Every trip we've shared since 2011—filter by where we went, when we traveled, or what we explored.
Showing 16 of 236 posts
United StatesBack 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.
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United StatesOur 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.
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United StatesWe 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.
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United StatesWe 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.
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United StatesOur 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.
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United StatesOn 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.
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United StatesWe 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.
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United StatesWe 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.
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United StatesWith 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.
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United StatesBrian 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.
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United StatesGetting 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.
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United StatesOn 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.
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United StatesOur 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.
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United StatesCooperstown 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.
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United StatesWashington 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.
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United StatesAfter 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.
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