, and the oldest nine-hole course in North America at Niagara-on-the-Lake. The trip finished across the border at the Canadian Women's Senior Amateur near Forest, Ontario, where Janice carded her 7th hole in one and a second-place finish in the Super Senior division.

#Pinehurst #Donald Ross #North and South Senior

John relaxing on the Cape May ferry

August 14, 20155 min read2015

Dateline August 14, 2015, Summer Travels Begin, Family and Friends

After a beautiful spring and early summer at home in Flagler Beach and at our golf course, The Riv, the time came to pick up our travels again. We packed the car for six-plus weeks on the road, beginning with a long loop of family and friends up the East Coast. From a Cape May ferry crossing and a boat night on Huntington Bay to a martini toast at Lake Sunapee, golf in New Hampshire, and grandchildren in Wind Gap, this was the family leg before the tournaments began.

#Flagler Beach #Long Island #Lake Sunapee

The Sydney Harbour Bridge

March 6, 20158 min read2015

Dateline March 6, 2015, Sydney, and Then Home

Our last stop. We arrived in Sydney from Narooma and pulled into the Russell Hotel at the Rocks, an old boutique hotel with a wonderful staircase puzzle (cut through two fire-exit doors, up two stairs, down three stairs, to find your room). A few days to wind down a 42-day adventure: a pass on the $250 walk across the Harbour Bridge (we'd rather get high at the pubs, thanks), a Sydney butcher-counter dinner at Phillip's Foote where you cook your own steak, a Saturday market crowded by 3,000 of our closest friends off a cruise ship, a small Pony Lounge dinner we loved so much we went back for the End-of-Vacation supper with Pete and Bunny, and a Sunday round at Moore Park Golf Club that turned out to be eight holes because of a booking-system quirk. The last bottle of Lambert Estate, The Commitment Shiraz, was opened in the Russell's reading room. We donated the chill box to Maxine at the front desk. Then a 24-hour flight, and a landing at Daytona Beach just before midnight on a Monday. Forty-two days, 4,200 miles, fifty-some bottles of wine, six of rum, six of vodka. Goodbye to another adventure with Pete and Bunny.

#australia #new-south-wales #sydney

Kookaburras on the electric wires at Narooma, New South Wales

March 2, 20158 min read2015

Dateline March 2, 2015, Melbourne to Sydney

We enjoyed our final breakfast at Robinsons with Stanley saying his goodbyes, packed the car, and Paul gave us directions to the M-1. His suggestion for the first night was Metung, a small fishing village where Paul's family had summered when he was a boy. From there it was Eden (with golf among the friendliest kangaroos we had met yet), then two nights in Narooma at Anchors Aweigh B&B with Heather and Kerry, where the train ran through the ceiling, the kookaburras on the wires had two chicks, and a crow at Narooma Golf Club stole John's yellow ball and flew with it out over the ocean. A picnic on the way at Bega Valley with prawns, leftover steak, and the last bottle of Lambert Estate sparkling. The Blow Hole at Kiama as we drove north. Then Pete behind the wheel for the run into Sydney, and the keys to our final room at The Russell Hotel on the Rocks. We returned the car to Avis and closed out 4,200 miles of driving between New Zealand and Australia.

#australia #victoria #new-south-wales

Coops Shot Tower at Melbourne Central, Victoria, Australia

February 27, 201511 min read2015

Dateline February 27, 2015, Melbourne, Just a Great City

After our wonderful afternoon with the kangaroos at Anglesea Golf Club, we arrived in Melbourne at Robinsons In The City, a boutique hotel in an 1850s heritage building that began life as Henry William Bennett's bakery. We were welcomed by the General Manager, Paul Humphreys. Three days of city wandering followed: the Royal Mail pub with John's first taste of kangaroo steak (like eating Bambi, but really like eating Joey after a week of golf with them), the Victoria State Library and its beautiful Domed Reading Room, the Coops Shot Tower under a glass canopy in the heart of the central shopping center, a Saturday cricket ticket attempt that failed because India versus Pakistan was sold out, a long Sunday walk through the botanical gardens, the Australian Henley Regatta on the Yarra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra practicing in the open, the Shrine of Remembrance with its Ray of Light ceremony, and a round of golf at Albert Park Golf Course laid out around the Grand Prix track. We had Lebanese-Italian on Errol Street to close it out. Melbourne should be at the top of any Australia list.

#australia #victoria #melbourne

The Great Ocean Drive coastline, Victoria, Australia

February 26, 20154 min read2015

Dateline February 26, 2015, The Great Ocean Drive

As we left Port Fairy we knew we were close to starting one of the most beautiful drives in the world. John and Janice had done the drive in 2009; this was Pete and Bunny's first time. The Great Ocean Road is more than a string of fabulous beaches, cute towns, and spectacular cliff and rock formations. It is also a war memorial. Survey work began in August 1918, and thousands of returned WWI soldiers descended on the area with picks, shovels, and horse-drawn carts. The first stage, linking Lorne and Eastern View, was completed in 1922, and the full route was officially opened on November 26, 1932. We drove toward Apollo Bay with frequent stops: Bell's Beach for the surfers, the Bay of Islands for the rock formations, London Bridge (which famously broke off the mainland in 1990 and stranded a few tourists who had to be helicoptered out), the Grotto for the ocean-level view, the Twelve Apostles (which is, historically speaking, a kind of marketing miracle), and the Otway Lighthouse in the Great Otway National Park, where we watched a mother koala let her baby out of her pouch and onto its own little perch in the tree. Apollo Bay for dinner at Casalingo. Onward in the morning.

#australia #victoria #great-ocean-road

The kangaroos at Anglesea Golf Club, Victoria, Australia

February 27, 20153 min read2015

Dateline February 27, 2015, Anglesea Golf Club

We drove out from our motel in Apollo Bay with a planned stop for breakfast at the Wye Cafe, about twenty minutes up the coast. John and Janice noticed on arriving that it was the same cafe they had stopped at on a previous Melbourne to Adelaide drive — a small coincidence to start the day. Then on to Anglesea Golf Club for the round we had been waiting for. Anglesea is famous for the kangaroos who share the fairways with the golfers. Looking out from the clubhouse before our 1:15 tee time, we couldn't see a single one. The pro told us they sleep in the heat of the day and start feeding as it cools. We started on the 10th hole. By the 11th green, our first mob. From there, it was constant. Many of the kangaroos wore collars with names — permanent members of the club, we figured. The course was a good test of golf, except for the part where there are kangaroos everywhere and you cannot stop taking pictures of them. The pictures tell the story.

#australia #victoria #anglesea

The Obelisk at Robe, South Australia

February 18, 20157 min read2015

Dateline February 18, 2015, Robe and Port Fairy, Australia

We drove almost six hours to get to our next destination, Robe, one of the oldest towns in South Australia. We checked into the Harbour View Motel, where Robbie at the front desk offered us an 'upgrade' for an extra hundred dollars (we politely declined). Drinks at the Caledonia Hotel, built in 1858, then dinner at Sails, the best restaurant in town and probably in the province. A morning walk along the cliffs by the lighthouse, breakfast at the Marina Cafe, a lobster pickup at the fish market that became one of our favorite lunches of the trip on a picnic table at Cape Bridgewater. Then north to Port Fairy and the Quamby Homestead, where William and Ailsa host out of a property whose gardens were designed in the 1880s by William Guilfoyle, who ran the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. A round of golf at Port Fairy Golf Club, oceanside and beautiful, where a friendly woman at the bar afterward showed us a photo of the tiger snake she had recently found in her house and warned us about the copperheads on the course. A walk around Griffiths Island, a first wallaby sighting, and a second night at Clonmara Cottages. Onward to the Great Ocean Drive.

#australia #south-australia #victoria

Lambert Estate Winery in the Barossa Valley, South Australia

February 13, 20157 min read2015

Dateline February 13, 2015, Lambert Estate, the Barossa Valley

From New Zealand to Australia. We left Queenstown on an evening flight, with an overnight at the Auckland airport, then on through Melbourne to Adelaide, landing about 11 a.m. We picked up the rental car and pointed it at the Barossa Valley to visit Jim and Pam Lambert at Lambert Estate. We had met Jim and Pam about eight years before through a small online wine company we ran with partners, specializing in boutique wines from around the world, and visiting their winery had been one of the highlights of our last Australia trip in 2009. A great change this time around was meeting their son Kirk and his new wife Vanessa, who is from Peru. The two met in the University of Adelaide's wine science program and are now the winemakers at Lambert Estate. Over two evenings at the property we worked through about thirteen bottles between the four of us and the Lamberts and their friends Kingsley and Kathy, including the flagship Silent Partner Cabernet Sauvignon and the Family Tree Shiraz, which once beat Penfolds Grange nine-to-ten in a Milwaukee blind tasting. We chased kangaroos through the vineyard, dined at the Wanera Wine Bar in Angaston, played pokies (Bunny cleaned up), and slept gratefully in the Lambert Estate Retreat. A wonderful welcome to Australia.

#australia #south-australia #barossa-valley

A koala at the Parndana Wildlife Park on Kangaroo Island, South Australia

February 15, 20157 min read2015

Dateline February 15, 2015, Kangaroo Island, Meet the Koala

We left the Lambert Estate Retreat, headed over to Jim and Pam's to buy a few bottles for the drive to Sydney, and pointed the car at the Cape Jervis ferry through the Adelaide Hills route to Hahndorf, the oldest German town in Australia, settled in 1838 by fifty-four families escaping religious persecution. We strolled the shops and had lunch in town, then caught the 4:00 ferry across to Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island. We were based in Kingscote for two nights. Over a motel dinner that turned into wine and conversation, we met Terry Modern from Victor Harbor, who was on the island for the Kangaroo Island Cup Carnival. The next morning we drove to the Parndana Wildlife Park, fed the smaller, darker island kangaroos in the enclosure, and met Dana, the conservationist who walked us through the koala — marsupial, related to kangaroos not bears, threatened more by drought and chlamydia than by predators, sixteen thousand on the island and ten thousand sterilized to keep the population in balance with the foliage. Two of Dana's rescues had been raised in a burlap bag with formula. Then on to Flinders Chase, where koalas sat in the trees right above our car, and out to the Remarkable Rocks, Admirals Arch, and Weirs Cove on the wild south coast. A wonderful two days.

