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 12 of 236 posts

The Welcome to Plains, Georgia signUnited States
4 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
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A hole lined with flowers at Georgia Veterans State ParkUnited States
3 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
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The old train bridge lit at night in Little RockUnited States
3 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
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A hoodoo in Palo Duro CanyonUnited States
3 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
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The Petrified Forest National Park signUnited States
4 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
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The four of us in SedonaUnited States
3 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
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The Guadalupe Mountains in west TexasUnited States
4 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
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The Alamo in San AntonioUnited States
4 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
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John and Janice in TexasUnited States
4 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
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Royal Street in the French Quarter of New OrleansUnited States
6 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
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An osprey at its nest in the EvergladesUnited States
7 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
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The washed-out A1A beach road in Flagler BeachUnited States
8 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
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