May 10

We are in Cashel. Just visited the Rock of Cashel. Will try to include a picture.

May 8

We had a lovely steak dinner tonight with our Irish friend, Anne Conway, at McLeary's in Waterford. Was another miserable day however as it rained most of the day.

ROCK OF CASHEL

Just spent a couple of cold and misty hours exploring the Rock of Cashel. Jeanette will post a photo or two whenever she can get her phone to connect. I'm just testing right now.

May 7, 2015

Today was wonderful. Much less rain and driving was much smoother. Spent most of the day in Kilkenny -- lovely city!!

Off to Ireland

Well, we’re off again – this time to Ireland for three weeks.  We’ve never visited any of the British Isles other than a few hours spent in the London airports between flights to other European destinations, and it’s been on our bucket list for a long time.  Our original plan was to split this trip between Ireland and Scotland, but the more we got into researching and planning our itinerary, the more we realized that we needed to spend more time in Ireland.  We eventually came to the conclusion that we would spend the entire three weeks in Ireland, which would allow for a less hectic pace of traveling around the Emerald Isle and enjoying the sites and scenery in a more leisurely manner.  So, God willing, we’ll hit Scotland and England together on a future trip.

One of my reasons for wanting to visit Ireland is to see the land from which at least a part of my heritage comes from.  My great, great grandparents, Patrick and Julie Angus McDonald Prendergast immigrated from there in 1840 or so; Patrick from County Mayo and Julie from County Cork.  I’ve done a little casual genealogical research, but haven’t located any suspected relatives in either area.  So while it won’t be as exciting as meeting Jeanette’s ancestral family in Italy a few years ago, at least we’ll be visiting and walking on the same ground upon which my forebears trod nearly 200 years ago.

Our itinerary in Ireland is free and flexible – we’ll be renting a car when we arrive in Dublin and then traveling in a clockwise loop around Ireland, starting in Dublin, with probable stops in Kilkenney, Waterford, Cashel, Cork, Killarney and the Ring of Kerry, Dingle, Limerick, Galway, Inishmore, Westport, Donegal, and back to Dublin.  We’ll be staying one or more nights in some locations.  If time permits, we may get as far north as the Giant’s Causeway on the northern shores of Northern Ireland, but otherwise our time in that separate country will probably be limited to a day trip crossing a portion of it on our way back to Dublin from the Donegal region.  Our goal is to get back to Dublin with time to spend at least two or three days in that historical city, with its many museums, pubs, and, of course, a brewery and a distillery or two.  We also plan to meet up with one of our Camino friends, Maurice, while in Dublin.  We also have plans to meet with our friend Elnore’s friend, Anne, in Waterford when we’re down in that area early on the journey.  We met Anne a few years ago when she was visiting Elnore in Denver and joined us on one of our Tuesday hikes.

Look for further blog entries and a few photos, usually by Jeanette, as we make our way.  As we depart we pray that the road will rise up to meet us, that the wind will always be at our backs, that the sun will shine warm upon our faces, that the rain will fall soft upon our garden while we’re gone, and, until we meet again, that God will hold us in the palm of His hand.

Days 42 through 50 - Monday, June 23, 2014 to Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Alexandria, Virginia to Littleton, Colorado

I feel like I need to include at least a brief summary of the final eight days of our journey, even though we’ve now been home for a full week.  Russell and Carol had to return to work on Monday morning, so there was no reason for us to stick around Alexandria.  So we departed right after they both left for work. Leaving Alexandria, we drove down the George Washington Parkway past Mount Vernon, then took US 1 down to its merge with I-95.  At Richmond we cut over to US 360 to get away from the Interstate.  We spent Monday night at Staunton River State Park near South Boston, Virginia.  The only notable happening was the failure of our power converter, the device that provides the conversion of 110 volt AC shore power to 12 volt DC for the motorhome lighting and accessories as well as managing the charging of the coach battery (the motorhome has two batteries B the normal battery up under the hood for the truck plus a deep cycle battery under the floor of the coach for the interior lighting and accessories).  This was inconvenient not only because it was hot and muggy and we were hoping to run the air conditioner, but more so because without the controller we couldn=t charge the coach battery, which would soon deplete and make it impossible to run any of the lights, the refrigerator, or the vent fan in the roof .  We survived the night, though, by running a separate extension cord to the shore power outlet to run a portable fan.  Normally this would have been a bigger problem had it occurred out on the road somewhere, but we would be in Columbia, South Carolina the next day and Columbia is the location of our motorhome manufacturer=s factory.  We had already scheduled a visit there to have some other minor maintenance items taken care of, so we simply added the replacement of the power converter to the list.

