I had done my research to find a cute coffee place in Effingham – Joe Sippers on West 4th St. looked like the perfect place. And it was – a little island of liberal caffeine in a flat Western town. There were several tables outside and it was very inviting – and closed for the holiday. So we spent part of the day looking for Starbucks – which I will go to only in a coffee emergency (which this was). We found one that was easy to get to just outside of St. Louis – it had great music playing, a barista with a rainbow mask, and a sweet outdoor patio. We went through St. Louis rather than around it in order to see the Arch, which shows up at first as a small thing on the horizon, then keeps growing – kind of like the Rockies as you drive across Nebraska or Kansas.
After Missouri comes Kansas – and Kansas and Kansas, over 400 miles of Kansas. Our destination for today was Salina, Kansas – at a KOA Holiday campground. There aren’t a lot of options along I-70 once you get through Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. Many exits along the highway are labeled with the names of towns that are a good 50 miles away and significant towns (that might have an appropriate coffee shop) are often 30 or 40 miles apart. The other constraint we were under was a need for me to have wireless for a 3-hour work meeting on Tuesday morning. The Salina KOA had wireless – so at a minimum, we knew we could hang out there during my meeting.
This being our last night on the road, we decided to get out the table and set up the RV as a real dining room (albeit with bench seats). Add a tablecloth, candles and a vase with flowers (cut from my mountain laurel bush right before we left Arlington) and, while you wouldn’t mistake it for a restaurant, it passed muster for us.
You might also notice in the “dining room” picture a piece of art on the wall behind me. It’s a print I made in a monoprint class a few years ago. During last fall in Boston, we decided that one wall of the RV needed some decoration – and I “framed” the print and gave it to Liz for Christmas. I’ve included a close-up of it as well; the leaves at the bottom are real, covered in ink.
Fancy dining room with art in Salina, KS
One thing we had forgotten about Kansas until this trip – it’s where the Wizard of Oz takes place – at least until Dorothy gets blown to Oz by the tornado. There’s an Oz Museum somewhere (maybe we’ll visit it next trip) – and the Salina KOA had its share of Oz-y touches, including a tin man and an appropriately named “road” (really just a dirt lane between the RVs).
Oz-y touches at Salina, KS KOA
Tomorrow is our last day on the road – and the day we re-introduce Tristan and Izzie.
Today we drove through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana and camped in Effingham, Illinois at the Camp Lakewood Campground. This is the last day we’ll be able to rack up that many states in a day, as the states get larger as we go West. Even though there were only 15 miles of West Virginia, I had definite flashbacks to the Deer Hunter and memories of doing research in the “hollers” near Parkersburg in my first job at Abt Associates.
In spite of the semi-profane name of the town (which I’m sure has been pointed out to the residents numerous times), our campsite was lovely, as RV campsite goes. We used to judge them much more harshly, but we’ve re-calibrated over the past year and now think any campsite with trees is worthy of note. This one had lots of trees, a lake, a lounge, clean bathrooms (which we are no longer afraid to use) and free chocolate chip cookies when we checked in. There were packs of kids running around, riding bikes, and fishing in the lake – we witnessed the catch of one bluegill. There were even comfy rocking benches set up around the property and below is the view from one of them.
On the shores of Lake Pauline in Effingham, IL
The only downsides were that the Internet didn’t work and our nearest neighbors were strange (again, something we’ve grown accustomed to). We put out our patio mat (purchased at the end of last season after we saw how handy they are) and our portable chairs and toasted our road trip with canned prosecco (yes, prosecco does come in cans – and it’s not too bad).
As usual, there were LOTS of dogs at the campsite, so we got our share of doggie fixes. We were awakened in the morning, though, by an unusual occurrence: the arrival of an Emergency Medical Services vehicle with lights flashing – apparently summoned by our weird neighbors. We never did find out what was happening next door, but we’re relieved to know that one can call 911 from an RV campground and get service.
On Saturday we drove from Maryland to Pittsburgh to see my family. We stopped to see my oldest nephew and his family (picture below), then had dinner with my sister and her husband, my stepmother, and my middle nephew and his wife. Everyone came out to the RV to get some “Izzie time;” we couldn’t take her into the house because of my sister’s two large and somewhat rambunctious Bernese mountain dogs, Fiona and Fletcher.
My nephew and his family (and Liz and me)
Fletcher and Fiona
We camped on the street in front of my sister’s house, grateful that, unlike last year, we could go into her house to eat and use the bathroom. It’s amazing how much more we appreciate these little things after not having them for a year.
And just because this post is so short, here is a bonus picture of Izzie in the RV, burrowing under my sweater and backpack.