#australia #south-australia #kangaroo-island

Dateline: February 11, 2015 - New Zealand - Good Bye and Thanks

February 11, 20155 min read2015

Dateline: February 11, 2015 - New Zealand - Good Bye and Thanks

Will Owen - Playing Around New Zealand As we bid adieu to New Zealand there are many thanks to our many hosts along the way. Staying in the various Bed and Breakfasts along the way gave us a great appreciation for tra...

#golf #lake tekapo lodge #millhills lodge

Jack's Point Golf Club, on Lake Wakatipu, beneath the Remarkables Range, South Island, New Zealand

February 10, 20153 min read2015

Dateline February 10, 2015, Jack's Point Golf Club

The first question the pro at Jack's Point gets is whether the course is named for Jack Nicklaus. It is not. It is named for Jack Tewa, known as Māori Jack, who saved two friends from drowning when their boat overturned on Lake Wakatipu in 1862, near what is now the Jack's Point village. He is also credited with the first discovery of gold in the Arrow River that same year, which set off the gold rush in the region. The course is one of the top-rated in the world. Snow fell the night before we played, so the Remarkables Range stood over us in white. On the second hole, an airplane landed on the grass strip just below the tee, then took off almost immediately with a load of skydivers, whose chutes opened against the mountains as we played on. The fourth tee is across a small road and through a stone wall, with views down Lake Wakatipu and out to the high ranges. It is a true links: you do not see the clubhouse again until you walk off the eighteenth green. We agreed that it was the most beautiful and challenging course we had ever played, and we told the pro so. We were rained out at The Hills the next day, and the local advice was that Jack's Point was the better course anyway, so we went back and played it a second time. That second round was the end of our golf in New Zealand. It was a spectacular ending.

#new-zealand #south-island #queenstown

Coming down the road into the valley toward Queenstown and the Millbrook Resort

February 10, 20158 min read2015

Dateline February 10, 2015, Millbrook Resort and Queenstown

We came down into the valley to our final base in New Zealand, the Millbrook Resort, just outside Queenstown. The one-lane bridges in this part of the country are a queueing art form, watching the arrows to figure out who has the right of way. We checked into a two-bedroom cottage on the golf course. It was Pete's birthday on the 6th, so we let him pick dinner; he wanted to eat in. Janice and Bunny made the grocery run and came back with the most beautiful rainbow we had seen in a while. The week that followed was a series of rounds at Millbrook, a side trip to Arrowtown for Stephanie's recommended tapas at La Rumbla, an introduction to New Zealand's Blue Duck vodka, an extra night that Will Owen rescued for us when we found an error in our own schedule, a rained-out tee time at The Hills (refunded), a visit to the Kiwi Birdlife Park, the Queenstown gondola, and two old men attempting the Haka in front of an All Blacks poster. We close out New Zealand at Jack's Point, in the next post.

#new-zealand #south-island #queenstown

John and Pete suited up in flight hats at the Knights of the Sky exhibition, Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre

February 1, 20153 min read2015

Dateline February 1, 2015, To the South Island, the Marlborough Valley, and the Knights of the Sky

We left Wellington early to catch the ferry south, North Island to South Island, a three-hour crossing. Interesting detail: the cars are parked on recessed railroad tracks (with the trains evidently elsewhere that morning). Rainy weather, so the views were less than postcard-perfect, but the ride was enjoyable. On the other side we drove to the Vintners Retreat in the Marlborough Valley, home of some of the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world. We had a few hours of tasting time and used them well. Four wineries: Huia, Glissan, Nautilus Estates, and Wairau River Wines, all in or near Blenheim. We left every one with at least one bottle, and finished the afternoon with ten bottles between us, a mix of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot. Dinner cooked at the cottage, an old golf movie, an early night. In the morning, on to the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre, where Sir Peter Jackson's WWI aircraft collection and Weta Workshop dioramas make up the 'Knights of the Sky' exhibition. Pete is an airplane nut, with sixty-five model planes that he flies at home, and he called it the best WWI aircraft display he had ever seen. From there, on to Terrace Downs.

#new-zealand #south-island #marlborough

Sheep mowing the side of the highway on the South Island, New Zealand

February 3, 20155 min read2015

Dateline February 3, 2015, Christchurch

We left the Marlborough Valley early in the morning and drove south toward Christchurch. We made a roadside stop on the way and discovered we were at the Ōhau Point Seal Colony, a New Zealand fur seal breeding ground about twenty-five kilometers north of Kaikōura. Pupping season had just passed, and there were many babies playing on the rocks and in the tidal pools, and a few having lunch with their mothers. In Christchurch we checked into the Classic Villa B&B, an 1850s home where the lovely Alisa met us at the door. The city was four years out from the February 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and demolished much of the center. The recovery was slow. The shops had moved into temporary buildings on the edge of the reconstruction zone. A San Francisco infrastructure expert who was staying at the B&B told the hostess that Christchurch had taken more damage than San Francisco's quake. We ate lamb burgers for dinner. Janice was wiped out from driving and called it early. At breakfast the next morning, Janice fell into a long conversation with two sheep farmers, and we got a whole education on the NZ sheep and beef business. Then on toward Terrace Downs, where we encountered a herd of sheep doing the highway maintenance work.

#new-zealand #south-island #ohau-point

Terrace Downs golf course in its mountain valley, South Island, New Zealand

February 4, 20153 min read2015

Dateline February 4, 2015, Terrace Downs and Quickenberry B&B

We arrived at Terrace Downs on time, but the wind was blowing about forty miles per hour with gusts up to sixty, so golf was out. The course sits in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains, and the wind comes howling through. The staff at the clubhouse kindly moved our tee time to the following morning and pointed us toward Methven, a small village nearby with a few cafes. We poked around the stores (hardware first, of course) and had a lovely lunch at Cafe 131. We were booked into the Quickenberry B&B, where we were greeted with the news that we had been 'upgraded' to a villa at the golf course. We suspected an overbooking. Will Owen had told us the previous week's guests had been there with no issues. We did drive back to Quickenberry for dinner and the next morning's breakfast, both of which were exceptional. The villa had nice views over the course and a beautiful moon that evening. The next morning the wind had calmed enough to play. The course was in decent shape, the greens slow, a few blind shots, and the vistas of the mountains and rivers were stunning. By the last five holes, the wind was back at thirty-plus and the golf got a little crazy. Lunch at the clubhouse, where Bunny ordered the Green Lip Mussels. Then on to Lake Tekapo.

#new-zealand #south-island #terrace-downs

Lake Tekapo and the surrounding mountains from the Lodge

February 5, 20157 min read2015

Dateline February 5, 2015, Lake Tekapo, the Lodge, and the Church of the Good Shepherd

Our next stop was Lake Tekapo, where Stephanie and Alistair welcomed us into the Lodge at Lake Tekapo. The first day was cold (10°C) and raining, and the mountains across the lake were bare. Stephanie pointed us at Kohan, the Japanese restaurant down the hill on the lake, where we had fresh alpine salmon sushi raised in the local canals, possibly the best salmon we have ever eaten. In the morning the mountains had snow on them. Over breakfast, we asked Stephanie about her family. She is a fifth-generation New Zealander, and her story turned out to be one of the most remarkable we heard on the whole trip: gold rushes and shepherds in Stirling, Scotland in 1857, a Glasgow doctor who drowned en route to the Chinese mining settlement, a class photo from a 1966 girls' prep school that proved she and Alistair had sat next to each other thirty-six years before they thought they met. After breakfast, on to the Church of the Good Shepherd, the lakeside stone chapel dedicated in 1935 with the plate-glass altar window that opens onto the mountains and the lake. Then the drive to Queenstown, by way of Mt Cook, Lake Wanaka, and the Crown Range Road, on Stephanie's recommendation. Pictures say it all.

#new-zealand #south-island #lake-tekapo

The Museum Art Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand

January 31, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 31, 2015, Wellington

After a fantastic breakfast at Millhills, we took the road south for Wellington. The drive ran along the coast, through small beach towns, on routes 56 and 58. We pulled into Wellington and checked into the Museum Art Hotel for two nights. The hotel has a restaurant called Hippopotamus, and sure enough, from our balcony there was a very large Hippo looking back at us. The National Museum is across the street. An entire floor is given over to the social history of New Zealand, and we spent the afternoon on the Māori exhibits and the Treaty of Waitangi, signed February 6, 1840. Some patterns there felt familiar from US history. The next morning we drove up the coast for a round at Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club, a true links course. It was raining. Then it was raining harder. We walked in after nine holes, took hot showers, and caught up on the blogs. For dinner the concierge sent us to Chow's, an Asian-fusion tapas place two blocks away, up three floors in an old-fashioned elevator. We ordered most of the menu. Next morning, the ferry to the South Island.

#new-zealand #wellington #museum-art-hotel

Cape Kidnappers, the Tom Doak design on Julian Robertson's property above the cliffs of Hawke's Bay

January 30, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 30, 2015, Cape Kidnappers

From Millhills Lodge to Cape Kidnappers, the Tom Doak course on Julian Robertson's six-thousand-acre former sheep farm on Hawke's Bay. The TomTom got us to the entrance in thirty minutes. Then we learned it was another fifteen-minute drive on the inside road just to reach the clubhouse, narrow and winding and lined with speed bumps. Like Kauri Cliffs, we were among only eight players on the course that day. The staff was mostly young Americans on their post-college golf years, one from Penn State, all on their way back to the US to take jobs at courses there. We played the first two holes. We arrived at the third. Peter, Janice, and John all missed the green. Then Bunny stepped up and put it in the cup for her first hole-in-one. From there the course winds in and out of the fingers of land that drop straight off the cliffs, with cows as our gallery and electric fencing going up around us. At the turn the lodge brought down sandwiches. The back nine plays along the cliff edges, with the danger signs to match. Back to Millhills Lodge for Penny's gourmet dinner.

