Fredericksburg, VA

9-24 thru 9-27-14

We camped south of Fredericksburg, VA, that gave us easy access to the four Civil War sites of Fredericksburg (Dec 11-12, 1862), Chancellorsville (April/May, 1863), The Wilderness (May 5-6, 1864), and Spotsylvannia Court House (May 8-21, 1864). These different battlefields are within 17 miles of each other making for easy driving. We were lucky to spend 4 days here and devote a different day to each batttlefield.

The National Park Service has purchased the land where the battles occurred. They have done a wonderful job of restoring the battlefields to what they looked like during the battles. The visitors centers are also very well done with excellent films and thorough explanations of what took place during the battles.

There are driving tours through each of the battle sites that are marked with interpretive signs and monuments. We particularly enjoyed walking some of the trails through the hardwood forests to battle sites.

It is hard to comprehend that 105,000 casualties occurred during these four battles. Such a large loss of life. The Fredericksburg area is half way between Washington and Richmond (the capital of the Confederacy) and was a strategic point for both the Union and the Confederacy.

We are thinking of friends Debbie and Fred as they have visited these battlefields as part of their quest to visit all 390 National Park sites. And they did visit all of them. Congratulations.

Washington D C

9-18 through 9-23

We have spent the last 7 days visiting Washington, D. C. We had previously lived in D C for a year in 1974 and then again in the summer of 1985 and spent a great deal of time exploring the area. Even though we had lived here, it came as a surprise to us as to how beautiful a city it is. We have a lot to be proud of in our nation's capitol.

The Mall area including the Capitol, Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials were inspiring. We had not previously seen the Vietnam Memorial nor the WW II Memorial. They are beautifully done. It makes you take pause about the sacrifices of our service people.

We visited several museums including the Natural History Museum, Air and Space, Holocaust and attended a talk at the Supreme Court. It was interesting to be sitting in the fairly small room where the Justices actually sit.

One highlight of our visit was the tour of the Library of Congress. The inside of the building with all its paintings and mosaics rivals any building that you see in Europe.

All of the tours and entrances are free and every guide that we had on our tours was excellent. It does take a bit of time to get through all the X rays and security checks. Something that we didn't have to do when we lived here.

We parked our motor home at Cherry Hill CG in College Park, MD. It's advertised as the closest RV park to downtown DC. They are very well set up to give you information on the ins and outs of getting into and exploring DC. There is a bus that takes you to the nearest metro station and then it's about a 35 min ride to downtown. They also have Grey Line tours that pick you up at the CG and take you into town for tours. We chose to drive our car to the College Park metro station because it saved time over taking the city bus. Seniors get a reduced rate to ride the metro and it's fairly simple to use once you figure it out.

We did take one day to drive out to Annapolis and enjoy one of our favorite meals of crab cakes. Just can't beat the Maryland blue shell crabs.

Now that I'm finally caught up with the blog, I will look into posting some pictures. We are having so much fun touring that the blog has taken a back seat.

Gettysburg, PA

9/6/14

We headed on I 76 towards our goal of Gettysburg, PA. Our Lazy Daze friends Mike and Vicki contacted us and said they were in Gettysburg. So we decided to head there a little earlier than planned and catch up with them.

It's been a challenge driving on the interstates in Ohio and PA with all their toll roads and different rules. Not only that, but the interstates really need lots of work done on them because they have a fair amount of pot holes and bumpy roads.

It was a beautiful drive through rolling hills covered with hardwood forests. It was hot and humid for the last few days and we will enjoy getting to some cooler weather. We appreciate that all the parks, private and state, have electricity so we can run our air conditioners.

9/7/14

We spent an afternoon and evening catching up with Mike and Vicki. It had probably been 5 years or so since we had last seen them in Death Valley. They are our friends who traded in their sailboat for a motor home,and instead of sailing around the world, they are doing the U.S. in their Lazy Daze.

We are thoroughly enjoying our stay in Gettysburg. Even though we had visited this area twice before when we lived in Washington, D C., we are rediscovering this special place. The new visitors center is well done with an excellent film, museum, and cyclorama painting of Picket's charge during the battle of Gettysburg. It took 5 years to restore the 42 foot high painting that was done in 1883-84. It is extremely detailed with paintings of actual soldiers who fought in the battle.

The entire National Military Park surrounds the town of Gettysburg. There are bus tours of the area but we chose to buy a CD and travel the park on our own. It is very easy to follow the roads and get a full description of the battle as it unfolds. There are 1,328 monuments and memorials scattered along the route that honor states, battalions, and individuals. It's inconceivable that 51,000 soldiers were wounded, captured or killed in three days of fighting from July 1-3 in 1863. That would amount to 6 million deaths in today's time.