We left Boston on Thursday morning, May 27. Our first stop was ½ mile away – at Kickstand Café in Arlington Center. I had pre-ordered a pack of 10 Vietnamese fresh rolls for our journey and they were waiting for us – for FREE, a lovely “good-bye for the summer” gift from the wonderful staff at Kickstand. For those of you in Arlington, please patronize them this summer to make up for my lack of business!
Left: my deck the morning we left. Right: Liz enjoying fresh rolls from Kickstand with peanut sauce
Our destination for Days 1 and 2 was Easton, Maryland, where Liz’s 97-year-old Aunt Lorna lives in assisted living. Lorna is Liz’s mother’s older sister and is the only one of the three sisters still alive. She is a lover of cats and of crab, so we set out to bring her plenty of both. We took Izzie in to see her several times over the course of 24 hours – and Izzie become a famous “therapy cat” at the residence. On Friday night, we bought a whole pound of jumbo lump crab from Lorna’s favorite local restaurant and a six-pack of local ale and the three of us polished it off – with Lorna doing her share.
Aunt Lorna encountering Izzie
We camped those two nights in the parking lot of Lorna’s church. Liz had gotten official permission from “Pastor Jeff” (who lives next door to the church) beforehand and we got to thank him early one morning as he trudged across the parking lot to the garden that the church maintains. We stuck our head out to say hello and were happy to discover the guy in gardening clothes and flip-flops was the aforementioned Reverend.
Our “host” church
On other visits to Aunt Lorna, we’ve gone to the local Amish Market, and this was no exception. We bought too many interesting cheese spreads and some kettle corn and enjoyed the local culture – like the signs pictured below. On the right is a picture of the pig roast in the parking lot of the market.
Images from the Amish Market in Easton, MD
We also took a lovely bird walk at a local Audubon sanctuary, Pickering Creek, and saw a large flock of glossy ibises as well as many nesting swallows in little houses. Unfortunately, we also saw a bunch of ticks, including on the back of my knee and Liz’s torso. We think we removed them quickly and safely, but will be on alert for Lyme symptoms for the next few weeks.
A swallow guarding its family from us.
One of my favorite tasks on road trips is finding local places for lattes wherever we stay for the night. In Easton, it was Whole Note Coffee, less than a mile from Aunt Lorna’s assisted living. There I was introduced to pistachio milk – the latest non-dairy milk on the market. It’s similar to almond milk, but a bit creamier and with a sweet edge.
Masks are definitely less common than last year – and less common than in Massachusetts (although that may have changed on May 29 in Mass.) But this coffee shop still required masks when ordering, which made me feel even better about them, as I’m still not totally comfortable unmasked indoors. Next, on to Pittsburgh.
A quick account of Liz’s trip from Boulder to Boston, in preparation for a longer trip back to Boulder with Andee and Izzie.
Liz made the drive from Boulder to Boston in just 3 days. She spent the first night at her cousin’s house in Kansas City, enjoying KC Barbecue with family. She had planned to find a truck stop for the second night, but I intervened and suggested she might do better at a campsite with an advance reservation. She acquiesced and I found a campground in Marengo, Ohio, just north of Columbus for her. She arrived in time for dinner on Sunday, much to Izzie’s and my delight. A few highlights from her journey below.
Liz here, writing from Boulder after 2088 miles in RVG with Tristan keeping watch for road hazards:
Some people have radar…others have cats
The world changed during those miles: the Georgia results, the riot in DC. But the Colorado sky, which knows nothing about such things, was still there to greet me.
Heading West, getting close to home
As Barack Obama said on November 8th, 2016, “the sun will still rise tomorrow.” Nonetheless, there is work to do.
I wish all of you strength, truth, health, and equilibrium in the coming year.
In spite of my good intentions, blogging has fallen off the stack on this trip, so I’m creating one big post during our last evening out. There’s no Internet here in Hickory Run State Park in the Poconos, so I’m not distracted by email – and I’ll post what I’ve written when we get back to Internet-land tomorrow. (Now that I’m actually posting, it’s 5 days later – apologies!)
We spent a fair amount of time before our departure preparing the RV for transporting Tristan and Izzie – two carriers, lots of special cat blankets, etc. – see below. And on the first day, they clearly had moved right in (also see below). For those who don’t know our two cats – Tristan is slightly bigger and darker, more brown than red. He’s in the foreground in the picture below. Liz took the third picture below, of all three of us asleep on one of the RV beds.
