…we bugged Brent at work…at lunch…very small chance he’d get in trouble having us all there…what could I have done to get him in trouble with his commander??? I’ll have to think of something for next time…wait, he’ll be retired from the Army before then…DARN! I missed my last chance! Brent is a Sergeant First Class in the 4th Infantry Division stationed at Fort Carson. He’s a Team Chief in charge of 34 mechanics, overseeing the maintenance of the 87 tanks and 2 Army Breaching Vehicles in his brigade. He has an office, but he only uses it when the Army makes him. He’d much rather be down on the shop floor alongside his men. He’s good at what he does and has earned the respect of his commanders and his men. Good, ‘cause he ain’t ... read more

…I woke up feeling dehydrated so I downed a bottle of water…then another. By 9:00 I’d had two bottles and started a third when we left the campground. The trusty cooler was packed with more and I’d restocked the refrigerator. All set. Today we drove through Wyoming…lots of grazing land…lots. Lots of cows and sheep and horses…lots. Rest areas on Hwy 18…not lots…one…better use it whether you think you need it or not. Way up ahead of us we could dark clouds and that gray curtain of rain. We were in a nice sunny stretch and hoped we wouldn’t have to drive through it. As I gazed off in the distance I saw a bolt of lightning shoot down in the middle of that curtain. A couple minutes later I saw another. Wherever that was, they ... read more

…and on the To-Do List is the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore. First up…Crazy Horse Memorial…it’s huge. It’s a publicly funded project—entrance fees, donations and proceeds from souvenir and food sales all help to make the work on the memorial happen. There are no federal, state, county or city funds involved. The parking lot is really big and RV friendly. As you enter the main building you are encouraged to watch a short film about the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, how the memorial came about and the first 50 or so years of the project. It’s quite informative and, for my Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing friends out there, captioned. From there you can tour the Native American museum which is pretty big, go outside and see a 1/34th scale model of the memorial as well as the ... read more

…was another Point A to Point B day...with a teaser of what's to come. We’re coming into some iffy weather now. Yesterday on our way to our parking lot for the night we ran into lots of rain, wind and some very dark clouds. The weather is unseasonable everywhere. Today the weather wasn’t so bad, but at we were driving through the southern part of Minnesota the windmills in the wind farms we passed were earning their keep. Minnesota is the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” but what qualifies as a lake? We passed a handful of bodies of water and I would count them down…”9,999 more…9,998 more…9,997 more…” Mike called them cow ponds because they weren’t really big enough to be lakes. Neither of us knew if these were part of the 10,000 or not so ... read more

…another baseball day. Can’t have too many of those. Today’s game is brought to you by the letters CTA and the numbers 2 and 0. Chicago is another city with a really good public transportation system. The only problem we ran into was the Metra train from Chicago back to Joliet. We had to leave the game early. But, like in Baltimore, we came to see the stadium not the game. We learned in Baltimore that the easiest way to get to a game is to just figure out which train to get on to begin with. From there, just follow the jerseys. Walking up to the home plate entrance with its big red Wrigley Field sign was incredible. Just being in one of the oldest ballparks in Major League Baseball is thrilling. Only Fenway Park ... read more