#new-zealand #cape-kidnappers #hawkes-bay

Arriving at Kinloch Golf Club, the Jack Nicklaus design near Taupo, New Zealand

January 29, 20152 min read2015

Dateline January 29, 2015, Golf at the Jack Nicklaus-Designed Kinloch Golf Club

Thursday morning, one more goodbye to Pat and Russell at Ambleside, and on to Kinloch Golf Club. Kinloch was designed by Jack Nicklaus, about seven years before our visit, for a wealthy New Zealander who knew nothing about golf. Phil, the club's golf professional, joked that the owner probably googled 'best golfer in the world,' found Jack, and asked him to build a course. Whatever the path was, the result is exceptional. The land itself does most of the work. Nicklaus barely moved any of it. The course is links-style, with carries that punish the wrong club, but it is one of the most beautiful layouts we have seen on the trip so far. We chose the white tees at 6,500 yards. They were a little too much for our games, but we did not care. Of the four courses we had played in New Zealand by this point, Kinloch was the most interesting and the most challenging. For a low handicapper it would be a great test. For us it was difficult, beautiful, and worth playing again. After the round we packed up and headed for Hawke's Bay and Millhills Lodge, with Cape Kidnappers on the schedule for the next day.

#new-zealand #kinloch #kinloch-golf-club

Millhills Lodge, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, surrounded by Penny's family farms

January 29, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 29, 2015, Millhills Lodge, Hawke's Bay

After the round at Kinloch, we drove on to Hawke's Bay for a two-night stay at Millhills Lodge. TomTom led us to a small plot of land with several cows looking at us. A call to Sam Jackman told us we were two hundred yards from the actual turn-in. We were greeted by Penny and Sam and their dog Kip, given a tour of the cabins, pointed at the nearest liquor store (the vodka and rum supplies on the trip were running thin), and welcomed in for two of the most enjoyable days of the trip. The lodge sits on several acres surrounded by Penny's family farms, sheep on one side and cattle on the other. Dinner the first night at a place called Diva. The second night, Penny cooked for us at the lodge, a three-course dinner that closed with a Pavlova, and we spent the evening with Penny and Sam over Hawke's Bay wines. Between the two evenings was a day at Cape Kidnappers, where Bunny made her first hole-in-one. Eggs Benedict on the last morning. Hawke's Bay was wonderful.

#new-zealand #hawkes-bay #millhills-lodge

Bunny Warenski with the Callaway ball from her hole-in-one on the third hole at Cape Kidnappers

January 30, 20151 min read2015

Dateline January 30, 2015, Ace Bunny Warenski, Hole in One!

Extra, extra, read all about it. Bunny made her first hole-in-one on the third hole at Cape Kidnappers. Some backstory. The day before, on the practice range at Wairakei, Bunny had set her clubs down on the grass. When she picked them up, there was duck poop on her clubs, her arm, and a little on her shirt. We all told her: bird poop is good luck. We had no idea how right we would turn out to be. The next day, on the third hole at Cape Kidnappers, with a Callaway ball that had a 3 stamped on it, on the 30th day of the month, on the third day in a row of New Zealand golf, Bunny put it in the cup. Cape Kidnappers later sent us a photo of the plaque with her name engraved on it. Bunny's was the second hole-in-one of the year on that course. The first one belonged to a PGA pro.

#new-zealand #cape-kidnappers #hole-in-one

Arriving in Taupo on the central North Island of New Zealand

January 27, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 27, 2015, Taupo and the Ambleside B&B

Out of Auckland and south to Taupo, with a stop at Rotorua along the way for the geysers and the mud cauldrons and the rest of New Zealand's small-Yellowstone thermal show. We arrived at the Ambleside B&B in Taupo and were met by our hosts, Pat and Russell Jensen, who poured us tea and wine and sat with us for an hour while we got to know them. They had raised two sons on a deer and sheep farm near Hawke's Bay and sold the farm twenty years ago to build this place. Russell's story of getting out of the venison business after Chernobyl, the Norway lamb paradox, the hawks that pick off the lambs at birthing time. Dinner at a lakeside restaurant down the hill at sunset. The next day we played Wairakei and came back to the hot tub — heated by the geothermal water that runs under the property, so hot it takes a hose of cold water to cool it down to soak in. Pat did our laundry for a nominal fee. Two nights here. Off to Huka Falls and then on to Kinloch and the Jack Nicklaus course.

#new-zealand #taupo #rotorua

Gulf Harbour Country Club, Robert Trent Jones design on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula north of Auckland

January 26, 20153 min read2015

Dateline January 26, 2015, Golf at Gulf Harbour

Goodbyes after breakfast at Swallow Ridge, then south back toward Auckland for our second round of New Zealand golf at Gulf Harbour, the Robert Trent Jones design that hosted the 1998 World Cup of Golf. Jones likens the course to Pebble Beach. Pete and Bunny had been with us on the Robert Trent Jones Trail in Alabama in 2012, so we were happy to be playing another Jones course together. An early afternoon tee time, a clubhouse sandwich, a few range balls, and out we went. The front nine was a pleasant layout, challenging in spots but not punishing. The back nine climbs up to the cliffs above the Hauraki Gulf, with views back across to Auckland and the Sky Tower in the distance. We absolutely loved the back nine. Off to Panorama Heights in Western Auckland for the night, then south in the morning to our next golf course and our next B&B.

#new-zealand #gulf-harbour #gulf-harbour-country-club

The view from the porch at Panorama Heights, looking out across the bay to downtown Auckland and the Harbour Bridge

January 26, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 26, 2015, Panorama Heights, Western Auckland

About an hour from Gulf Harbour, up into the Waitakere Range in West Auckland, to Panorama Heights, our bed and breakfast for the night. Our hosts Allison and Paul had been running the place for sixteen years and had it set up beautifully. The B&B was the upper of two houses on the property, perched high on a steep hillside, with a porch looking straight out across the bay to downtown Auckland and the Harbour Bridge. The sun went down, the city lights came up, and we stood out there for a while. A country breakfast in the morning that we ate with Allison and Paul at the table, along with a short history of the Waitakere preserve below and the kauri trees that once covered it. Then came the small mystery: did we know what a panel beater was? We did not. With some hints, we figured out it was the Kiwi term for an auto body repair person. Then Paul took us outside to show us his cars, a brand-new red Jaguar F-Type and a fully restored 1967 E-Type, both done by the resident panel beater himself.

#new-zealand #panorama-heights #waitakere-range

Entry to the course at Wairakei Golf and Sanctuary, Taupo, New Zealand

January 28, 20153 min read2015

Dateline January 28, 2015, Golf at Wairakei Golf and Sanctuary

A ten o'clock tee time at Wairakei Golf and Sanctuary, just up the road from Pat and Russell's place in Taupo. The course is owned by a wealthy Taupo dairy farmer the locals refer to as Smiley, because no one has ever seen him smiling. The course was designed by the British architect Commander John Harris, who routed it through one of the most active geothermal landscapes in the country. It was in the world top 100 in the 1970s, fell on hard times for years, and has been pristine since Smiley took it over. The entire course is fenced as a wildlife sanctuary, to keep out the rodents that would eat the kiwi birds and other native species. You drive your cart up to a gate, the gate opens, and you are in. Beautiful entry, beautiful Maori totem at the gate, and a round of golf with pheasant, quail, and the occasional mother bird and chick wandering across the fairway. Back to Ambleside for another evening with Pat and Russell.

#new-zealand #taupo #wairakei

Swallow Ridge Bed and Breakfast, perched above the Bay of Islands at Kerikeri, New Zealand

January 24, 20153 min read2015

Dateline January 24, 2015, Bay of Islands, Swallow Ridge

Out of Auckland early Saturday morning, heading north for our first New Zealand golf round at Kauri Cliffs. The hostess at the Whangarei information center sent us out on the first "Loop" to Tutukaka, two hours of cliffside driving that returned us to within ten kilometers of where we had started. We did it again on the second Loop. By the time we reached Russell it was too late to look around, so we caught the short ferry across to Kerikeri and our B&B at Swallow Ridge, where Mike and Chris welcomed us in. Mike and Chris had moved from London seven years before and built the place themselves in 2009. The bedroom slider opened directly to the Bay of Islands. Sunrise was something. After Kauri Cliffs the next day, Mike booked us into a local restaurant, and we came back to Swallow Ridge for one of the better nights' sleep of the whole trip.

#new-zealand #bay-of-islands #kerikeri

Kauri Cliffs Golf Club, perched above the Bay of Islands on the North Island of New Zealand

January 26, 20153 min read2015

Dateline January 26, 2015, Golf at Kauri Cliffs

A thirty-five-minute drive from Kerikeri took us off the main road and onto a mile of dirt road that had us wondering if TomTom had us lost. Then the gate appeared. Cameron, the assistant golf pro, met us in the drive, loaded our carts, and pointed us out to the course. Seventy-five degrees and sunny, a soft breeze, and only six other players on the course for the whole day. The course was designed by David Harman of Orlando, Florida, who died of lung cancer at fifty-one not long after completing this design. The owner is Julian Robertson, the Tiger Management founder, who fell in love with New Zealand as a young man on a writing year and later built both Kauri Cliffs and Cape Kidnappers on cliffs above the Pacific. The front nine plays over fantastic vistas out to the Bay of Islands. On the back, John birdied ten, birdied eleven, and parred twelve before reality returned on thirteen. Janice shot eighty-three from the men's tees at six thousand-plus yards. Pete and Bunny had a blast. Back to Swallow Ridge for rum and Cokes by the pool and a quiet dinner.

#new-zealand #kauri-cliffs #kauri-cliffs-golf-club

Auckland's harbor and waterfront, cleaned up for the America's Cup defense in 2000

January 24, 20155 min read2015

Dateline January 24, 2015, Auckland, Welcome to New Zealand

Out of Sydney on the morning flight to Auckland. Will Owen of Playing Around New Zealand, who would be our tour operator for the whole New Zealand leg of the trip, met us at the airport and got us checked into the Stamford Hotel on the harbor. A two-hour driving tour of the city the next morning: Mount Eden (an inactive volcano with views the length of the harbor), a stop at the stadium where the World Rugby Championships had been held, a stretch along the America's Cup waterfront, and along the beach communities where one resident in five seems to own a boat. In the afternoon, the ferry across to Waiheke Island for the Hop On bus, two wineries (Stonebridge first, Cable Bay second, the second clearly better), and a long conversation at Cable Bay with Lizzie Dunkley, four years into a solo trip around the world. Back into Auckland for the city's 175th birthday weekend, with an English contortionist folded into a glass box on the waterfront. In the morning, off to the Bay of Islands and our first round of New Zealand golf at Kauri Cliffs.

