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Published: April 22nd 2018
Before Chapter 2017 of
The Great Adventure even began, I became an adoptive single parent to an infant (a 2017 Dodge Ram) and a toddler (a 2013 Bighorn 5
th wheel). I hesitate to say either was new since both were used or previously owned or previously drive or whatever is politically correct these days. The days spent shopping for both occupied a good part of my “planning for 2018” time, completing the paperwork and awaiting my Illinois tags cost some more time and downsizing from the travel trailer to the 5
th wheel resulted in yet more – yes, the old Pilgrim had more storage space than the new Bighorn! All told, my departure from Apache Junction AZ ended up being deferred until June 15, 2017. That’s much too late for Uncle Larry as the temperatures had long since reached triple digits.
My general itinerary brought me through Las Vegas NV where I visited friends and then into Idaho where I set up shop at
Craters of the Moon National Monument to enjoy the attraction and to visit some more friends in nearby Howe ID. I explored the Boise ID area with a retired Los Angeles Fire Department paramedic who was set up in the RV
Some Folks Had a Front-Row Seat – In the Sun!
38th Annual Four Corner States Bluegrass Festival - Wickenburg AZspace next to mine and then celebrated our Nation’s independence with a jet boat ride on the Snake River through Hells Canyon. My next trek was into Washington where I made eight stops that totaled eight weeks. I stepped up the pace a little bit through Oregon and northern California so I could attend the
National Championship Air Races in Reno NV. During that stop my Bighorn suffered an electrical surge that caused some grief, and I suffered a corneal abrasion which was treated at the local VA clinic but either one would have delayed my departure. I was lucky they happened concurrently. Not quite yet ready for “still too hot for Uncle Larry” Phoenix metro, I made two stops in Utah to check out the fall foliage and some dinosaur fossils and then in Colorado to visit friends at two different stops and to enjoy some more fall foliage.
Some of the more unique attractions I visited in 2017 were
Grand Coulee Dam,
Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour,
Northwest Carriage Museum,
Columbia River Maritime Museum,
Sundial Bridge and a practice session of the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Some of the national parks and monuments I visited were
North Cascades National Park,
Olympic National Park,
Lava Beds National Monument,
Lassen Volcanic National Park,
Dinosaur National Monument,
Mesa Verde National Park and
Hovenweep National Monument. I had seen
Mount Rainier National Park and
Mount Saint Helen's National Volcanic Monument in 2014,
Devastation and Glaciers – Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier WA, but used
different entrances and different roads to gain a different perspective. I visited the incredible gold rush towns of Silver City ID and Virginia City NV and learned a lot about logging, mining, cranberry farming and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Of course, scenic drives, lighthouses and waterfalls are always on my agenda and all three are abundant in Washington and Oregon. State capitols, state history museums and state Vietnam memorials also are always on my agenda, and I saw all or some of each in Idaho, Washington, Nevada and Utah. One unmentioned Washington highlight was spending my birthday at a kite festival in Long Beach WA, and the highlight of the entire summer journey was a tour of
Hull-Oakes Lumber Company in Dawson OR – the only lumber mill tour I have ever seen offered.
From time to time, folks have asked me how many miles I had driven and the fuel cost. My data for the entire 2017 trip was 13,688 miles, 996 gallons of diesel, 13.576 average MPG, $2810.39 in fuel costs with an average $2.821 per gallon. My new (to me) truck has a fancy computer which provides not only two trip odometers (as did the old Ram)
but also provides fuel mileage, average speed and elapsed time for each trip odometer screen. Over the winter I have developed a recording system (which I played with last summer) to isolate my actual trip miles and my “fun” miles from the total odometer miles. Next year I hope to have more meaningful data.
