May 17, 2013 - Lexington, KY to Columbus, OH

May 15-17 Balmy, sunny morning in camp. Last night we “debugged” the rig and I finally remembered to wipe off Pepper’s nose marks from the interior windows! Did not eat until almost 8:30 because of our big lunch. Took the scenic route to Columbus, OH and not the interstate. We have had nothing but problems with our GPS in KY so I switched to Google Maps. Are taking Hwy 68 through KY to the OH border where we were to have picked up Hwy 62 which we somehow missed in a small town. Not to worry though as we will get on interstate 71 a little...

Apr 1, 2013 - Columbus, Ohio

We have stayed the last 2 nights at Deer Creek State Park in Mt. Sterling, Ohio. It is just a little south of Columbus. We wanted to stop and visit the Kubota facility there and meet the wonderful folks who helped us for years. It was great fun to see them all. We are heading to the Amish country in Ohio for a couple of days and then, back to North by NorthEast!

Mar 9, 2013 - to Columbus OH; 17/0

130309-Sat-73809 miles-Today we drove 232 miles to home. We got gas at Get-Go and put in 47 gallons for $23.93 and we got 10.1 mpg going 65-70 mph. The RV ran great and the trip was uneventful. The trip is over but we are glad to be home. Jamie dropped by and helped us unload most everything.

Jan 18, 2013 - North Fort Myers, FL

For those of you who wondered, a much larger group of our Alaska pictures remains a work in very slow progress. I have made the 1st edit and still have 7000 images to organize. I have purchased Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 to help me with the task. I will let you know when and where you can view more pictures as soon as I can. In the meantime, Jan and I arrived at Swan Lake Village in North Fort Myers FL at the end of December and we'll be here the next 3 months. This is our second season here as snowbirds. The people could not be any...

Oct 21, 2012 - Marathon Flop

Well that was disappointing!!! We arrived at the Cardinal Center Campground in Marengo, OH on Thursday afternoon. It is an interesting place because it is home to the Ohio Trapshooting Association. It must be a wild place during events because there are hookups available for over a thousand campers. There are about fifteen campers here now! It was completely quiet for our stay as not one shot was fired this weekend. Meanwhile, we went into Columbus on Saturday to pick up my packet for the marathon. It was a nice expo with a couple of...

Oct 19, 2012 - Pennsylvania

Today: On the road at 8. Hershey's Chocolate World at 10. Lunch, then the moving Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania (listen to the brief audio clip of the park ranger telling us about the memorial). Then long hours back to Grove City, Ohio for the night. To my mind, the most beautiful foliage of the whole journey was late this afternoon as we drove through western Pennsylvania, as the light started to fade. Dense stands of trees in brilliant yellows with some reds and oranges lined the highway for miles. Tall trees and...

Oct 12, 2012 - Ohio, then Pennsylvania

A story from our tour director Tour director Joy Rissmiller organized a sack-decorating contest to help pass the time while we traversed four states on Thursday. She had alerted travelers to bring supplies for decorating the sacks, which she said would be used throughout the trip. She said the hotel staff would judge the sacks Thursday night, but road construction delayed our arrival at the hotel. When it came time, the hotel had no one available to do the judging. Joy, as an experienced tour organizer, devised Plan B. There was almost no...

Oct 11, 2012 - Skimming through four states

We are in Indiana as I tap-tap this on my phone. We are in our third state today, heading for our fourth. "We" are 51 people, most of whom were already friends before this trip started, and most of whom are experienced travelers with this tour company. It's a congenial group, which helps keep people from getting testy when the inevitable frustrations of travel intervene. Sitting here in a big comfortable seat letting an experienced and cheerful driver handle the bad drivers and construction delays is a comfy way to travel. Fall color so...

Sep 19, 2012 - Visiting relatives and Alum Creek State Park

Wednesday, September 19 Alum Creek State Park We enjoyed two days in the Columbus, OH area staying at Alum Creek State Park. We visited Jim's nephew and his family and his niece who live here. His nephew had just returned from Afghanistan this summer. The state park appears to have been a Corps of Engineer park at one time, but has been turned over to the state to operate now. We enjoyed riding our bikes around and seeing the remainder of the park. There are other parts of the park that we didn't see because the busy road to them had little...

Sep 15, 2012 - We're Home!

I just wanted everyone to know we are home safely. Thanks so much to everyone for traveling with us on our long journey! We got home yesterday about 5:30, and Tim and Terri made it to their home campground in Akron about an hour later. We had a great homecoming with wine and snacks with our neighbors, then a pizza and a late birthday celebration at our favorite pizza place with Jamie. The cats don't even know we are home...we decided not to interrupt their routine in the trailer by taking them in the house and having to haul them back out....

Sep 3, 2012 - to Columbus OH; 16/0

120903-Mon-69282-Today we ended at 69566, started at 69282 miles, for total miles today of 284. Today we drove home. We got home about 1pm. I just relaxed and then we went to Jamie’s for dinner around 5:30 and got back home about 8:45pm. Today was overcast & it rained off & on during our drive, but it stayed dry when we got home. Since we started our trip at 61579 miles, we went a total of 7987 miles. This is the last log entry. Something is wrong with the large photos that I can't seem to fix, so look at the small ones.

Mar 23, 2012 - The Final Journey Home

Up bright and early to begin our final journey back to the United States. We loaded the bags and headed to the bus stop - we do travel in style. We hauled our bags onto the public transit and headed off to London Heathrow - Terminal 5 (their roughly $8B new terminal built in 2008). We had trepidations as we had already had experience with the English "state of the art" terminal back in 2008 when they lost our bags on our way to Germany and we didn't see them again for over a month. As it turns out, in 2008 they failed to properly test the...