November 17, 2023 – Day 49 We both love the banjo player Bela Fleck. We’ve seen him live twice and would gladly see him again if he plays anywhere in a drivable distance from us. Now banjo, you may thinking of Deliverance… But Bela plays differently than that. He teamed up with Edgar Myers and made the wonderful modern bluegrass album Short Trip Home. Stop the presses. Bela Fleck had nothing to do with that album! Both Susan and Paul would have fought you on this but we were wrong. (To be fair, Meyers and Fleck have a long history of collaboration. But it wasn’t this album or that song.…

November 16, 2023 – Day 48 We pulled out of French Creek State Park in Elverson PA to make it halfway home. We’re on the second to last day. The “penultimate” day. Paul had that word as a vocabulary word in High School and has always been amused by it, it is certainly a $20 word when a 50¢ word will do. This is completely unlike his other favorite weird-word, which is “defenestrate.” Paul always wondered why such a word was needed, “To throw out a window” is pretty specific. And Wikipedia comes to the rescue. Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window. The…

November 15, 2023 – Day 47 French Creek State Park is located next the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. Paul’s brother has visited this in the past and spoke highly of it. After a lazy morning we headed over to visit it and stamp our National Parks Passport book. Hopewell Furnace showcases an early American landscape of industrial operations from 1771-1883, Hopewell and other “iron plantations” laid the foundation for the transformation of the United States into an industrial giant for the time. The park’s 848 acres and historic structures illustrate the business, technology and lifestyle of our growing nation. There were two furnaces there, the newer, anthracite furnace, which…

November 14, 2023 – Day 47 We pulled out of Claytor Lake State Park, heading towards French Creek State Park in Elverson, PA. We’re both getting pretty tired of driving. It is like watching paint dry sometimes. Notice what the truck is carrying? We’re so funny, right? To be fair, we both were surprised by this, thinking that paint would be transported in cans, but I guess it gets bulk transported also. Or maybe it is a liquid used to make paint? We don’t know but it did strike us as funny. Or, maybe we’re just punch drunk from thousands of miles of pavement. Every city has what every other…

November 13, 2023 – Day 46 Frankly, we didn’t do much today, just hung out, played radio, Susan cooked up a storm so she wouldn’t have to cook later, and we were both getting tired of sandwiches for lunch. Speaking of Lunch, one thing Paul likes to do is buy the weird drinks he finds. Today’s was Zia Ginger Ale. The bottle promised “Red Chili and Lime,” and well, the lime was there but no red chili taste was found at all. This was almost certainly purchased out west. Oh, we didn’t get a picture of it, but the oddest one was the Cucumber Soda. The four of us had…

November 11, 2023 – Day 44 Some of you may know the song 500 Miles by The Proclaimers. Here’s the chorus. But I would walk 500 milesAnd I would walk 500 moreJust to be the man who walks a thousand milesTo fall down at your door “500 Miles” – The Proclaimers That was the plan for today. Technically it was 496 miles but it’s close enough to call it 500 miles. We were curious whether we could manage that big a drive. We were simultaneously looking forward to it and dreading it. We had no idea how easy or hard this would be. It was hard. Remember we said it’s…

November 12, 2023 – Day 45 (Claytor Lake State Park, Dublin Virginia) Today was going to be an easy day. We were here for 3 days to relax and do some chores, this was purposefully scheduled since we knew we had just come off of two hard days driving. We did that on purpose to see what our limits are and now we know. Paul went out to empty the trash and spoke with some park rangers, they said we had a great site because the deer hung out in the fields next to us, they were right! We saw them every day, and several time we saw a herd…

November 10, 2023 – Day 43 We woke pretty early and broke camp. Not super early, but early we thought. It was so gorgeous outside! Here’s the view from our “dining room” window. Campsites always have that something like that hanging thing. We’re not sure what they are for but they are useful, we’ve hung our water from it so it could filter into our water bladders, run some paracord for drying towels, etc. We finally figured out what they are for. To hang the coax for the ham radio antenna, of course! The view outside the door was equally impressive. We really liked Daisy Hill State Park and plan…

March 16, 2024 – Day 1 Wait, wait. You can’t leave, you’re not home yet. Last time we losers published we were doing nothing in the rain but writing blog entries in Daisy State Park somewhere in Arkansas. We wrote 8 blogs that day, blogs that you haven’t seen. Suspenseful music plays. Until Now! Let me ramble on some. Writing the blog goes like this. We have adventures and take 1,00,000 pictures. Then we park for the night, trim the pictures down to something manageable and Paul writes the blog. Then Susan tarts it up. That’s an exact quote, she’s sitting across from me and said “You’re the facts guy,…

November 9, 2023 – Day 42 Remember those clouds we saw yesterday? It turned out that a storm was coming through. The ranger who checked us in told us about that. At first we were disappointed because we wanted to explore the area. When we woke up we realized that we needed a break from driving and adventures. A very rainy day was just the ticket to force a day of rest on us. We stayed put, we wrote and re-wrote blogs, Paul did radio, Susan knitted some. And it turns out neither of us took a single picture! It was a much needed day “off.” We’re realizing that the…