#new-zealand #auckland #mount-eden

The Sydney Opera House from the harbor, on the ferry out to Watson Bay

January 21, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 21, 2015, Sydney — The Adventure Begins at Doyle's

In 2010 we had spent a couple of weeks in Australia, primarily to play the great Sandbelt courses around Melbourne, and we ended that trip with a few wonderful days with Jim and Pam Lambert at the Lambert Estate in the Barossa Valley. We had been looking for an excuse to go back ever since. This trip is the excuse. New Zealand and Australia with our friends Pete and Bunny Warenski, who were with us on the Alaska Walkabout and on the Robert Trent Jones Trail in Alabama. We arrived in Sydney Tuesday morning after twenty-four hours of flight time, met up with Pete and Bunny at the hotel, walked the city, and tried to stay awake until evening to outwit the jet lag. The next morning we took the ferry across the harbor (past the Opera House and under the Harbor Bridge) out to Watson Bay and Doyle's, the seafood restaurant we had visited on our last trip to Sydney and had been looking forward to introducing the Warenskis to. Tomorrow we fly to New Zealand.

#australia #sydney #sydney-opera-house

The Norwegian Epic, almost 1,100 feet long with eighteen levels above the waterline

November 23, 20146 min read2014

Dateline November 23, 2014, Norwegian Epic and the Western Caribbean

After a weekend at the Fort Lauderdale Country Club catching up with old friends from our South Florida days, we drove the forty miles down the coast to the Port of Miami and boarded the Norwegian Epic for Thanksgiving week. Almost 1,100 feet of ship and eighteen levels above the waterline. Out of Miami at 5:30 in the evening, South Beach lit up to our right as we left the harbor. Two days at sea to Ocho Rios, Jamaica, then heavy seas forced us to bypass Grand Cayman (their port requires tenders rather than dockside mooring), so on to Cozumel, where the wind made us drop our planned round of golf and walk the town instead. Cozumel turned out to be the gem of the trip: the Mestizo Monument and the story of Gonzalo Guerrero, the shipwrecked Spaniard who chose to stay with the Maya. We bought a small metal Christmas tree off a street vendor and walked it back through ship security. Friday's last steak at Cagney's, Saturday at sea on the balcony, and Sunday morning back at Miami. Next stop in January: New Zealand and Australia.

#caribbean #norwegian-cruise-line #norwegian-epic

2014 - Christmas with Collin!!

January 9, 20154 min read2015

2014 - Christmas with Collin!!

(/images/2015/IMG1074.jpg)Welcome to our Christmas. We must admit that it is all different when you have a grandchild to make it a Merry, Merry time! First let us introduce you to Collin, John's son James and his wife...

Fort Lauderdale - A wonderful Weekend

January 8, 20153 min read2015

Fort Lauderdale - A wonderful Weekend

(/images/2014/IMG0386.jpg)Our first stop before meeting the Norwegian Epic in Miami was to have dinner with old friends at Fort Lauderdale Country Club. Meeting at the bar for Friday night cocktails gave us a chance t...

#fort lauderdale country club

Lambert Estate - Our 2010 Visit - We Return in February 2015

December 15, 201414 min read2014

Lambert Estate - Our 2010 Visit - We Return in February 2015

We wrote this piece after returning from Australia in 2010. We are returning to see the Lambert Estate and enjoy a few days with Pat and Jim in February, 2015. Our friends Peter and Bunny Warenski from our Alaska and ...

#lambert estate

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum on the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park, New York

August 13, 20139 min read2013

Dateline August 13, 2013, The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

After the JFK Library in Boston, we drove west across Massachusetts and into New York to Hyde Park, on the Hudson, for our sixth and final presidential library of the year: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The library sits on the old Roosevelt estate, dedicated by FDR himself in 1941, the original of the model every other presidential library has followed since. A $35 million renovation had just been completed, with the first major overhaul of the permanent exhibition in seventy years. Twelve thousand square feet of interactive video tables and digital flip-book screens walk you through the most consequential presidency of the twentieth century: Hyde Park, Harvard, the Navy under Wilson, polio at Campobello in 1921 (the cottage we had visited only the year before on our way through New Brunswick), the New York governorship, the inaugural at the bottom of the Depression with the line about fear itself, the fireside chats, the New Deal, the Arsenal of Democracy, Pearl Harbor and the Day of Infamy speech, the unprecedented third and fourth terms, Yalta, and Warm Springs.

#new-york #hyde-park #franklin-d-roosevelt

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on Columbia Point, Boston Harbor

August 12, 20139 min read2013

Dateline August 12, 2013, The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

After a few days on Cape Cod with Janice's Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill, we drove into Boston for the JFK Library on Columbia Point. The fourth of our presidential library visits this year. The welcome at the door was more reserved than the others had been, worth noting only because it was so different. The library walks you through Kennedy's life in proper sequence: PT-109 in the Solomon Islands, Harvard, the House, the Senate, the 1960 race against Nixon that included the first televised presidential debate in American history, the inauguration and 'Ask not,' the Bay of Pigs lesson three months in, the Berlin Wall and 'Ich bin ein Berliner,' the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights, the moon program, the Test Ban Treaty, Robert Kennedy at Justice, Jackie's White House restoration, and Dallas. In the morning we drive west to Hyde Park for the FDR Library.

#massachusetts #boston #john-f-kennedy

Hearst Castle on the California coast, 165 rooms and 127 acres of gardens, terraces, and pools

July 23, 20138 min read2013

Dateline July 23, 2013, Monterey, Carmel, and the California Coast

Out of Yosemite to the coast and the Monterey Peninsula. The Monterey Fair Grounds RV park, set up among the horse stalls (the 'Don't Wash Horses Here' sign at our water hookup was a nice touch). A walk through Monterey, with a memory or two from a Citrix Systems conference there years ago before we were married, the night they hosted a dinner inside the aquarium. Golf at the Bayonet Course, where the PGA Championship had played in 2012. Phil's Fish Market in Moss Landing, oysters on the half shell and a snapper sandwich big enough to defeat the two of us together. Carmel, the lodge at Pebble Beach, and the bagpiper walking out of the fog on the patio at Spanish Bay at sunset. Then the Pacific Coast Highway south through Big Sur, the elephant seals at their July haul-out, the Hearst Castle, the wines at Adelaida Cellars in Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and an overnight high above the Malibu beach. The Reagan Library was waiting for us in the morning.

#california #monterey-peninsula #monterey

A par 3 at Torrey Pines South Course, the green sitting on a cliff above the Pacific

July 30, 20135 min read2013

Dateline July 30, 2013, Long Beach to Torrey Pines, Closing the Trip

Out of Simi Valley after the Reagan Library, down the 405 (the freeway only one person in modern history has ever been able to drive fast on, and even he was crawling). Long Beach for a city park overnight near the Queen Mary, then a Mercedes brake job that ate the whole next day. Huntington Beach, with the campsites taken by the US Open Surfing crowds, so a Marriott Courtyard instead. Janice's practice round at Sea Cliff Country Club for the USGA Senior Women's Amateur qualifier, with John caddying. A Safeway chicken eaten next to the rig in the hotel parking lot. Breakfast with Gigi Kimball at Ruby's on the pier. Monday over to Yorba Linda for the Nixon Library. Tuesday Janice's qualifier, a four-putt on the par-three 17th that pushed her into a six-way playoff, and a brutally tough second-year-in-a-row playoff loss. Then Ann and Ruth in Oceanside (who turn out to live in a beach house on the Pacific). And finally Torrey Pines, the South Course, the closing round of more than 1,600 miles down the California coast. Then east toward Arizona, with Lelia and Betty Lou waiting for us.

#california #long-beach #queen-mary

The Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, where Nixon was born and is buried

July 29, 20138 min read2013

Dateline July 29, 2013, The Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library

Out to Yorba Linda for the Nixon Library, on the grounds where Nixon was born and where he and Pat were eventually buried. A personal note for John: this was the library of the first president he ever voted for, in 1968, when you still had to be 21 to cast a ballot. The library handles Watergate up front and well, then walks you through the rest of a long, consequential life: Whittier, Duke Law, the South Pacific in World War Two, the Hiss case, the Checkers speech, eight years as Eisenhower's VP, the loss to Kennedy, the loss for Governor of California, and the comeback that landed him in the White House in 1968. The opening to China. The Brezhnev treaties. The Paris Peace Accords. The Hanoi Hilton POW flag. The long, slow post-resignation work of rebuilding. And the 1994 funeral where every living president attended, with Bill Clinton's eulogy doing the difficult work of asking the country to consider an entire life rather than only its lowest point.

#california #yorba-linda #richard-nixon

Air Force One (SAM 27000), the Boeing 707 that served seven presidents, suspended in the three-story atrium at the Reagan Library

July 26, 20137 min read2013

Dateline July 26, 2013, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum

From Malibu over the coastal mountain roads to Simi Valley, sometimes at 15 MPH around the curves. The drive up to the Reagan Library has a portrait of each president lining the entrance, opening out at the top of the hill onto an extraordinary view across the valley. Inside, a chronological walk through Reagan's life: Eureka College, sports announcer making up the play from a ticker tape, Hollywood, Knute Rockne and the Gipper, World War Two training films, the Screen Actors Guild, the GE Theater years, the slow turn toward conservatism, the 1964 'Time for Choosing' speech, two terms as Governor of California, and on to the presidency. The 'are you better off than you were four years ago' debate, the Hinckley assassination attempt, PATCO, Beirut, Grenada, Reykjavik, the INF Treaty, 'trust but verify.' And the Air Force One pavilion, a Boeing 707 that served seven presidents from Nixon to George W. Bush, suspended in a three-story atrium overlooking the valley. The chocolate cake stories, the Jelly Bellys, the shining city farewell. A long, well-told life.

#california #simi-valley #ronald-reagan

The west entrance to Yosemite National Park, with two rocks leaning together over the road

July 21, 20135 min read2013

Dateline July 21, 2013, The Redwood Forest and Yosemite

The introduction pictures say it all. These parks are some of God's greatest accomplishments. Out of Crescent City and down through the Redwoods. The BenBow Inn for a night, with a great chance meeting at the bar with a Southern California golf pro and a kindergarten teacher, who handed us a list of courses and restaurants. The Redwood Forest itself, where a slice of wood on display tells you how many hundreds of years it takes to grow ten feet in diameter, and the Roadtrek was too tall for the famous drive-through tree (John walked it for us). Cache Creek for golf and a stop at the tribal casino, where Janice discovered the California-specific roulette they run, and pocketed a $25 gas card. Then Yosemite, the west entrance with its two leaning rocks, Lower Falls, the Wawona Tunnel View, and Saturday morning at Glacier Point, looking straight down into the valley we had driven through the day before. Then back on the road for Monterey.

