The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

Well, we’re heading back home and back in the West..home of good beer!

From Washington, DC we had a couple of long driving days heading to Mankato, Mn to visit my brother, Howard, and his family. The first night was spent in a little town in Ohio at the delightful (ha ha) La Siesta Hotel for the bargain price of $46/night! It was a very basic but clean with a very nice owner and really, for that price who can complain?! We also had a great dinner at the local Mexican restaurant with great margaritas and some good tex-mex.

Next night was in Chicago, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake. We had talked about staying outside of town but Jim had never been there so we decided to stay downtown. We did have a great location at the Best Western North River (and we have learned a valuable lesson along the way. I called the hotel and was given a rate of $189. We walked in the door and were given the room for $139..big savings and not the first time it happened in the course of this trip). We did have a good walk down to the Sears tower but didn’t go to the top as they wanted $39 pp!! Outrageous. So, we wandered a bit but just headed back to the hotel for some Olympics and pizza delivery. It was quite disheartening to be in big city USA and have all those people rushing down the streets, no one smiling, no one making eye contact, no one looking happy or even pleasant. It has been very obvious throughout this trip how different we are in the US from everywhere else we’ve traveled in the world, where people are much more “involved” with the street scene and their community than here.. I’m not liking our way of doing it so much as we’re all so disconnected from everyone else around us. The only place we’ve been that has not been like that is in the South..basically from Memphis to South Carolina people are much more laid back and interested in actually relating to those around them.

Anyway, we got to Howard and his wife Kathy’s house (along with their kids Nathan, Eric & Chelsea, dog Sebastian and 15 cats (15 is NOT a mistype!). We haven’t see Kathy and the kids in 5 years and Howard in 3yrs and both of those times was due to our mom’s illness so it was really great to see them just because. We mainly hung out, enjoyed their great fire pit , and visited some of Mankato’s historical sites and the local brewery. All good fun but then back on the road again!

We drove a long , pretty boring day through southwest Minnesota and all of South Dakota to get to the Black Hills, near Mt Rushmore. On the way we did stop in Luverne, Mn…where I spent most of my childhood so Jim could see our old house and town. The house has changed a bit but, interestingly enough, in over 25years the downtown street looks almost exactly the same. Next stop was the Corn Palace in South Dakota…a stop everyone makes but not too exciting. Basically it’s a building that they do artwork made of corn on each year. Then, Wall drug..another cheesy stop that everyone makes…partially because you’ve seen billboards for it since Minnesota advertising $.05 coffee and ice water. We actually opted for a chocolate shake and skipped buying any of the souvenirs!

In the Black Hills we stayed at the KOA Mt Rushmore/ Hill City. We had reserved a tent site but upon arrival realized that all of their tent sites basically sucked…very few trees, on a hill with gravel and no grass. So, we opted for one of the cabins and had a late dinner. The next day was a very busy day touring the Motorcycle Museum in Sturgis, going through Deadwood (which has lost most historical value and is basically all cheesy shops and gambling halls), the amazing Crazy Horse Monument which was started in 1948 and is not even close to being done. It’s the largest monument in the world and the devotion of the original sculptur and how his family is amazing.

Next stop was the Custer State park where we saw quite a few bison and pronghorn sheep. We were going to explore one of the caves but were just too tired at that point so headed back to camp and ate dinner. At 8pm we headed up to Mt Rushmore for the lighting ceremony which proved to be very moving. There was a short film highlighting the 4 presidents and then they lit up the sight and had all the military people in the audience go on stage and help with the lowering of the flag. It was definately worthwhile.

From the Black Hills we drove to Cody, Wy…another pretty boring drive as anyone knows who’s ever been in Wyoming! Cody itself was good. We stayed at the Irma Hotel..built in 1909 by Buffalo Bill himself for his youngest daughter. We toured his museum which was well done, watched the “shootout” in front of the hotel, and had a good burger & beer at the historic Silver Dollar Saloon, which is now a biker bar. Overall, a very good afternoon.

It was a fairly short drive from Cody into Yellowstone park. We entered the park from the East entrance and stopped for some sightseeing, to get a fishing license for Jim, and to see Old Faithful blow before heading out through the West entrance on our way to our KOA.  It was another very nice KOA and they had really nice tent sites so we got all set up right near the camp kitchen and bathrooms..lovely! We had a great dinner of chicken pasta with peanut sauce, met some other travelers as we cooked and had a camp fire under a ceiling of stars. It doesn’t get much better than that.

We set the alarm for 5:30am the next morning because we were heading out for Jim to flyfish. However, it had been a VERY cold night (around 39 degrees) so we stayed snuggled in our sleeping bags until 6:30am! It was still pretty cold but we did get going and were in the park fishing on the Madison River by 7:30am. I hung out, read, and watched Jim fish and he had a great 3 hours or so of fly fishing. It was a beautiful site..lovely, meandering river through meadows with the mountains in the background. Right out of “A River Runs Through It”. We didn’t have any fishing luck but did then enjoy a great (albeit hot) hike to Mystic Falls and the overlook above it. We spent the rest of the day exploring a whole bunch of the other geysers in the park and watching for wildlife. We never did see a beer but we saw loads of elk, bison, pronghorn sheep, mule deer and one really cool moose.