We spent most of the day Tuesday driving down through Greensboro and Charlotte, North Carolina on our way to Columbia, where we=d be parking the Tiger in my brother=s driveway and spending the next three nights.  It was the beginning of the afternoon rush hour when we arrived in Columbia, so it was a bit hectic getting though the city on our way out to Irmo, where John and Charlie live.  However, a glass of chilled white wine with them after we settled in relieved the stress of the day=s drive.  It=s been a while since we=d seen them B the last time we were with them was a stopover during our 2010 trip to Florida and the east coast B so we had a lot of catching up to do.

After a big breakfast Wednesday morning, Jeanette and Charlie went off to the local nursery to look at plants while John and I headed over to Best Buy to pick up a video streaming device to get him set up for streaming video on their TV.  The simplest, and least expensive device was a ARoku Streaming Stick,@ a module that was not much bigger than a USB memory stick and which plugged directly into an HDMI  port on the rear of the TV.  It was a very simple and straight forward installation, and we were soon exploring all the options for streaming video sources such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon TV, etc.  Dinner that night was at a wonderful seafood place, the Blue Marlin, in downtown Columbia.

The first order of business on Thursday was getting to the Provan factory, which is located near the Columbia airport.  We had hoped to get the original items on our list done in a couple of hours, but the addition of replacing the power converter took quite a bit longer than I had anticipated.  It was around 2 PM when we finally got away from there and headed back to John and Charlie=s.  Their daughter, Lynn, and granddaughters Mira and Rosemary joined us for dinner.

Friday morning we were off again, up I-26 through Spartanburg toward Asheville, North Carolina.  Just before reaching Asheville we cut across a series of back roads up through the Great Smoky Mountains.  We hit I-40 at Waynesville and headed west into Tennessee.  This portion of I-40 follows a steep gorge down the west slope of the Smokey Mountains, through some spectacular scenery.  We continued through Knoxville in a rain shower, and on to Cumberland Mountain State Park near Crossville, Tennessee for the night.

Saturday was spent driving across central Tennessee to Nashville, then up I-24 into western Kentucky.  At Paducah we cut west across US 60, and crossed the Ohio River just above its confluence with the Mississippi near Cairo, Illinois.  The map showed a park at the confluence of the two great rivers, so we stopped there for a while to get some photos and videos of the actual joining of the waters.  The park was rather decrepit and run-down, overgrown with weeds, and spoiled by a bunch of barges loaded with scrap metal tied directly to the adjacent Ohio River bank.  But it was really neat to stand on the extreme point of land which comprised the final separation of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, with the former by my left foot and the latter by my right.  You could see the actual joining of the waters by the color B the Mississippi is brown and muddy, while the Ohio is noticeably cleaner and bluer.

 

Confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers -- Ohio River to the left, Mississippi River to the right. Note the muddy brown water of the Mississippi.

From Cairo B which itself is a rather rundown and decrepit shadow of the formerly important and historic town that used to be B we drove up the east bank of the Mississippi a few miles before crossing over to Cape Girardeau, Missouri for the night.  We arrived in time to make it to the 4:00 Mass at the downtown cathedral.  We stopped at Fazolli=s after Mass for a spaghetti dinner, then enjoyed a round of miniature golf at the RV park where we were staying.             

It rained most of Saturday night and into Sunday morning, but cleared up by the time we reached St Louis.  We bypassed this city, going around the western loop and picking up the small and winding State Highway 79, which hugs the western bank of the Mississippi River up to Hannibal, the boyhood home of Mark Twain.  This road makes its way through the rich farmlands along the river and crosses several of the steeply rolling, heavily wooded limestone hills which define the edge of the Mississippi bottomlands.  We stopped for lunch at the little town of Clarksville, a perfect example of a typical 19^th century steamboat landing city with its main street sloping right down to the river.  After lunch, we walked down to the river bank to see the dam and locks which are part of the Corps of Engineers river navigation system.  The river was quite high with the spring run-off, measuring 29 feet above normal stage at the locks.  There is a monument in the park that marks the highest river level during the great flood of 1973, and I=d estimate that the level was no more than five or six feet below that mark. 

Leaving Hannibal, we headed west on US 36, which we=d be following all the way across the states of Missouri and Kansas back to Colorado.  We spent a very hot and muggy night at Pershing State Park near Leclede, Missouri.  This park is named after General John J Pershing of World War I fame, who spent his boyhood years in the town of Leclede.