#california #redwood-national-forest #redwood-forest

Sunset over Camp Wilson, Will and Cathy's place on Whidbey Island, Washington

July 17, 20138 min read2013

Dateline July 17, 2013, Washington to the Redwood Forest

Out of Coeur d'Alene, twenty miles through the rest of Idaho, then on to Spokane, where both of John's parents grew up before meeting in Seattle at the University of Washington. The Ginkgo Petrified Forest at Vantage, a stop John remembered from family drives between Seattle and Spokane as a boy. A Columbia River campsite, Snoqualmie Pass where John learned to ski in first grade, across Lake Washington into Seattle for Pike Place Market and chowder at Lowell's. The Mukilteo ferry to Whidbey Island and three days with John's brother Will and his wife Cathy: salmon, mussels, the family deer, and Janice doing the actual RV repair herself with Will helping. Then ferry to Port Townsend, Hurricane Ridge above Port Angeles for a few snowballs in July, down the Olympic Peninsula and Highway 101, across the Columbia to Astoria. Down the Oregon coast in rain, Bandon Dunes too cold to play, and on to Crescent City and the start of the Redwoods.

#washington #spokane #seattle

The Floating Green at the Coeur d'Alene Resort, the world's only movable floating golf green, on underwater cables

July 11, 20133 min read2013

Dateline July 11, 2013, Coeur d'Alene and the Floating Green

Pulling into Coeur d'Alene to look for a campground, we noticed we were right next to the famous golf course, so we turned in just to take a look. One conversation with the assistant pro later, we had an 8:50 tee time the next morning. The course was in impeccable condition, hand-watered, divots filled in by staff walking the fairways with buckets. Two fawns played across the 6th hole until their mother called them back into the woods. Then the 14th: the floating green, the world's only one, movable on underwater cables to play anywhere from 100 to 200 yards. Janice hit it and made par. Janice's verdict, after lunch: better than Pebble Beach, which she has played a number of times. On to Seattle.

#idaho #coeur-dalene #coeur-dalene-resort

Bill Fairweather's grave on Boot Hill, Virginia City, Montana, with the sign noting his discovery of gold at Alder Gulch in 1863

July 9, 20138 min read2013

Dateline July 9, 2013, Montana, Big Sky Country

South out of Yellowstone into Teton National Forest, the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Parkway with the Tetons all the way down the right side, and into Jackson, where the farmers' market was in full swing on a Saturday morning. Then north to Virginia City, Montana, a real ghost town with deep family weight: John's mother's great uncle, Bill Fairweather, was the prospector who discovered gold at Alder Gulch in May 1863 and effectively founded the place. John had last stood at Bill's grave in 1958, at age eleven. Then over to Big Sky to spend a couple of days with old family friend John Bohlinger, Lt. Governor of Montana from 2005 to 2013, the Republican half of Brian Schweitzer's bipartisan ticket. Lunch at the Montana Club in Helena. Spruce River Campground outside Kalispell, an electrical problem on the Roadtrek that needed a part to be picked up in Seattle. On to Lake Coeur d'Alene.

#wyoming #tetons #jackson-hole

Old Faithful erupting, Yellowstone National Park

July 4, 20136 min read2013

Dateline July 4, 2013, Yellowstone National Park

Out of Cody on the morning of the 4th, the short drive west into Yellowstone. Through Shoshone National Forest, in past Yellowstone Lake with its hot pools steaming along the shore, an elk in the trees. Two days of southern loop and northern loop with everything Yellowstone is famous for: Old Faithful erupting (Artemisia Geyser around the corner, easily as beautiful), a grizzly on the road, a 5:00 AM Janice drive up to Hayden Valley with John still asleep in the back, a bison herd that brought their late-season babies right past the rig within touching distance, Tower Falls, a pair of black bears crossing the road, and a Saturday morning so quiet that you could see a female elk just grazing alongside the lake. Then south to the Tetons.

#wyoming #yellowstone-national-park #yellowstone

The Eisenhower family home on the grounds of the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas

June 29, 20136 min read2013

Dateline June 29, 2013, The Eisenhower Library and Museum

Saturday afternoon at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, about three hours west of Kansas City. From the library wall: 'Dwight David Eisenhower was born the year the US census pronounced the frontier closed and died the year man walked on the moon. In between those milestones he planned and led the greatest amphibious military assault in history and waged eight years of peace and prosperity as President.' The Eisenhower story: West Point 1915, Fox Connor's mentorship in Panama, first in his class at the Command and General Staff School, the Philippines under MacArthur, Marshall's call to the War Department after Pearl Harbor, D-Day, VE-Day, NATO. Then eight years as President, two terms, two losses for Stevenson. Korea ended. The interstate highway system. The 1957 Civil Rights Bill. Three balanced budgets. Eight hundred rounds of golf, and a 'Truman and Eisenhower 2012' t-shirt in the gift shop that we both stopped to look at.

#kansas #abilene-kansas #dwight-eisenhower

Sunset behind the arena at the Cody Stampede Rodeo, July 4, 2013

July 3, 20136 min read2013

Dateline July 3-4, 2013, Cody, Wyoming, as in Buffalo Bill Cody

Into Cody after the long drive across Wyoming. Fuel for the Roadtrek, fuel for the body (a local butcher with the best black rye we have ever had), and an early bed. The Stampede Parade on the 3rd is led by the only mounted Marine Color Guard in the entire US military, based in Barstow, California. A breakfast at Pete's Cafe that could have been a Norman Rockwell drawing. A drive out twenty miles to the McCullough Peaks Wild Horse Management Area to find a hundred wild mustangs on BLM land. And the Cody Stampede Rodeo on the 4th, running since 1919, with the sun going down behind the arena. Then on to Yellowstone.

#wyoming #cody #buffalo-bill

Camped outside Centennial, Wyoming, at the edge of the Snowy Range

July 3, 20137 min read2013

Dateline July 3, 2013, Traveling from Missouri to Cody, Wyoming

Out of Missouri toward Cody. The golf course we had on the schedule was hosting a Missouri Golf Association tournament, so we adjusted, did the Truman Library, then headed west past the Eisenhower Library in Abilene. John could not drive past Manhattan, Kansas without stopping at Kansas State University, his old college, to see the fraternity house and a couple of other old haunts. Then across Kansas to Lake Waconda in the wheat country, the largest community ball of twine in Cawker City, Ft. Collins for golf, Cheyenne for RV light repairs, and into the Medicine Bow National Forest. The Ames Monument at the highest point of the original transcontinental railroad. A campsite outside Centennial, Wyoming, found through the kindness of a bartender and a woman named Jenny. The Snowy Range at sunrise. A pronghorn antelope, the last surviving member of its family. Split Rock on the Oregon Trail. Saratoga's hot springs. And the dinosaur museum at Thermopolis, with one of twelve known Archaeopteryx specimens in the world. Then on to Cody.

#kansas #manhattan-kansas #kansas-state-university

The 'Buck Stops Here' sign from Harry Truman's desk, on display at the Truman Library

June 28, 20135 min read2013

Dateline June 28, 2013, The Truman Library

Our stop at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri was one of those pleasant, unexpectedly educational mornings. Most of us studied World History and US History in school, but unless we became serious students of the subject, the details of any one president's tenure tend to fade. Truman's tenure does not deserve to fade. The atomic bomb decision. The Truman Doctrine and the start of the Cold War. The Marshall Plan. The recognition of Israel eleven minutes after the declaration. The Berlin Airlift. NATO. Korea. The firing of MacArthur. The Buck Stops Here. And the small silver piano sent by a Holocaust survivor with her thanks. A wonderful museum, and a wonderful country.

#missouri #independence-missouri #harry-s-truman

The Grand National sign at the Robert Trent Jones Trail course in Opelika, Alabama

June 29, 20133 min read2013

Dateline June 29, 2013, Leaving Flagler Beach, Going West

Heading out west for the summer. National Parks, family, friends. The first leg runs from Flagler Beach to Cody, Wyoming for the Stampede on July 4th, then on to Yellowstone. Out of Florida, a stop in Orlando to swap a glow plug sensor, a KOA in Perry. Then a round at Grand National at Opelika, the one RTJ Trail course we did not get to with Pete and Bunny last May. Wind Creek State Park on Lake Martin. The drive through Alabama up to Memphis and on to Jonesboro, Arkansas, where Doris at Craighead Forest Park rented us a lakeside site for $10. The open country of Arkansas and Missouri, the kind that reminds you how big the country still is. Cooper's Landing on the Missouri River was flooded out, so we backed into Binder Park outside Jefferson City for the night. Independence, Missouri and the Truman Library in the morning.

#florida #alabama #arkansas

The Rio Grande crossing at El Paso, Texas, on the drive west

May 15, 20134 min read2013

Dateline May 15, 2013, On the Road Again, Janice Traveling in the RV

John became a realtor over the winter, and his first deal landed the week we were supposed to leave for the Roadtrek Corporate Rally in Branson, Missouri. He stayed home to work it. I went west on my own and added a stop that was not exactly on the way: my oldest friend Marty and her husband Jeff, in Cottonwood, Arizona. Marty and I have known each other since high school. From Flagler Beach to Biloxi (with a small detour through the Beau Rivage Casino), an overnight at a Walmart, San Antonio, Las Cruces with a fuel scare in a ghost town, a tethered surveillance blimp out in the desert, and the long beautiful drive through Tonto National Forest and Roosevelt Lake. Written by Janice.

#mississippi #biloxi #beau-rivage-casino

Bob Bittner at the DJ console of WJTO, his Bath, Maine AM radio station

July 25, 20123 min read2012

Dateline July 25, 2012, Bath, Maine, and the Radio Guy

Out of Acadia and south down the Maine coast to Bath, to visit Bob Bittner, who has known Janice since grade school. They had not seen each other since high school, until Facebook reconnected them. Bob and his wife Raisa, an architect who redesigned their place themselves, live on a stretch of water acreage with a great room and a view from the back porch. Bob has been in the radio business for twenty years and owns two AM stations playing adult standards from the 1930s through the 1960s, drawing from a library of more than 5,400 records. We toured the studio (78s, 33s, and 45s for the youngsters), and the garage, where Bob's lifetime license-plate collection runs into the thousands. And then we waved goodbye, and headed home, the long summer through four Canadian provinces and a slice of Maine quietly closing behind us.