Today, 26August, we celebrated our 1yr anniversary from the day we left on this incredible journey that has been our life for the last year. Time sure does fly by but we wouldn’t trade the last year for anything.

We had a gorgeous drive today, up through West Yellowstone, through Bozeman, Butte, and Missoula (a wonderful little college town) up to Kalispell with views of the Rocky Mountains all along the way..just beautiful.  Tomorrow we head up into Canada on the way to Mike & Malisa’s house for Labor Day weekend…keep tuned for our next adventures! Hope everyone is well and we’ll see you all at home soon. Love, J&R

Here we are in our capital, it took us a lot of years to get here! First of all, on our 2nd full day in Charleston we first headed out to Magnolia Plantation to tour the gardens and walk through the amazing swampland area. Luckily,it was a bit overcast so very muggy but not more than 93 degrees or so. After that we headed to Mount Pleasant to tour the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier used both in WWII and Vietnam (as well as a few movies) and was really fascinating. Neither of us had been on one before and it’s really amazing how large those ships are as well as how complicated they are to operate. We also took some time to go down into a submarine and that life is unimaginable to me, it takes someone very special to be willing to live in that close of quarters!

For dinner we headed to Jestines Kitchen which we’d read about in Lonely Planet as well as a few magazines. It’s a tiny place and we waited in line around 45minutes to get in but it was well worth it! Named after Jestine Matthews, who lived to be 112yrs old, and owned by the daughter of the family she worked for , it is low country cooking at it’s best! Jim had blackened pork chops topped by roasted tomatoes and horseradish cream sauce and I had the best fried chicken anywhere and we both had table wine (southern talk for sweet tea) and the steamed cabbage and butter beans. We practically rolled home but it was the perfect finale to our time in the south.

We had a long drive up to Williamsburg, Va and checked into a pretty nasty Super 8 motel. But, it was clean, the cheapest in town,  and only 1 night so what the heck! We went for dinner to Tequila Rose mexican kitchen for dinner. Jim had chorizo burritos that were ok but I had a fantastic carnitas (pork marinated in herbs and beer and slow cooked) w/ beans & rice. yummy! The next morning we headed out for sightseeing. We had planned on seeing all 3 towns (Williamsburg, Yorktown & Jamestown) but found ourselves spending hours just in Williamsburg. It’s a fascinating place with 312 acres of traditional houses & shops, locals dressed in traditional colonial garb, and re-enactments of historical events…basically, we had a ball so we never made it to Yorktown or Jameston…oh well, maybe next time because we had to get up to Washingon DC.

DC is known for being an expensive hotel town, however, about 2 weeks ago Jim found the Washington Court Hotel for us on Orbitz.com for only $99/night! The hotel is a 4* hotel, about 3 blocks from the Capital and pretty nice. Of course, we’re paying through the bum for parking & internet use but after walking past the Willard hotel today and seeing THEIR parking is $8 /hr or $65 /day I don’t feel so bad! That first night we didn’t get here until about 7pm so pretty much just checked in, ordered a pizza, had a couple of gin & tonics and watched the olympics in bed..overall not a bad evening! Plus, we are blessed with having great weather! DC has been in the upper 90’s for weeks and during our time here it’s been in the low-mid 80s..lovely.

Ok, first full day in DC…what to do??? One truly amazing thing about this town is that all of the Smithsonian musums are free, thats right FREE FREE FREE…I’ve got to say we haven’t seen much of that so far on this road trip in the good old USA. We started out by walking to the Capital which is completely surrounded by police and chose not to wait in the extremely long line for the free tour. Walking down the mall we first stopped at the Air & Space Musuem to spend a few hours, next up was the original Smithsonian – now known as the Castle- for lunch before continuing along to the Freer Gallery, a lovely small gallery with mostly Asian & Islamic art.

From there we went to the US Holocaust Museum…what an amazing place. Jim & I are fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to have been to many Holocaust sites throughout the world and it was heartening to see how well it was documented and laid out in this museum. It was heart wrenching and informative and moving and we left there completely worn out.

We did walk down to the Washington & Lincoln Memorials, the reflecting pool, WWII memorial and Vietnam memorial and finally staggered back to our hotel 10 hours after our day began! We simply could not move so it was room service and bed.

Today, up and out again! We had to wait in a very long line at Starbucks for coffee, amazing to us until we realized we had seen very few Starbucks..it’s certainly not like home where there is one on every other block. After coffee we walked to the White House to get as close as possible (which is not very these days), then off to the Natural History Museum, one of the highlights of the trip. We spent almost 5 hours exploring this amazing place..it’s huge and really well done and I still can’t believe it’s free! Next up, the very interesting International Spy Museum….it was packed, which surprised me a bit, but very interesting and had a lot of hands on displays. By then it was 6pm and, exhausted once again, we drug ourselves across the street to Gordon Biersch brewery for a restorative beer & some dinner. Back at our hotel at 7:45pm after another really great day.

Tomorrow, we are going to Arlington Cemetery in the morning before starting our trip back West…So far it’s been a great trip and we’ve been having a ball! I will say, one thing that struck me here in Washington was how lucky we are to have traveled around the world to all of the many countries we’ve been too. With the exception of Japan, pretty much everything that we saw at the museums was from countries we’ve been to and seen the sights first hand. Pretty amazing.

That is it for now, we’ll update again soon and until then we hope you’re all living the dream as well! Love, J&R

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