Over the winter, my cousin Marilyn and my best childhood friend, Gary, kept me busy with a variety of activities. Marilyn and I celebrated Veterans Day by taking a drive from the Phoenix metro east valley to Buckeye AZ in the west valley to see the
Vietnam Traveling Wall. I had seen the travelling wall when it was in Rockford IL in the early 1990s and had seen the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial (or "The Wall" as it is more affectionately known by those who hold it in high esteem) in Washington DC on three occasions; however, Marilyn had seen neither. Buckeye officials conducted a very nice Veterans Day service. Two days later, on Veterans Day proper, she and I took a day trip to Wickenburg AZ to see the
38th Annual Four Corner States Bluegrass Festival. I had seen
Musical Instruments Museum in Scottsdale AZ in 2015 when my sister came to Arizona to visit me and
her granddaughter’s family in Chino Valley AZ,
Winter 2014/15 Was Spent Exploring Several Phoenix Area Attractions; however, although on her bucket list, Marilyn had never seen the incredible facility. We incorporated a music museum visit into a day trip. After visiting the outstanding museum, we headed to Anthem AZ to see the Valley’s Tallest Christmas Tree and the lighted Anthem Veterans Memorial. On the way back to her home in Mesa AZ, we stopped at the Arizona State Fairgrounds to see
Lights of the World in downtown Phoenix. What an incredible display!
The “new (to me)” 5
th wheel had developed some minor issues that needed attention and had some routine maintenance tasks that needed to be addressed, so I put my “house” in the shop for several days. That work is easier to perform in the shop than in the RV park. While my home was in the RV hospital, Marilyn and I headed to Las Vegas for three days to attend one of the ten performances at the
National Finals Rodeo (NFR). NFR is an event I have had on my bucket list for years but just haven’t tackled yet. Over the course of the season, cowboys and cowgirls earn points in various rodeos held throughout the US. At the end
of the season, the top ten points earners in bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, team roping, tie down roping (or calf roping), steer wrestling (or bulldogging), barrel racing and bull riding qualify for finals. All ten competitors in each event are reset to zero, and ten rodeos are held on ten consecutive evenings. The competitor with the highest accumulation of points after the ten events wins the national championship title for that event.
While in Las Vegas, we went to
Cowboy Christmas held in the South Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. What a western enthusiast’s shopping delight – aisle upon aisle of cowboy attire, western art and kids’ activities. A distant cousin, Naomi, (our great, grandfathers were brothers) came to the hotel where we were staying for a meal and some small talk. Naomi’s great, grandfather was the oldest, came to America before the outbreak of the Civil War and served in the Union Army while Marilyn’s and my great, grandfather was the youngest and came to the US after the Civil War was over.
A couple of days after our return to greater Phoenix and before I got “home” out of the RV hospital, we went
to
Celebration of Christmas. This Broadway-style musical theater performance tells the story of Christmas and features a full-blown live orchestra and state-of-the-art technology with incredible special effects. The performance culminates in a nativity scene with a majestic kings’ procession, live animals (including a camel), professional acrobatic silk aerialists and flying angels. Our seats were two rows from the orchestra pit which gave us a great view of the stage but compromised some of the views of the aerialists above the auditorium center. On yet another evening, we had dinner and headed out to see
Christmas Lights on the Mesa Arizona Temple Grounds in Mesa. Not being the kind of guy to turn down a good family-cooked meal, both Christmas and Easter found me at my great-niece’s home in Chino Valley.
My followers might remember I had stopped to see a childhood friend of mine and Gary’s, Darrell, who lived in Oklahoma City OK. He died during the winter of 2016-17 and was cremated. While I was out and about on Chapter 2017, his ashes were scattered in Tonto National Forest near Payson AZ where the ashes of his younger brother and both parents had been scattered. Another of Darrell’s brothers, Bruce, accompanied Gary and me on a trip
to the scatter site, a family favorite campground, so I could pay my respects to all four family members. I made two trips to Canyon Lake AZ with Gary to take out his pontoon boat and met with one of my retired firefighter friends who now lives in the valley area. Numerous visits to local eateries with Gary, Marilyn or both were regular fixtures on my calendar. In a nutshell, those were my winter accomplishments.