#maine #bath-maine #bob-bittner

The view of Bar Harbor and Frenchman Bay from the summit of Cadillac Mountain, the tallest peak on the Atlantic seaboard

July 25, 20126 min read2012

Dateline July 25, 2012, Acadia National Park

From Campobello across the FDR Bridge into Maine, and on to Mount Desert Island for Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor. The island is the second largest on the US east coast, with 26 mountains on it, including 1,530-foot Cadillac, the tallest along the Atlantic seaboard. Bar Harbor itself, a Gilded Age resort that once rivaled Newport, was largely lost to a fire in 1947 that smoldered underground through the winter, then was rebuilt. Plus a stop at the Desert Mountain Oceanarium for a hatchery tour with lobsterman David Mills, who explained how Maine's lobstermen voluntarily protect their own brood stock with size minimums, size maximums, and notched females, and why the catch has been growing year over year because of it. Then the history of Acadia itself, George Dorr's 43-year campaign, John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s carriage roads, and the long story of how 47,000 acres got preserved.

#maine #acadia-national-park #bar-harbor

The Hopewell Rocks at low tide, New Brunswick, the Bay of Fundy's signature flowerpot formations

July 22, 20128 min read2012

Dateline July 22, 2012, Back to the Bay of Fundy on the North Side, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick

Back from Newfoundland and onto the north shore of the Bay of Fundy. The Truro tidal bore turned out to be a small wake of a wave that produced an entire crowd singing 'Is That All There Is?' Five Islands, Nova Scotia, was the most beautiful campground of the trip, with hummingbirds at the fish store next door. The Hopewell Rocks at low tide in New Brunswick. Kelly's Bakery cinnamon buns in Alma. And a meaningful detour: a Fairweather family ancestry mission in Sussex on behalf of John's brother Will, where we found four graves of our forebears, including Hanford Fairweather, who died at age ten and for whom John is named. Then to Saint John, the Reversing Falls, the ferry to Deer Island and on to Campobello, FDR's summer cottage, and the bridge across to Lubec, Maine. Back in the USA.

#canada #nova-scotia #new-brunswick

Atlantic salmon working their way up the fish ladders at the Salmonid Interpretation Center, Grand Falls-Windsor

July 17, 20128 min read2012

Dateline July 17, 2012, Trinity and Gros Morne National Park

Out of St. John's heading west on the Trans-Canada Highway. Brigus first, the birthplace of Captain Bob Bartlett, the great Newfoundland Arctic mariner shipwrecked at least twelve times, with the 1860 Tunnel that John Hoskins cut through solid rock by hand. Then Trinity, a working heritage community where the Rising Tide Theatre's New Founde Lande Pageant walks you through the village telling Newfoundland history in song and story. Atlantic salmon climbing the ladders at Grand Falls-Windsor. Then Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland's UNESCO geology, where 500-million-year-old ocean floor was thrust up into mountains, and a boat trip down Western Brook Pond, a freshwater fjord with pitcher plants in the bogs and Pissing Mare Falls plunging from the plateau above. Then the ferry back to Nova Scotia.

#canada #newfoundland #brigus

The view down to St. John's harbor from Signal Hill

July 14, 20125 min read2012

Dateline July 14, 2012, St. John's, Cape Spear, Signal Hill, and the Screech-In

Standing at Cape Spear, the easternmost point of mainland North America, with your back to the sea, the entire continent is behind you. Face the sea and the next stop is Ireland. The oldest surviving lighthouse in Newfoundland sits here, kept by the Cantwell family for over 150 years. Then up to Signal Hill and Cabot Tower, where Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal in 1901, the receiving end of the same circuit we had just seen the Cape Breton transmitting side of a few days before. The harbor below, the WWII gun batteries, the views of St. John's. Then George Street in the evening for a pub or two, and a partial entry into the Royal Order of Screechers, John kissing the cod, Janice and John both passing on the rum.

#canada #newfoundland #st-johns

A Northern Gannet soaring along the cliffs at Cape Saint Mary's Ecological Reserve

July 12, 20123 min read2012

Dateline July 12, 2012, Arriving in Newfoundland and Cape Saint Mary's

The overnight ferry from North Sydney to Argentia, Newfoundland. A huge ship, ten decks, cabin with two bunk beds and an easy crossing. From Argentia, a 90-minute drive south to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve at the southwest tip of the Avalon Peninsula, one of the most accessible great seabird colonies in North America. We arrived in dense fog, almost gave up, and got pointed out the mile-long path to the colony by a ranger who promised the fog would lift at the end. He was right. 70,000 birds in the air and on the cliffs: Northern Gannets, Black-Legged Kittiwakes, and Common Murres. The lighthouse finally came into view on the way back.

#canada #newfoundland #argentia

The finale of the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo, Halifax, July 2012

July 11, 20128 min read2012

Dateline July 11, 2012, Halifax, the Tattoo, and Cape Breton

Into Halifax for the Maritime Museum, where the Titanic story still lives because Halifax was the port that received the bodies. A reunion with Roadtrek friends Ann and Ruth, who had just arrived in Nova Scotia. The Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo on Saturday afternoon, with the 1812 Overture and a surprise wedding inside the show. Then over to Cape Breton: the Ceilidh Trail, fish and chips at the Rankin family's Red Shoe Pub in Mabou, a shot at the Glenora single-malt distillery, the Cabot Trail, the Englishtown cable ferry, and a quiet round at Seaview Golf. And finally the Marconi National Historic Site at Glace Bay, where a retired ham operator named James Charlong gave us a tour that turned out to be one of the highlights of the whole trip, partly because John had reviewed Morse code messages for the Army Security Agency a long career ago, and standing at the foundations of Marconi's 1902 transatlantic station closed a quiet circle.

#canada #nova-scotia #halifax

The lighthouse at Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, one of the most photographed spots on the Atlantic coast

July 5, 20128 min read2012

Dateline July 5, 2012, Nova Scotia, Pictou to Peggy's Cove

Off the ferry at Pictou and across mainland Nova Scotia. Truro at the top of the Bay of Fundy, where we missed the tidal bore by a few hours. Grand Pré on the Annapolis Valley with the Bay's enormous tides going out at our campground. Two wineries in one afternoon, including a Scottish ex-pat ENT surgeon named Jon Muir Murray who had landed in Nova Scotia by way of South Africa and Bermuda. Parker's Cove, a working fishing village where the lobster boats stand on wooden braces at low tide and a fresh two-pound lobster cost $4.50 a pound. Our 13th anniversary, played at Annapolis Royal Golf Club, dinner of lobster and haddock from the village fish market with champagne from Domaine de Grand Pré. Then Shelburne, Lunenburg with the Bluenose II under restoration, and the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove.

#canada #nova-scotia #pictou

Sunset over the Roadtrek at Crystal Beach Campground, Prince Edward Island

July 1, 20129 min read2012

Dateline July 1, 2012, Canada Day on Prince Edward Island

Three days on Prince Edward Island over the long Canada Day weekend. The Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick. The Bottle Houses of Édouard T. Arsenault, three buildings made from 25,000 reclaimed bottles. The Wind-Hydrogen Village at North Cape, where wind turbines split water into hydrogen for backup. A rainbow over the Roadtrek at Crystal Beach. Charlottetown and the actual room where Canadian Confederation began in 1864. Lobster sandwiches at St. Peters Bay and an elderly local named Chuck telling us what the place was like in the 1930s. The Prince Edward Distillery, run by a Florida B&B owner and a North Carolina granddaughter of pre-Prohibition distillers. A long evening of cross-border conversation with Chris and Mylissa Greening. Then the Canada Day ferry to Nova Scotia.

#canada #prince-edward-island #pei

Percé Rock standing out of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the iconic natural arch of the Gaspé Peninsula

July 4, 20124 min read2012

Dateline July 4, 2012, Gaspé Peninsula and Eastern New Brunswick

Out of Quebec City on Route 132 along the south shore of the St. Lawrence, the long curving drive out to the Gaspé Peninsula. The Appalachian Mountains end here. Pouring rain through the small fishing villages, the side roads called navigateurs threading down to the shore and back, and then the sky clearing in time for Percé Rock, the great natural arch standing out of the water like a ship under sail. A fish market in Cap-d'Espoir, a campsite on the beach at Carleton-sur-Mer, cod for dinner. Across the bridge to New Brunswick at Campbellton for a thunder-shortened round at Restigouche Golf and Country Club. Sensational clam chowder in Moncton. A tree-house campsite in Miramichi. Janice picking a steamed lobster apart on the side of the road for sandwiches. Then the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island.

#canada #quebec #new-brunswick

The Château Frontenac rising above Old Quebec City

June 20, 20127 min read2012

Dateline June 20-23, 2012, Montreal and Quebec City

From the wedding, north to Canada. A visit with Janice's cousin Bobbie Dawes in Clinton, New York, a free overnight at the Akwesasne Mohawk casino, and over the border to Camping Alouette outside Montreal. Lunch at Poutineville with David Williams (Parker's cousin, so a Wilson by way of Carol), and with Courtney and Amanda, who shared the news that grandchild number two was on the way. The afternoon at Saint Joseph's Oratory on Mount Royal. Then on to Quebec City for the only walled city in North America, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the Château Frontenac, the Citadel, and the story of how the British took Quebec in 1759. Plus a garage update from home.

#canada #quebec #montreal

James and Mary Wilson on their wedding day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, June 16, 2012

June 16, 20124 min read2012

Dateline June 16, 2012, James and Mary's Wedding in Gettysburg

Back in the Roadtrek after two weeks home. The garage project is underway in the old carport, the foundation blocks set. First stop, Gettysburg, where our son James married Mary Albin under a beautiful summer sky. Rehearsal dinner at Appalachian Brewing Company. The toast, naming the five women in James's life, from sister Kieran through to Mary. The Wilson family sword from 1944, used to cut every wedding cake since Jack and Grammy. A garden wedding in Hanover. Mary becomes Mary Wilson. Eastern Canada is next.