Continuing west on US 36, we crossed the Missouri River at St Joseph and entered Kansas, the 25^th state of our long road trip.  The highway heads due west across Kansas in almost a straight line for approximately 475 miles.  It runs through the whole gamut of Kansas geography and geology, making it a much more scenic and interesting drive than the blandness of I-70, only a about 50 or so miles to the south.  After 340 miles of Missouri and Kansas we were ready to stop for the night, so we set up for our last night at Prairie Dog State Park near Norton, Kansas.  This park is situated on a medium-sized lake which is supposedly one of the top bass fishing lakes in the country.  In contrast with the muggy heat and overcast skies of the previous night, this night was cool and the air was clear B almost like being in Colorado.  Well, the elevation here was 2350 feet, which is getting up near Colorado altitude, so that could have something to with it.  To top it off, we were treated to probably the most beautiful sunset of the entire trip.

 

Sunset on our final night -- Prairie Dog State Park, Kansas.

The final 300 miles home were almost anti-climactic.  We crossed the Colorado border a few miles west of St Francis, Kansas, and spent the next hours traversing some of the most boring terrain of the seven-week journey B mile after mile of dryland farm and pasture land, the highway straight as an arrow along the section lines and only occasionally cutting diagonally across one or two square-mile sections to rejoin the due east-west section boundaries a mile or two to the north or south,  This lonesome highway passes through a series of almost ghost towns with names like Joes, Cope, and my favorite, the suitably named Last Chance.  Highway 36 joined I-70 at Byers, Colorado, about 40 miles east of Denver, making it a short hop to home at last.

Here=s the overall trip summary:

Number of Days:  50

Total Miles Driven:  9840

Number of States: 25

Number of Provinces: 7

Day 41 (I think) – Sunday, June 22, 2014

Alexandria, Virginia

I’ve lost track of the days and I left our trip log out in the motorhome, so I’m guessing it’s Day 41.  We’re now at Russell and Carol’s house in Alexandria, enjoying an all-too-brief visit with them.  Just to bring the blog up to date since my last post, here’s a brief recap…

After leaving Freeport, Maine, we spent the next night in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts at a campground in Pittsfield.  It was a pleasant drive across southern New Hampshire and Vermont, re-visiting the area we first visited a few years ago on our first long motorhome adventure after our retirement.  That was in the fall when the colors were at their peak, so it was interesting to see the same countryside in the verdant green of spring.

From western Mass. we crossed over into New York and followed the Hudson River down past West Point, then cut across a winding road to northwestern New Jersey, where we spent Thursday night at Swartswood State Park, near the town of Newton.  The next day we drove south through the center of New Jersey, mostly on Highway 206, avoiding the freeways and toll roads that most travelers use to zip across this state without a second glance.  The countryside was very pastoral, not at all like the usual picture in our minds when we think of New Jersey.  It was slow going, however, as the small towns along back roads such as this are frequent, and as we drew nearer and nearer to Trenton, the traffic increased dramatically.  We took advantage of the six-line superslab to get around Trenton, and were soon in the New Jersey Pinelands, heading toward Cape May.  Our second night in the Garden State was spent at a campground in Belle Plains State Forest, near the town of Woodbine.

The next morning it was a short hop over to the southern Jersey shore, where we plodded our way through the beach traffic for several miles.  We stopped at Stone Harbor for a stroll on the beach – a mile or so – to break up the morning’s drive, then proceeded to the Cape May - Lewes ferry to the Delaware shoreline.  This was the sixth ferry ride of our journey, the others being 1 & 2 - Madeline Island in Wisconsin (two ways, there and back), 3 &4 - Mackanac Island in Michigan (again two ways, there and back), 5 - Prince Edward Island to Nova Scotia, and finally 6 - Cape May to Lewes.  Our plan was to spend the night at Cape Henlopen State Park just outside of Lewes, Delaware, but for the first time on this long trip we were met by a “Campground Full” sign.  The gentleman at the state park entrance gate was kind enough to give us a sheet listing all the commercial campgrounds in the area, so we ended up at one of these.  Commercial campgrounds, especially those near resort areas, and more especially in this part of the country, are not our favorite places to stay since they always turn out to be about 90 percent semi-permanent or “seasonal” travel trailers and 5^th wheels to 10 percent overnighters or short-termers like us.  That is not what we’d consider the most pleasant atmosphere and the main reason we much prefer state parks, national parks, Corps of Engineers campgrounds, and, when in Canada, provincial parks.  Needless to say, we were up and out of there as quickly as possible this morning, making a beeline for the 130 or so miles to Alexandria to spend a few hours with Russell and Carol before moving on down the road tomorrow morning to spend a couple of days with my brother John and sister-in-law Charlie in Columbia, South Carolina, our final stop before heading home to Colorado.