We’re probably some of the few people who plan their departure based on when the Tour de France stage of the day is over…so we left Tuesday morning right after Lennard Kemna arrived at the summit of the day’s climb. Nebraska was just as long going from West to East as it had been on the trip out and we didn’t make it all the way across on our first day. We camped at a KOA in Gretna, Nebraska, slightly West of Omaha. It was a friendly enough place, with a pizza shop in the office. It also had a tiny mini-golf course (I guess that’s redundant…), a splash pad and a separate dog play area.
Our destination on Wednesday was our friends Cindy and Jack Rusher’s house on Big Cedar Lake in West Bend, Wisconsin, where we planned to spend a day or two. This required crossing all of Iowa before getting to Wisconsin – and in the process we missed a turn, so the trip dragged on longer than we had hoped. On the way, we spied a Dunkin’ (what used to be called Dunkin’ Donuts), so we knew we were making our way East. Liz got me an ice coffee, which Izzie helped me finish. (She (Izzie) will drink anything that has milk in it…)
Izzie next to the empty ice coffee – who me?
We arrived at the Rushers’ house to a traditional Wisconsin dinner – boiled brats and cheesy potatoes – with some other Wisconsin friends who drove up from Madison to meet us. In addition to a lovely large house on the lake, Jack and Cindy recently acquired a small cottage in an adjacent lot for use as a guest house. We and the cats moved into the cottage – and somehow ended up staying until Sunday morning, enjoying an unexpected vacation. Highlights included a “cocktail cruise” one night in the motorboat, long walks on nearby conservation land and a kayak trip to visit one of the springs that feed Big Cedar Lake. We saw hummingbirds, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, great blue herons, kingfishers and pintail ducks. I participated in a webinar on “engaging students with authentic data” and recorded my part for a virtual choir that Coro Allegro is putting together for the Terezin Music Foundation gala on November 9.
But we think Tristan and Izzie may have enjoyed the stop even more than we did. The cottage was the perfect playground for them with many climbing opportunities and even more windows from which to watch the lake. But the best part of the cottage was its other residents: mice. Izzie and Tristan spent a lot of time sitting together, staring at a heat register that we figured must be pumping out mouse aroma. And the third night we were there, Izzie excitedly brought us a gift in the middle of the night – her first mouse conquest, solidly dead. She regaled us with a long story about the chase, until we flushed the mouse down the toilet and she settled down again.
Unfortunately, we also heard about RBG’s death while we were in Wisconsin and spent a sober evening considering her legacy and the future of the Supreme Court. We briefly felt uncomfortable about the RBG stickers we have on the back of the van, but then decided they were a good way to honor her memory.
After several more yummy dinners, hot tub soaks and lunches by the lake, we managed to tear ourselves away and resume our eastward trek. On Sunday we made it to Western Ohio, where we stayed in one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve yet encountered, at Sauder Village in Archbold, Ohio, one of those “living history” sites. The campground is actually affiliated with a nice inn, so in non-pandemic times campers are allowed to use its pool and hot tub. There was also a walking trail into town and a cute coffee-shop-in-a-trailer, both of which I took advantage of. Revival Coffee was just started this summer, when its co-owners lost their jobs due to the pandemic and decided to start a coffee camper, so I was happy to add my support to their endeavor.
Revival Coffee in Archbold, OH
Five hundred miles of driving found us still in Pennsylvania (which rivals Nebraska for being wide). Route 80 through northern Pennsylvania is beautiful, but full of trucks, hills and curves. I spent much of the afternoon in the back of the van trying to keep the cats quiet and out of one another’s hair/fur. If we’re both up front, they tend to want to join us, and I’ve found that if I’m on one of the beds in the back, they’re more willing to both lounge with me and leave the driving to Liz. Here is one of the sweeter pictures we have of Izzie, who was enjoying a petting session in my lap.
Izzie, the affection hound
We camped last night – our last night out for a while – in Hickory Run State Park near Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. (If you don’t know the story of how Jim Thorpe got its name, look it up..). The Poconos are a beautiful part of Pennsylvania; I spent parts of several summers at Camp B’nai B’rith in Starlight, PA, so the area has positive connections for me. Liz ,it turns out, has less fond memories, as she did rowing training near Jim Thorpe back in the day – and didn’t enjoy it.
We in the final stretch now, on Route 84 through New York and Connecticut and then hitting the Mass Pike at Sturbridge. I’m ready to be in a real bed and for the cats to have more space to run around – but I am also dreading the amount of work it will take to move back in after over 3 months away. We’re looking forward to re-joining our community in Arlington – while still missing our friends in Colorado. Shanah Tovah to those of you who celebrate the Jewish New Year.
The next morning we left the RV park and Liz insisted I take a picture of this sign at the exit because we had seen variations of it before – and it’s so representative of the RV culture.