#pennsylvania #gettysburg #hanover-pa

Sunset over Mobile Bay from Meaher State Park, on the last night of the Robert Trent Jones Trail trip

May 27, 20128 min read2012

Dateline May 27, 2012, Capitol Hill, Magnolia Grove, and the End of the Trail

The last week of the Robert Trent Jones Trail trip. Montgomery and the Capitol Hill complex: The Legislator (rained out partway and finished the next afternoon), The Judge with its first tee two hundred feet above the fairway, and The Senator with its 160 pot bunkers. Then down to Mobile and Magnolia Grove for the Crossings and the Falls. On the last round, individual stroke play, Janice shot a 78 from the men's white tees and won outright. Final standings, with Janice giving the most strokes all trip. The Trail ends. The alligator at Meaher State Park does not. And James and Mary's wedding in Gettysburg waits a few weeks ahead.

#alabama #robert-trent-jones-trail #rtj-trail

John, Janice, Pete, and Bunny at the 19th hole after a round at Oxmoor Valley

May 20, 20124 min read2012

Dateline May 20, 2012, Oxmoor Valley

Ninety minutes south from Gadsden to Oak Mountain State Park outside Birmingham, the largest state park in Alabama, nearly ten thousand acres of trails and lakes. Then up to Oxmoor Valley to play the Ridge and the Valley, two of the most photogenic courses on the Trail, both built on former coal-mining country. The Ridge with its 150-foot elevation changes, the Valley running two miles down its namesake. Plus the discovery of sweet tea vodka, a small wildlife parade of turkeys, and an East Hampton neighbor in the campground who came in second in the XTERRA over-50 women's triathlon.

#alabama #robert-trent-jones-trail #rtj-trail

The Silver Lakes clubhouse, rebuilt after the April 2011 tornado

May 17, 20124 min read2012

Dateline May 17, 2012, Hampton Cove and Silver Lakes

Out of Florence and up to Monte Sano State Park, sixteen hundred feet above Huntsville. Two days at Hampton Cove, including the River Course, the only Robert Trent Jones Trail layout in Alabama with not a single bunker. Then eighty miles south to Gadsden and Silver Lakes, which we found in remarkable shape considering an EF4 tornado from the April 27, 2011 Super Outbreak had taken out forty thousand of its trees and the top of its clubhouse a year before. The Backbreaker and the Mindbreaker. And a brown water snake we left to its business.

#alabama #robert-trent-jones-trail #rtj-trail

The 18th green of The Fighting Joe at The Shoals, overlooking Wilson Lake on the Tennessee River

May 12, 20126 min read2012

Dateline May 12, 2012, RTJ Trail Alabama, The Shoals

Out of Henderson Beach to Joe Wheeler State Park on the Tennessee River, where Pete and Bunny Warenski were already set up. Three rounds over four days. The Fighting Joe at The Shoals, all eight thousand yards of it. A rain day for Rogersville antiques and Brooks BBQ (Yelp again). The Schoolmaster the next day. And on Friday, Turtle Point Country Club in Killen, a private RTJ Sr design Janice had played years before in the SWATCA tournament. Plus a quick history of the Nassau bet, and the unlikely story of Joe Wheeler, the only Confederate general to come back and serve under Union colors.

#alabama #robert-trent-jones-trail #rtj-trail

The boardwalk through the dunes at Henderson Beach State Park, Destin, Florida

May 6, 20122 min read2012

Dateline May 6, 2012, Heading to the RTJ Trail by Way of Henderson Beach

Out of Flagler Beach and seven hours west to Destin and Henderson Beach State Park on the Florida panhandle. Our first time in this stretch of the Gulf since the BP spill, and the beaches were back, no trace of it. Pristine dunes, monarchs and sea turtles, sand like powder. Sixteen dollars for the campsite (being 65 helped). One night on the way to Alabama and the start of the RTJ Trail.

#florida #destin #henderson-beach-state-park

A green at Grand National on the Robert Trent Jones Trail, the iconic checkered pin flag against the water

May 8, 20124 min read2012

Dateline May 8, 2012, The Robert Trent Jones Trail

Off for another adventure. Pete and Bunny, who we met during Walkabout in Alaska, came down to Flagler Beach in January for a few days of golf at home. By the end of the visit, we had a plan: meet in Muscle Shoals in May for a three-week golf fest on the Robert Trent Jones Trail. Twelve courses scheduled, and the Trail itself a quiet small-miracle of state economic development. A short post on the history of how 26 public golf courses, on eleven sites, with 468 holes, ever got built in Alabama in the first place.

#alabama #robert-trent-jones-trail #rtj-trail

The 15th hole at Augusta National Golf Club

April 2, 20126 min read2012

Dateline April 2, 2012, The Masters Practice Round at Augusta National

Back on the road in the Roadtrek after six months in Flagler Beach. Janice's sister Connie and her husband Lee dropped at the Jacksonville airport, an overnight at Jekyll Island, and on to Augusta for Monday of Masters week. The 5:30 AM alarm, Gate 9, the merchandise tent, and then down to Amen Corner where Tiger and Mark O'Meara were standing on the 15th fairway. Tom Watson hitting into 9. The Eisenhower Cabin. Lunch by the Hogan Bridge in 90 degree heat. The 16th skip-shots. And Janice walking the same course she had worked three Masters tournaments on with IBM in the late 1990s, still without the chance to play it that some of her colleagues got.

#georgia #augusta-national #the-masters

Mount McKinley from Talkeetna, the heart of the 2011 adventure

October 10, 20115 min read2011

Dateline October 2011, A Look Back at Our Spectacular Adventure

Travels have ended for now. We've landed in Flagler Beach, Florida, where we're looking for a new home. A look back at the whole year, the miles, the bears and moose and orcas, the wine consumed (sixty bottles), the people we met, and the day on Tracy Arm to Sawyer Glacier that has to count as the single biggest thrill of the trip. We'll restart in the spring with new adventures.

#walkabout-canada-alaska #after-alaska #retrospective

Sunset on Shinnecock Inlet beach, Long Island, Labor Day weekend 2011

September 5, 20116 min read2011

Dateline September 5, 2011, Long Island, Labor Day at Shinnecock

Out of New England with Irene behind us, a stop in New Bedford with the fishing fleet still in port, the ferry from New London to Orient Point, and on to Carol's in Locust Valley. A run into the city to see our daughter Kieran and son James, with the inimitable Panna II in the East Village (chili-pepper Christmas lights, disco ball, and a fake birthday). Then Labor Day weekend at Carol and Parker's beach trailer at Shinnecock Inlet, where this family has been gathering for 35 years.

#new-bedford #long-island #locust-valley

Walker's Point, the George H.W. Bush family home in Kennebunkport, Maine

August 25, 201110 min read2011

Dateline August 25, 2011, Family Visits and Maine

Pittsburgh with our son James and his fiancée Mary, and the great mouse caper that began in the Midwest. Clinton NY with Janice's cousin Bobbie. Elvis Weekend at the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino with Steve and Marilyn. Long Lake with Kim, Tony, Stella, and Daphne. Vermont, then a quiet visit to Janice's parents Stanley and Jeanne at Eastman Cemetery. Connie and Lee in Derry, the Bush home at Walker's Point, Cape Arundel at sunset, lobster in Rockport, and Cape Cod with Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret as Hurricane Irene rolled through.

#pittsburgh #watkins-glen #clinton-new-york

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, with its famous long porch overlooking Lake Huron

August 8, 20117 min read2011

Dateline August 8, 2011, Across Michigan to Mackinac, and on to Indiana

Across the Upper Peninsula on the UP Golf Trail. Mackinac Island with the Grand Hotel, the red phone booth, no cars since 1898, and clubs hauled between the front and back nine by horse-drawn carriage. Sleeping Bear Dunes with Pat and Anna Carney, who were also on the long road home from Alaska. Traverse City with our friend Robin Vaught and her family. And on to Noblesville, Indiana, where Janice took a swing at qualifying for the USGA Women's Senior Amateur.

#michigan #indiana #upper-peninsula

Native dancers from Oklahoma at Jasper's Park Day

July 19, 20115 min read2011

Dateline July 19, 2011, End of Walkabout Canada-Alaska: The Canadian Rockies, Jasper, Lake Louise, and Banff

As the Walkabout Canada-Alaska wrapped up, a final swing through the Canadian Rockies. Grande Prairie in the rain, two days in Jasper with Park Day and Maligne Canyon, the Icefields Parkway south past the Columbia Icefield and Athabasca Glacier (water flowing from there to three oceans), Lake Louise, and a lunch view from the patio at the Fairmont Banff Springs.

#alberta #canada #canadian-rockies

Mountains and a lake in Glacier National Park, Montana

July 24, 20115 min read2011

Dateline July 24, 2011, Glacier National Park, Custer's Last Stand, Crazy Horse, and Mount Rushmore

From Calgary down to the Montana border, into Glacier National Park with its mountains that somehow still impress after Alaska, then east through Missoula (where the people are absurdly good to strangers), across to Little Bighorn for a version of Custer's Last Stand we hadn't heard before, and on into the Black Hills for the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore. The first chapter of After Alaska.

#montana #south-dakota #glacier-national-park

Reflections on Muncho Lake along the ALCAN

British Columbia

July 15, 20114 min read2011

Dateline July 15, 2011, Our Safari Whitehorse to Dawson Creek

Down the ALCAN from Whitehorse with Pete after Bunny flew home, a wildlife safari that turned up nine bears plus moose, bison, and sheep, the Sign Post Forest at Watson Lake, an evening soak at Liard Hot Springs, the rig stuck in the mud back at Dawson Creek, and a final goodbye to John and Melanie at the spot where the Walkabout had begun eight weeks earlier.

#british-columbia #yukon #canada

The view over Dawson City from the Midnight Dome

July 13, 20117 min read2011

Dateline July 13, 2011, Dawson City and Whitehorse, Yukon

Dawson City brings the Klondike gold rush stories back to life: Jack London's cabin, a personal connection to his grand-nephew Milo Shepard at the Jack London Ranch in Glen Ellen, Diamond Tooth Gertie's, a German Rotel Tours sleeping bus, the drive south to Whitehorse, Mom's famous family-sized cinnamon buns, the restored sternwheeler S.S. Klondike, the MacBride Museum, and the world's longest wooden fish ladder at the Whitehorse Rapids dam.

