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 24 of 236 posts

The sign at Otsego Golf ClubUnited States
3 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
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Otsego Golf Club on the shore of Otsego LakeUnited States
7 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
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The view from Herbert Hoover's birthplace to his gravesiteUnited States
9 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
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John and Janice with their guide deep in the Soudan mineUnited States
6 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
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Joe Wiegand performing as Theodore RooseveltUnited States
5 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
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A lone bull buffalo in Theodore Roosevelt National ParkUnited States
2 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
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Janice at the Bully Pulpit Golf CourseUnited States
4 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
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The drive to Whitefish, MontanaUnited States
4 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
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A brown bear and her cub on the golf course at WatertonCanada
3 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
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Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia RiverUnited States
3 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
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Ross Lake in the North CascadesUnited States
4 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
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John and Janice in Oregon wine countryUnited States
5 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
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A rainbow over Shoshone FallsUnited States
3 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
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John and Janice setting off in the RoadtrekUnited States
5 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
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On a boat beneath Iguazu FallsArgentina
3 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
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King penguins at Volunteer Point, Falkland IslandsFalkland Islands
3 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
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The Amalia Glacier in Chilean PatagoniaChile
2 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
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The first view down at Machu PicchuPeru
5 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
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The circular terraces of MorayPeru
4 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
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John with a baby llama at PisacPeru
5 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
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Steve, Marilyn, and John at the start of the tripPeru
5 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
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