Jim and April's Roadtrips

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted anything here.  In my small defense, I haven’t been going much of anywhere.  Grocery store, church, out to eat, Walmart….just not much material there.  This past month has been dedicated mostly to setting up a new website for a writing group I belong to call Wordsmith Studio. We are in the process of making a community site for writers to meet, discuss, and support each other.  To do this, we are using WordPress and a plugin called BuddyPress.  It has been an adventure since no one seems have a BuddyPress for Dummies book available.

I’ve been to several sites that claim to have info, but none of them seem to be addressing our issue. So all my traveling this past month has been electronic and in vain.  Now I find myself with less than a week to go before we leave for our Combat Camera Reunion Roadtrip.  If you’ve been following us, you may already know quite a bit about that. If so, here’s a recap and update.  If not, here’s a quick rundown.

This site was started a little over a year ago as a place for my brother, Jim, and I to post pictures and information about interesting places we found as we traveled to his Air Force Combat Camera reunion in Albuquerque, then on to Los Angeles and up to Arches National Park where Jim wanted to try some night photography.  It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since then.  It’s time for the reunion again and this time it’s in Charleston SC, a place I’ve always wanted to visit.

We leave home on the morning of September 22nd.  That’s this coming Saturday! To head toward the Carolinas, we would normally go to Nashville first, then head down I-40.  Because I need to visit with one of my granddaughters who is in Richmond, KY along the way, we are going to head directly east on the West Kentucky Parkway instead.  We’ll pick up I-75 in Lexington, stop off in Richmond, then head south, through Knoxville, into the Smokey Mountains.  We plan to spend two nights at Pigeon Forge, then head down to Charlotte for a visit with my youngest daughter and her family until Thursday morning.  Her daughter, Stephanie, is taking photography courses in college and wants her Uncle Jimmie to help her learn more about what her camera is capable of doing.

On Thursday we report to Charleston for the actual reunion.  The reunion committee has a couple of tours scheduled, but they’ve also allowed some free time for people to check out the historic district.  I’ve been told for years that Charleston is a beautiful city and I’m really excited to finally be able to see it.  We’ll be there from Thursday until Sunday morning.

We plan to drive up the coast on Sunday, staying as close as possible to the beaches along the way.  At Norfolk VA, we will turn west, visit the battlefields at Fredericksburg, then head into Washington DC for the remainder of the week.  I’ve never been to the capital either and I love visiting new places. Jim plans to take extensive photos of the monuments on the mall.  He wants to get some night shots there as well.  I want to visit the Smithsonian and the National Zoo.  We won’t get there until Monday and we leave Friday morning so time will be constrained, but we’ll pack as much into as possible.  On the way home we’ll be making stops in Roanoke and Cumberland Gap for photos.

Two weeks to make a big loop east, south, north, then back west to reach home again on Sunday evening of October 7th.  I promise to make time for, at least, 3 posts during that time and there will be photos as well.  If you’ve visited these places yourself and have recommendations of places to see or eat, leave them in the comments below.

I’ve checked in on Facebook from several Nowhere, (insert state name) places along the road this week.  Now it’s time to post photos of the places in between.  This is the first full day I’ve had for working on pictures.  I’m kind of frustrated because I’m having to learn to use a new software program while working in a strange environment.  We recently installed Lightroom on the laptop.  I’ve never used Lightroom at all and I don’t enjoy working on the laptop.  I’m longing for my desktop with the two nice 23 inch monitors and the wireless keyboard.

As a kind of fix for the laptop problem (my biggest complaint is the smallness of the screen, I’ve taken over Brad’s (my grandson) game console television in his “man cave.”  He had a cable to hook it up to my laptop so I’m using it like a monitor.  I am sitting in his “game playing” recliner with the keyboard on my lap and my writing pad on the right arm to serve as a mouse pad.  I might eventually get used to it but, at the moment, I’m staving off Alzheimer’s by learning to live outside my comfort zone.

Our trip went smoothly, but the schedule was more strenuous than anticipated.  We got started later than we planned which put us into our first night’s hotel after 10pm.  That meant we were late getting on the road the next morning which put us into our second night’s hotel the same way.  We elected not to sight-see in Casper, but we stopped along the way and still wound up not getting here until….wait for it….AFTER 10PM.

The road between here and home has lots of long empty stretches.  The last day, we told the GPS to use the “fastest route” instead of “most freeways.”   Unfortunately, we lost this round of the GPS game.  It might have been faster, but it sure didn’t seem like it.

I was pleased with it’s choice, at first, since it followed the roads I had chosen on Google.  I thought it would be nice to get away from the tourist trap places and see some local sites, plus it was a more direct route that the interstate.  That was before we hit the Road Construction. I’m not talking about squeezing everyone from two or three lanes into one that used to be the shoulder of the highway.  We handled that coming across Missouri and Nebraska.  It was frustrating, but doable.  This was a two lane blacktop road reduced to very rough gravel.  Then, after going thirty miles an hour for miles on end, there was a stop light with a sign saying “Wait for lead car.”  After sitting there, fourth in a line that was growing behind us like a snake, for an endless 15 minutes or so, the “lead car” came churning along through the dust with one truck behind it.  He did a U turn and we all followed him through the actual construction site.

On the other side of what seemed to be about a five mile stretch, the two lanes of gravel resumed.  Over the next several hours, we passed through small wide places in the road that had been named as though they were towns, but apparently had no need for gas.  There was a bar and grill at each one with a full parking lot.  Some of them also had schools and post offices, but it seemed they didn’t feel the need for a place to buy gasoline.  We started to really worry when we saw a sign that said “Road Closed Ahead.”  Luckily it ended at an intersection with the road where we were supposed to turn next.

There was a gas station there, attached to a Casino, in the middle of Nowhere.  This, my friends, is not Kentucky.  The new road, while still only two lanes, was paved.  As we started out, they threatened us with construction ahead again, but we didn’t see any.  Maybe they are just warning the locals.  Along here, we came across a cool windmill farm.  We had been wondering all across Nebraska and Wyoming why we hadn’t run across one.  The wide open spaces seemed like a perfect place to put them.  Maybe they were away from the highway, like this one.

Even though I had extended the Nowhere joke across the mostly empty countryside, it was beautiful and the cities where we spent the night were active and well maintained.  If they had areas of decline and boarded up structures, they weren’t visible from the roads we were on or the hotels where we stayed.

In fact, the main reason we got such a late start from Lincoln, Nebraska was their gorgeous public garden areas near their zoo.  While we love zoos, we decided we would not take the time.  We were just going to stroll through the attached rose garden to photograph the huge fountain on the other side, then check out the Sunken Garden across the street.  We expected to spend an hour at most.  Let’s just say we lost track of time.