Talk about a small world. Larry and Barb from Kalamazoo, MI checked into the same RV park that we are staying in. We had spent some time with them in Apalachicola, FL, and then ran into them when we were in AZ on a different trip. It is fun making friends with people from all over the country.

Sister Jane and hubby Terry are spending 5 days with us. It's been fun touring the battlefield with them. Each day we've covered a different part of the battlefield. Terry drives the car, John plays the CD and Jane and I sit back and enjoy.

The entire battlefield has been restored to what it looked like during the battle. The nonprofit Gettysburg Foundation has purchased all the land and farmhouses that were involved in the three day battle. It's quite a memorable trip to relive what happened here.

Jane, Terry and myself took a ride to Lancaster, PA and Amish country. The visitors center was very helpful in recommending a route to drive and see Amish farms and farmhouses. It was particularly interesting to see the Amish horses and buggies going down the road as they tried to stay out of the way of all the cars.

John stayed back at the motorhome and did some work on the rig and enjoyed some quiet time.

Going East

Somebody was busy and dropped the ball on posting the blog. We have covered 11 states since the beginning of the trip.

After Cheyenne, WY we headed east on I 80 through southern NE. The road followed the Platte River valley. It's the same route that the Oregon, Mormon and California trails took. You can understand why they chose this route since it's fairly flat through a river valley. We started to see lots of large corn fields and crossed into the central time zone.

We passed through Kearny, NE and John had to call Lois from CHS and tell her we were in her grandparent' s hometown. How he remembered this is a mystery.

We decided to stay at a State Recreational Area CG south of the interstate. Johnson Lk Park had large grassy areas under some beautiful trees. Most of the time we stayed ahead on those terrible thunderstorms that were plaguing the midwest, but that night we had a pretty strong thunder and lightning storm. It was time to dig out the weather radio so we could track the severe weather.

We rely on our Weatherbug app on our cell phones for local weather. The radar is particularly helpful. However, our weather alert radio gives accurate up to minute weather warnings from NOAA.

John wanted to take a detour to the Blue Ox factory to have them check out our true center that was installed in CA. He didn't think it was working properly. It gave us a change to get off the interstate and take some back country roads. We ended up at Pender, NE, a small town of about 1,000 people. We were able to stay at a nice CG right next to the factory. They let us stay there for free and even drove out to the motorhome to service our true center. More storms, but not severe. We did notice that the newer homes were built up on knolls so they could have tornado shelters under them. I was happy to leave tornado country.

We left northeast NE and took I 29 into Iowa. We had traveled this area before when we were tracing the Lewis and Clark trail in 2009. The road parallels the muddy Missouri River.

We next spent the night on an Iowa corn farm owned by a former coworker of John's. Jay and Elizabeth were very gracious to give us an interesting tour of the corn/soybean farm. Jay has meticulously restored his family's house, barn, corn bin, etc. He's also installed a very large array of solar panels and is creating a tractor that runs on hydrogen.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner in one of the Amana colonies. The seven separate villages were established in 1855 as a commune where everything was shared in common. The villages became privately owned in 1932 and exist today as a tourist area with lots of cute shops.

After leaving Jay's we continued on I 80,crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois. We picked a state park to spent the night called Starved Rock SP. It's so much nicer to stay in state parks because they pick very nice locations. The sites at this park were private, level and under trees with grass all around. The park was probably not 10% occupied. Our kind of camping.

The next day we crossed through the NW corner of Indiana on I 80 to I 94. New time change as we passed into MI.

We stayed at another SRA campground called Ft Custer that was located half way between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek. We had a lovely private site in the trees.

Here is where we had our first difficulty. When we were leaving the CG we couldn't put in one of the slides. We called CoachNet, our RV roadside service provider. They sent out a person who was able to get the slide in so we could continue on our way. We were on our way to spend a week with our friends Pete and Bonnie and felt certain we could get the slideout fixed in Detroit. As it turned out, that was the case.

We spent a week with our friends on their lovely 40 acre horse property. We were treated royally and included in many of their neighborhood parties. The Michiganders are certainly friendly people.

We are on the road again. We passed into Ohio and continued east on I 80 just to the south of Lake Erie. We then dropped down to I 76. Our friends Allan and Sue were raised in East Liverpool, Ohio and we thought we might visit their home town. We got as close as Lisbon, Ohio but didn't make it to East Liverpool.

It was a lot of driving and moving almost every day but we were trying to get to MI and our friends before Labor Day. The rest of the trip should be easier where we plan to spend anywhere from 5-7 days in one area.