Day 33: aloha- from bear-hunters we have advanced to bear heaven, although we have not yet spotted an alive wild bear, moose or mountain goat. We are very surprised- and impressed- by our progress! Basically after Ontario's beautiful scenery on backroads and highway one, we had to make a challenging decision: have a rest day (with not that much progress up to that point), or try to do more miles. After a restful sleep, and a wonderfully odd breakfast we were able to drive on and on and on. We have not been able to get going at the first hint [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 27: We landed in a hunters’ camp just to the east of Thunder Bay, Ontario, with a room in a dorm-like cabin. Since it was pouring rain and getting dark, we decided to stop at 7:30 p.m. and call it good. We both woke up today to the fact that this is an immensely wide continent and that we have to keep driving to ever get across it. That said, we almost decided to take a day off in Thunder Bay to reward ourselves for such dedicated driving. Lake Superior is aptly named. It seems as big as an ocean [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 26? Time and days seem to flow together. We spent the last two nights on Golden Pond, actually Stoney Creek Pond, with Mallory and Pete Armstrong - friends from Maui. The highlight was floating into a heavenly moment of wild geese, kingfisher, Great Blue Heron and some nameless ducks. Blooming waterlillies and small bass in the water. Saw two otters playing on their private island where cranberries grow. Anita kayaked and Jule rode the canoe like a queen while the Armstrongs paddled. We were out for hours, going down a brook where Mallory once saw a bear until we were [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 22? I’ve lost our calendar and our girl. Pretty sure the one is safe at Georgetown but the much-needed calendar with all our info is floating out in the ether somewhere. Yesterday Sierra matriculated into the University. It was a ritual of much pomp and Sousa marches, with interspersed Latin chants and prayers and talks by witty classical professors. She is one of 1500 new ones, just beginning what everyone promises here will be “the best years of your life.” The place where she might meet her new mate (50% do they tell us) and where she will get the [View Full Entry]

---

---

After 3 days in DC and busily helping to set up Sierra in her new environs we fled to a people-less area, and are staying in a pretty amazing hotel in Warm Springs over the Blue Ridge Mnts in Virginia. The Warm Springs Motor Hotel - which says nothing about the fact that it is the old Warm Springs Courthouse and we are staying in the converted jailhouse. It is very plush and totally filled with collectibles ranging from confederate soldiers to art deco tables and lamps, African carvings, deep south antiques and monkeys - both real and fake. People with [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 14: After two long days push through the lovely hills of Ohio and West Virginia, we arrived in DC. Sierra is deposited in her dorm room at Georgetown. Feels something between leaving her at the Ritz and throwing her into a den of ravenous wolves. But the room next door to her is already taken by the RA, and the security guard is fierce and is beginning to wonder why we are still here. Her Y-Lead program has begun, with 15 of them working 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. to learn to be campus leaders of diversity empowerment - or [View Full Entry]

---

---

After many days of driving we have hit the expected highlight according to Jule and Anita - the Corn Palace. The Corn palace is an amazing spectacle, this year adorned by pictures of rodeo heroes. Corn is their medium for art, and we all were quite stunned by the sheer work and effort that these Iowans took to make a Russian style palace so American. After the tour we got to spend a minute or so looking through the gift shop, and of course had to buy some souvenirs to support the Kernels basketball team, whose mascot was Cornelius the Corncob. [View Full Entry]

---

---

I sit down and try to come up with the words to describe the last days, and my mind is blank. 3500 miles in however many days, stops for conspicuously marked tourist attractions, and a family visit. All is well in our little tin van at the moment, and even better after a restful nights sleep in the best western of Chamberlain, South Dakota. Today is the day to hit the Corn palace, the place that Jule and Anita are very excited about that. All I have to say is, they should develop more hobbies other than pasting corn on the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 6: We found America for Sierra. The quintessential all-American town is Sidney Nebraska, home of Cabela’s sporting goods. This is another of many dying agricultural towns of the Midwest. Felt like we were driving through a graveyard, with the markers the dead family farms - heritage barns collapsing and paint-peeling houses boarded shut in the midst of GMO corn and other crops planted right through the lawns and up to the doors. Then occasional mega silos and metal warehouse barns signaling the true owners of the prairie. With the fog settled almost on the ground it was just plain sp [View Full Entry]

---

---

Tuesday morning we met with Jim and Angela Fowler (see photo) in our little Lakeview house, bought by Jule on a lark one trip when we passed through, ate at the Burger Queen and admired the 2-story Cowboy that welcomed folks to Lakeview - an Eastern Oregon mill town on the edge of Goose Lake and at the base of Warner Canyon. They’ve been with us 13 years and we’ll keep them until they leave - either by moving or carried out on a stretcher. Jim is a Native American retired maintenance man, and Angela suffers from multiple problems - now [View Full Entry]

---

---