Cross Country trip to Washington Sate and Back

Cross Country trip to Washington Sate and Back

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Well, I’m finally working on getting caught up on my posts here on the JA Roadtrips Blog! Sis has been a bit better on posting here lately to the site than I have been, but if you want to see posts from me daily, pay a visit to my main website at jimpearsonphotography.com where you can also find links to all my Social Media Accounts where I post pretty much daily.

As sis says in her post from our Washington State trip, we both had a great time and got to meet up with family and friends along the way, which is always nice during our trips. I was happy to finish off my 50th state on this trip when we cruised through Oregon on this trip. Sis is doing Hawaii with her daughter and her husband this year in May and it’s her 49th state. I guess we’ll have to plan something down the road to get to Alaska as it is the last state she hasn’t visited.

Our trip lasted for 15 days and we covered a bit over 6,000 miles during the two weeks we were on the road! I of course was interested in finding trains as always, but also enjoyed seeing other sites and places along the way, including Yellowstone National Park, where I’ve never been. Sis had been there before, but of course she was more than happy to visit it again!

We both enjoy traveling a lot and while COVID put a damper on our travels for over two years, it’s nice to be able to hit the road again to see new sites and locations.

While this post is about our cross country trip, I do have another coming up from a 10 day train photo charter I did in Colorado last fall, so stay tuned for that one! I have some other plans for trips this year, one of which will be a train photo charter to Vermont in the fall, and hopefully a few small train trips before then. Stay tuned!

Below you’ll find some of my favorite images from our trip that were made on my iPhone!

 

Mini-Trips

Mini-Trips

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This past weekend, I went with two of my daughters to a Guns and Roses Concert in Nashville TN.  We left at 1pm on Saturday.  Had a meal at The Cheesecake Factory, then checked into our hotel.  We left the hotel around 5:30 to go to the concert.  Traffic was so bad that we were about 30 minutes late.  

That didn’t bother us too much because the opening act was Carrie Underwood.  She puts on a good show, but she sings mostly country, not rock.  I personally don’t care much for country music anymore.  I used to like it, but it just doesn’t appeal lately.  She finished up around 7:45 and Guns and Roses didn’t get started until nearly nine.  That didn’t seem very efficient to me, but they did put on a good show. They played until 10:30 or so.  They left all their biggest hits until the last hour.  We enjoyed it, but it was so noisy, we couldn’t even hear ourselves sing along.  It was my first Rock Concert.  Probably my last.  

It was nearly midnight by the time we got back to the hotel.  After a good night’s sleep, we headed home around eleven a.m. and stopped for food at the Clarksville Bojangles.  It was an enjoyable weekend, not just because of the concert, but because of spending time with my daughters.  Family time without all the chaotic goings on of eight young ones between four and twelve years old.  Just us grown up girls talking and enjoying each other’s company.

Kentucky Travels

Kentucky Travels

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I find it somewhat strange that we’ve now visited all 48 contiguous states, but we haven’t seen all of Kentucky yet.  We’ve been many places in our state: Mammoth Cave, Cumberland Falls, Louisville, Bowling Green, Paducah, Red River Gorge, etc.  But there are still places we’ve missed.  

This past weekend, we went to one of those places.  We visited Kingdom Come State Park and The Big South Fork Railway.  Along the way, we stayed overnight at Benham Schoolhouse Inn.  Kingdom Come State Park is named after the popular Civil War novel, “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come,” by Kentucky author John Fox Jr.

The park is beautiful, the railway featured a coal mine tour that was very interesting and the Inn was comfortable and nicely furnished with friendly, helpful personnel.  

 

On Our Way

On Our Way

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We are in Kansas City.  We made pretty good time  we stopped in St. Louis for a quick lunch at Banana’s Barbecue.  We hadn’t heard of them before and thought it was local, but it is a chain. According to their website they have multiple locations around Missouri and there’re even some in Evansville and Paducah.  I’d recommend them which is more than I can say for our current hotel.

It’s using the LaQuinta  name, but it definitely isn’t up to their usual standards.  The bathroom is cramped and the tub is stained.  I haven’t been able to access their WIFI although they claim it’s just a matter of opening the browser and accepting their terms.  I finally gave up on theirs and connected thru my hotspot.  They presented a disclaimer saying they just recently acquired the property and plan to improve it, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time. 

Jim is out looking for trains.  I brought the Roku from the bedroom and hooked it up.  I had to use my hotspot for it too.  They didn’t have Pandora on their menu, so I’ve added it.  When I opened it, it automatically pulled up my account and all my stations.  Nice that something worked well.  When Jim gets back, we’ll be watching the first episode of the new Outlander season.

Tomorrow we head out to Wyoming.  Our next reservation is in Cheyenne.  It’s another La Quinta, but I’m pretty sure it’s a normal one.  We’ll see.  We plan to lunch in Kearney Nebraska.  We’ll be trying to find a local place.  We usually do that for lunch.  For dinner we just eat at whatever is close to the hotel.  Today it was a Denny’s so we had breakfast for dinner.  It’s nice to be on the road again.