#yukon #canada #dawson-city

The Chicken statue, town mascot of Chicken, Alaska

July 7, 20115 min read2011

Dateline July 7, 2011, Leaving Alaska via Chicken and the Top of the World Highway

Leaving Alaska by way of Delta Junction, Tok, the rough Taylor Highway up to the town of Chicken (named because no one could spell Ptarmigan), the all-gravel Top of the World Highway, a stop at the Boundary station, an easy border crossing into Canada, and the Yukon River ferry into Dawson City.

#alaska #yukon #delta-junction

John, Janice, Pete and Bunny Warenski, and Patrick Carney at the North Star Golf Club in Fairbanks

July 4, 20115 min read2011

Dateline July 4, 2011, Fairbanks, Alaska

After Denali, a few days in Fairbanks: camping on the Chena River, eighteen holes with Pete and Bunny Warenski and Patrick and Anna Carney at the most northern USGA course in America, the story of Fairbanks' swindler founder E.T. Barnette, our 12th anniversary at the Pump House Restaurant, and the Aurora Ice Museum at Chena Hot Springs.

#alaska #fairbanks #north-star-golf

Sunset over Denali at 11 PM in early July

July 1, 20114 min read2011

Dateline July 1, 2011, Denali National Park

Denali National Park, the highlight the whole trip had been pointing at. The Fanny Quigley dinner theater show, Kitty the barmaid collecting dollar kisses, an international potluck with Hal's Hungarian goulash and Bunny's Polish perogies, three days camped at Teklanika at mile 29, and a 6:20 AM bus run out the Park Road where we joined the 30 percent club and saw the north face of Mt. McKinley clear as a bell.

#alaska #denali-national-park #mt-mckinley

The three peaks of the Alaska Range from Talkeetna: Mount Foraker, Mount Hunter, and Mount McKinley

June 27, 20116 min read2011

Dateline June 27, 2011, Anchorage to Denali

Eagle River nights and 18 holes at Eagleglen on Elmendorf Air Force Base, up to Hatcher Pass and the old Independence Mine, then on toward Denali by way of Talkeetna, where the three great peaks of the Alaska Range, Foraker, Hunter, and McKinley, were as clear as a bell. Plus Pete Warenski and John taking on a two-pound Seward's Folly burger at the West Rib Pub.

#alaska #anchorage #eagle-river

Dateline June 21 (Soltice, Sun is bright at 11:30 pm), Soldotna to Anchorage

June 21, 20118 min read2011

Dateline June 21 (Soltice, Sun is bright at 11:30 pm), Soldotna to Anchorage

While in Soldotna we did get the opportunity to play golf, you probably forgot that was part of the trip since we haven't played since being in Dawson Creek at John Rigsby's Farmington 9 hole course. The first 9 hole ...

Bald eagle with two chicks in the nest at Diamond M Ranch

June 18, 20114 min read2011

Dateline June 18, 2011, Homer to Soldotna and Diamond M

Six moose along the highway up the Kenai Peninsula, six days at the Diamond M Ranch in Soldotna with patriarch Carroll, salmon fishing on the Kenai River, a drive out to Captain Cook State Recreation Area, a razor clam dig that yielded over 200 clams for Friday night's soup, and a bald eagle's nest at the heart of the ranch with parents feeding their eaglets.

#alaska #kenai-peninsula #soldotna

The view down to Homer Spit from the Sterling Highway

June 13, 20119 min read2011

Dateline June 13, 2011, Across Prince William Sound and Down the Kenai

Ferry from Valdez to Whittier across Prince William Sound, the single lane shared tunnel into the Kenai Peninsula, six glaciers in the Portage Valley, musk ox and Kodiak cubs at the wildlife center, the old gold rush town of Hope, an orca pod off Seward, sockeye fishermen at Cooper Landing, and a few rounds at the Salty Dawg with Navy sailors in Homer.

#alaska #prince-william-sound #whittier

Columbia Glacier, Prince William Sound

June 9, 20116 min read2011

Dateline June 9, 2011, Valdez: A Picnic, a Glacier, and Jack Wilson's Salmon

A week in Valdez on Prince William Sound: a fresh halibut picnic with the locals on Memorial Day, the 1964 earthquake history, a glacier cruise out to Columbia Glacier through ice flows and sea otters, and a salmon barbecue using a recipe John's father, Jack Wilson, perfected decades ago.

#alaska #valdez #columbia-glacier

John and Janice driving the Roadtrek through the Yukon

June 5, 20117 min read2011

Dateline June 5, 2011, Haines to Tok to Valdez

Off the Marine Highway at last, with the Roadtrek group reuniting in Haines and Tok. Wonderful drives through the Yukon to Kluane Lake, the Sourdough RV Park's pancake throw, fishing in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and a long beautiful road down to Valdez.

#alaska #haines #tok

Mendenhall Glacier seen from the ferry leaving Juneau

May 30, 20114 min read2011

Dateline May 30, 2011, Juneau to Sitka to Skagway

Glaciers in Juneau, Russian history in Sitka, totem poles and ferries through the Inside Passage, and a drive over White Pass to Carcross with three grizzly bears along the way. A week on the Alaska Marine Highway.

#alaska #juneau #sitka

John and Janice at Sawyer Glacier, Tracy Arm Fjord

May 23, 20113 min read2011

Dateline May 23, 2011, Tracy Arm Fjord and Sawyer Glacier

A day on the Adventure Bound from Juneau through Tracy Arm Fjord to the face of Sawyer Glacier. Mountains rising from the sea, bears and eagles and seals along the shore, icebergs floating thick, and the kind of day you remember the rest of your life.

#alaska #juneau #tracy-arm-fjord

Roadtrek crossing a canyon bridge in British Columbia

May 21, 20114 min read2011

Dateline May 21, 2011 - Trip to Prince Rupert

We left Dawson Creek for Prince Rupert and the Alaska Marine Highway ferry, back down Highway 97 through Pine Pass, then west on Highway 16 past Smithers, Hazelton, and Terrace to the coast.

Melanie and John Rigsby, owners of Farmington Fairways

British Columbia

May 15, 20115 min read2011

Dateline May 15, 2011, Over Pine Pass to a Three-Day Welcome at Farmington Fairways

From a casino parking lot in Prince George up over a snowy Pine Pass, then a chance find that turned into the best three days of the trip so far: an RV park with a golf course, run by John and Melanie Rigsby, who pulled us into their opening weekend like we were old friends.

#british-columbia #dawson-creek #pine-pass

John and Janice at Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway, Dawson Creek, British Columbia

British Columbia

May 16, 20113 min read2011

Dateline May 16, 2011, Dawson Creek, BC: Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway

We reached Dawson Creek, Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway, and met the rest of the Walkabout Canada-Alaska group. Twenty-five Roadtreks from across North America, organized by Wendell Nunes of the Western Chapter, ready to head north together.

#british-columbia #dawson-creek #alaska-highway

The 2026 edition of The MilePost, Alaska's legendary guidebook, now in its 78th year

May 14, 20112 min read2011

The MilePost: Our Guide North

If you have never driven to Alaska, there is one book every veteran of the road will tell you to get. The MilePost rode in our glove compartment from the first mile to the last.

#alaska #milepost #alaska highway

View from Apex Lookout on Knox Mountain over Kelowna and Lake Okanagan

British Columbia

May 11, 20113 min read2011

Dateline May 11, 2011, Vancouver to Prince George: Wine, Golf, and Pine Forests

From the ferry at Vancouver up through Hope and the Okanagan wine country, with stops in Kelowna and a round at Tobiano Golf Club outside Kamloops, then north through Cache Creek to Prince George. Three days now until we meet the Walkabout group at Dawson Creek.

#british-columbia #okanagan-valley #kelowna

Butchart Gardens in spring bloom, Vancouver Island

British Columbia

May 6, 20114 min read2011

Dateline May 6, 2011, Vancouver Island, British Columbia

A week exploring Vancouver Island: Victoria's waterfront, Sooke on the river, Butchart Gardens in spring bloom, Parksville's mile-wide beach at low tide, and golf at one of the oldest courses in British Columbia. Eight days now until we meet the group at Dawson Creek.

#british-columbia #vancouver-island #victoria

Sunset over Mutiny Bay from Will and Cathy's home on Whidbey Island

May 1, 20113 min read2011

Dateline May 1, 2011, Some Time Has Gone By, Whidbey Island

A pause on Whidbey Island at John's brother Will and his wife Cathy's home overlooking Mutiny Bay. The Roadtrek needed a new radiator part, Janice and Will took care of it, and the Walkabout was about to begin in earnest. A look back at the months that bridged the gap: Clay's wedding in Hawaii, the Lake Jovita home selling, and becoming officially homeless.

#washington #whidbey-island #mutiny-bay

Clay and Talia with both sets of parents on their wedding day

April 11, 20112 min read2011

Dateline April 11, 2011, Clay's Wedding and the Big Island

The whole reason for the Hawaii trip: our nephew Clay Trauernicht's wedding to Talia, on the North Shore of Oahu. Then a week on the Big Island with the Wilson clan, Akaka Falls, kayaking out to the Captain Cook Monument in Kealakekua Bay, and snorkeling among more colorful fish than we knew the ocean held. And the news at the end that turned the page on the rest of the year: we had sold the house in Florida.

#hawaii #oahu #north-shore

The USS Arizona Memorial above the sunken battleship in Pearl Harbor

April 1, 20113 min read2011

Dateline April 1, 2011, Pearl Harbor, Oahu

A visit to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. Over six hundred feet of battleship resting on the floor of the harbor with the sailors of December 7, 1941. The wall of names, the small amounts of oil still escaping from the hull, and the USS Missouri turned inward to watch over them. Eleanor Roosevelt's wartime prayer at the circle of remembrance.

#hawaii #oahu #pearl-harbor

Hidden Lake RV Park in Beaumont, Texas, our first overnight

March 25, 20114 min read2011

Dateline March 25, 2011, Florida to Oregon: Two Weeks Across the Country

Two weeks on the road from Florida to Oregon to start our adventure, with stops in Texas, Arizona, and California along the way. Family visits, two birthday parties, our first Walmart night, a water leak in the rain, and a roll into wine country.

#florida #texas #arizona

The start of our Walkabout Canada-Alaska journey

March 1, 20115 min read2011

Before the First Mile

How we went from a tent at Anvil Campground in Williamsburg to a 22-foot Roadtrek on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis, and how a thread on a Roadtrek forum about a 2011 caravan to Alaska turned into the trip we came to call Walkabout Canada-Alaska.

#alaska #walkabout #roadtrek