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Published: December 27th 2007
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COAST TO COAST AND SEA TO SHINING SEA
On the shortest day of the year we embarked on the longest cruise of our boating life. We will be spending 150 days floating around the world beginning in Ft Lauderdale on December 21, 2007 and ending in San Francisco on May 16, 2008. We will begin and end the trip by transiting the Panama Canal and then proceed to circumnavigate the globe in between. We are on our favorite ship, the Regent Seven Seas Voyager, with our favorite ship’s staff and crew, traveling in a westerly direction visiting 70 ports in 30 countries on six continents.
We decided that before seeing the world, we would see the USA by car. We left Sausalito on October 30 and spent a month crossing this continent. We put over 5000 miles on the car and got to see friends and family along the way. On our first night of this sojourn while staying with John and Jeannie in Pebble Beach, we were jolted by a 5.3 earthquake. We had a nice Halloween in San Luis Obispo with sister Judy and family and then visited fellow world cruisers in LA and Palm Springs.
Sedona was amazingly beautiful. We enjoyed our 10 days in Green Valley, AZ visiting with my sister, Roberta and her husband. Our drive from there to Florida took two weeks. We had an interesting encounter with the military bureaucracy at White Sands Missile Testing Range in NM. We were low on fuel and the only gas pump for 70 miles was on the military base. Midway through the negotiations with the army brass, I figured we were going to end up in Gitmo as we might be a threat to national security. But after proving that we really did own our car and after several calls to our insurance company by the MPs— which took several very tense hours, all ended well and we went on our way with a full tank of fuel. We crossed the Texas Panhandle and happened to spend the night in Oklahoma on the evening they were celebrating their 100th anniversary of statehood. It was great--we got to see the movie "Oklahoma" twice in 24 hours--one of my favorite musicals! There were parties and fireworks everywhere.
We spent two nights in Bentonville, Arkansas--which as you may know is the home of Wal-mart. Practically every
building and street reflects the Walton family legacy e.g. Walton Avenue, Sam street etc. The whole town seemed like a Wal-mart experience. We stayed there because we were road weary and found a hotel--Marriott Residence--which had a kitchen and bbq. When we went to….where else-- Wal-Mart, we enquired as to where we could buy a bottle of wine. The clerk responded in a thick southern drawl: “Well honey, ya’ll just have to drive up to Missouri to get that stuff.” As we were driving through Arkansas we saw a sign for "Atkins-- 1 Mile." This small village is just down the road from Toad Suck Lake. So of course we had to stop. My Grandfather was from Arkansas and after a mysterious encounter with the law, he ran away from home and changed his name to Atkins which was the first town he stumbled into. We are certainly lucky that Toad Suck Lake wasn’t his first stop. Anyway I mailed my Dad a letter postmarked from Atkins and spoke with the post master who didn't look or talk like any relative of mine. But we did have the best fried chicken of the whole trip in my namesake town.
This was a wonderful time to cross the country as we saw all of the fall colors. Also there weren’t many travelers on the road so we had many options when it came to selecting hotels. Everywhere we went we seemed to hit the peak of the autumnal change. Northern Mississippi and Alabama were about the prettiest. We crossed the Rio Grand, Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee rivers and several mountain ranges. We traveled the back roads and secondary highways as much as possible. Staying off the freeways works better for us in that we feel we get a better sense of the real America. To us, freeways represent highballing trucks and have mostly the same chain hotels and fast food franchises at every exit.
We had a great LaGraff family reunion/Thanksgiving in Chattanooga. We had Thanksgiving dinner at the former rail station of the Chattanooga Choo Choo. We went up to the Smokey Mountains with Kevin's brother Dan and wife Karen and stayed in a cabin in the woods. It was cold and snowy but we had a great fireplace to keep us warm.
We then drove to Charlotte, NC and spent the night with Mary Ann -my
former fly-mate with Braniff Airways. She is 61 and still flying with USAir and hoping to change careers in the not too distant future. We pressed on to Pinehurst in order to celebrate the birthday of Kevin's oldest brother Michael. Susan prepared a traditional turkey dinner so we had a second Thanksgiving. We went bowling and swimming and walking in the cold rain.
In one day we drove from NC, to SC, to GA, to FL arriving in St Augustine Beach in darkness. Our motel had a hot tub and pool and a very inquisitive clerk who had very few teeth. She wanted to know what we were doing there from California and when I told her about our world cruise, she almost flipped out. She just could not imagine that anyone could ever go around the world on a ship. So I gave her our itinerary and in return she gave us a $5.00 discount on our $62 room.
We spent the month of December in Ft Myers, Florida getting ready for our next big adventure. We walked the beach every day, bar-b-qued every night, visited with high school friends and cruising friends. We sold our car
which had carried us safely across the country from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. We picked up a rental car, stuffed it to the gills with luggage and drove over to Ft Lauderdale to resume our life afloat on the high seas.
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roberta atkins
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The blog is a great idea. We subscribed so we'll be notified every time you add something. Enjoyed it all so far. Love, R.