I had told Marilyn last winter that I planned to go to Alaska in 2019, whereupon she revealed to me that driving the Alaska Highway had been a long-time ambition of hers. Since I had Chapter 2018 plans nearly completed, we made tentative plans to drive to Alaska in 2019. Then, just before my 2017 returned to the valley, Marilyn’s son (living in California) and daughter (living in Colorado) took her to Hawaii to celebrate her 80
th birthday. Uncle Larry, however, got to thinking – a dangerous turn of events. Since many of the expenses are the same whether incurred by one person or two and since neither of us are getting any younger, why wait? Instead of us splitting all of the expenses
Interesting Shapes and Coloration
On the Pontoon Boat - Canyon Lake AZ 50/50, she would pay for her food, admission tickets, side trip excursions, souvenirs, etc., and I would fund the expenses I would incur if I were going by myself – RV parks and fuel plus those just noted above. I threw out that proposition, and she accepted. One thing led to the next, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Sooo, Plan B is now in effect. The first portion of Plan A remains. That will find me making a slow drive to Florida with a stop at Fort Hood TX to see a great, great-nephew stationed there (his folks are in Chino Valley) and tourist stops in New Orleans LA and Mobile AL. I plan to be in Florida to spend Mother’s Day with my 95-year-young aunt and will then, after a stop in Atlanta GA, head for White Mills KY to see my only other surviving aunt over the Memorial Day weekend. From the greater Louisville KY area, I’ll head east to West Virginia where Plan B supersedes Plan A. Instead of continuing east to Virginia and north to “The Megalopolis” (Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City) and then on to New England, I’ll head north
to Pennsylvania and then west to eastern Iowa where Marilyn will meet me at one of her brothers. We’ll be pulling the Bighorn to Calgary, Alberta, Canada (where we will leave it with some of her long-standing friends from the dancing community); but, because she has never been on a cruise, instead of continuing the drive to Alaska, we will catch a “tour bus” to Vancouver and a Holland America cruise ship (ms Westerdam) to Alaska. An Alaska cruise also has been on my bucket list for a long time. In Alaska, we’ll rent a car and “hotel it” for about four weeks, making a large loop to Fairbanks (of course, with a couple of days at Denali), Valdez, the Kenai and Kachemak Peninsulas and, finally, Anchorage. From Anchorage, we will fly to Calgary reclaim the Bighorn and drive back to Iowa via
Glacier National Park,
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument,
Badlands National Park and
Mount Rushmore National Memorial. After a family reunion in Iowa where we can relate our adventures, we will each drive to Illinois for another “show-and-tell” session the following weekend. She will depart at her leisure while I remain to see more family and friends.
After Plan B ends, Plan A will resume with me heading
R.I.P., My Friends
Trip to Gustafson Ashes Scatter Site near Payson AZ to Omaha NE, Cheyenne WY, Denver CO and southern Utah to visit the area’s national parks for a time to be determined by the a) cold in the north, and b) heat in the south! Plan A already had been researched through “The Megalopolis,” and the remainder of Plan A was scheduled to be researched during winter 2017-18; however, I had done ZERO research on Alaska and had to replace my plans to complete Plan A with Alaskan research efforts. Sooo, the post-Iowa/Illinois portion of the 2018 journey will have to be completed on rainy days unfit for an Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia or Pennsylvania tourist.
I feel very fortunate to have made the connection with cousin Marilyn and her two Iowa brothers and hope to meet the fourth sibling in September. I am really looking forward to our trip to Alaska and must admit that Marilyn’s 80
th birthday celebration in Hawaii triggered my thoughts about how I wanted to celebrate my 70
th birthday. The only greater celebration I could conjure would be a stint on the International Space Station. Since that pipe dream remains unattainable, Alaska was a reasonable second choice. Marilyn and I have come to agree
that we are kindred spirits with very similar interests and are delighted that our friendship cannot be complicated by any possibility of romance. During our “fact-finding” trip to Las Vegas, I learned that she doesn’t snore too loud, and she learned that my farts (usually) are not nauseating! Alaska should be a lot of fun.
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