Typical exit sign at RV campground
We then headed into Cheyenne for the third and last of my coffee shop adventures. I had looked up local coffee shops and found Paramount Coffee, in the old Paramount movie theater. The baristas were masked, as were the other customers, the coffee was good, and they even had a gluten-free chocolate donut in the pastry case – which I rationalized with “how often do I get a gluten-free donut? – and, besides, I’m on vacation.”
Our last stop was for Liz to get a COVID test in preparation for her knee surgery. It was what we call the “brain swab,” where they get a sample from up high in the nasal passages. Liz said it just made her want to sneeze and wasn’t nearly as bad as she anticipated. (And it was negative…and her knee surgery went well!)
Our next trip in RVG will be from Colorado back to Boston, along with both Izzie and Tristan. Maybe I’ll blog that one too…
Guernsey State Park is also home to a CCC Museum. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25. Many improvements in public spaces were accomplished by the CCC and this museum is no exception. We were greeted by a statue of a well-built, healthy man (member of the CCC, of course) and were the only visitors to the museum. It was a spectacular building – but some of the exhibit text reeked of racism in the way it described conflicts between Native Americans and pioneers. We marveled in particular at how much labor had gone into the quarrying and transporting of stone for the building.
Our final stop in the area was at the Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site, just outside of the State Park. These are ruts from wagons that traversed the Oregon Trail, cut several feet deep into sandstone. I have to admit that I wondered how they knew these ruts were from wagons and suspected someone might have built an historic site around some naturally-occurring gullies in the rock. But nonetheless, they are impressive. See image below, with Liz for scale.
Liz in Oregon Trail ruts
We almost headed home after these spectacular sights, but we wanted one more night out. We considered Curt Gowdy State Park (named for a Boston sportscaster who must have been born in Wyoming), but couldn’t get reservations with so little notice, so we settled for AB RV Park just outside of Cheyenne. As RV parks go, this one was OK – there were a few trees and it wasn’t too crowded. It REALLY impressed us, though, with its on-site BBQ restaurant. We abandoned all pretense of healthy eating and chowed down on ribs and brisket.
The next morning we set off again on our bikes to Edness Kimball Wilkins State Park, just a few miles from our campsite, along (not surprisingly) the North Platte. It was a lovely ride and I seemed to be flying along effortlessly. Unfortunately, Liz informed me this was because we had a serious tail wind and going back to the campground would require much more effort (she was right).
One of my favorite things about the state park was the signs they had posted on trash cans to remind people to socially distance. As a math educator who has worked in zoos, these were totally up my alley (see below).
Visiting the state park also gives me an excuse for a short diversion about the role of women in Wyoming’s development. “Edness” is a female name and Edness Wilkins was the first female speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives in the mid 1960’s. Before that, she served as assistant to the first female governor of Wyoming (who was the first female governor of ANY of the states) in 1925. Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote, and Laramie has a Museum called the Wyoming Women’s History House, which celebrates the achievements of 13 women from Wyoming.
We visited “It’s A Grind” on our way back to the campground and discovered, as I had hoped, that it was a sweet spot, following health precautions cheerfully and with good humor.
Sign from “It’s A Grint” coffee shop in Casper
Our next destination was Guernsey State Park, another of Wyoming’s parks-on-a-reservoir, but first we knew we had to stop in Douglas, where Jennifer, one of our Boulder neighbors, was born. Most people know Douglas (if they do at all) as the home of the “Jackalope,” a fictional animal apparently invented by whimsical taxidermists. But we knew from Jennifer that Douglas was also the location of a POW camp for Italian and German prisoners during World War II and that the only remaining camp building had been turned into a small museum. Indeed, once we found it, with the help of Google Maps, it was fascinating. The walls of several of the rooms are decorated with murals painted by the prisoners and apparently several marriages between prisoners and local girls resulted. Look up Camp Douglas, Wyoming if you’re interested in more of this unusual history.
Guernsey State Park is another unheralded gem. Not only is it situated on a spectacular reservoir, but it was the site of a CCC camp in the 1930’s and boasts some of the most beautiful “rustic architecture” I’ve ever seen. On our way to our campsite, we drove to “the Castle,” which is actually a picnic shelter, although I thought it would make a great wedding site, particularly in these pandemic times. Next to it is a fancy bathroom that the CCC workers apparently called “the million dollar biffy,” as it was an extravagant expense. These pictures capture only some of the magnificence of the setting and the architecture.
Finally, we settled down in our campsite among the calls of killdeer and gulls. Here is a view of our camper in “living room mode,” with the front seats swiveled backwards to create more of a living space.
Andee and Liz's RV Trip 