Category: Travels

I wasn’t really expecting much from our stop at Devils Tower. Devils Tower is a really big rock thingie and sort of interesting in a way, but what else is there except to see it? Make the stop, see the tower, take the picture, and mark the checklist. That’s it–time to leave.

But I began to change my mind as we approached. From miles away there stands this stark, improbable column rising above the plain. The scene is so dramatic that the highway scenic turnouts start about 10 miles away.

And immediately, one begins to wonder. How could such a thing come to be? What is it like on and around that unlikely object? So, after setting up at the campground (directly at the entrance gate to the National Monument), off we went to explore.

And here’s what we found. In a way, it is just a big rock. But it’s so big, and so vertical, and so different from the surrounding area, that it has a near-hypnotic power to command attention. One can’t help but to stare at the image it presents and be lost in the mystery of it. Plus, that effect changes as one walks the 1.3-mile hike around the base. The north side, almost always shaded, is captivating in a way that the south side, way too bright for something so dark, is not. Different kinds of trees grow in different areas around the base, and frame the tower in contrasting ways. The effect is best illustrated, perhaps, by the fact that everyone walking the trail, including us, stops every few hundred yards to take another picture looking up at the rock. Why? How many pictures of a tower can one take? Does it really demand another picture every few steps? Yes, because the tower’s effect renews in different ways at every turn. No wonder the Indians thought this place has magical powers–it does.

So, we’re surprised at how glad we are that we made this stop. The campground is fun, even though we missed the hayride through the adjacent cattle ranch, and we were too tired to stay through the entire showing of Close Encounters of Third Kind, activities the campground does every night. And, to be sure, a half-day is probably enough. But this is also more than a stop enroute to somewhere else. Surprising as this may sound, if we ever pass this way on some future trip, I’d be inclined to make the visit again. It’s that kind of a place.

Having been humbled and inspired by Mt. Rushmore, we took the next day to explore the surrounding area, learning once again that sometimes the things we don’t plan work out better than we ever could have planned. Go figure.

We left the campground and headed into Keystone, then through the Black Hills National Forest, over the Iron Mountain Road section of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Highway (Route 16A). From there, into Custer State Park, taking the “Wildlife Loop” road, down into Wind Cave National Park. Then back up to the Needles Highway section of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Highway (Route 87), and then back to the campground. Overall, it took us about 8-1/2 hours to travel almost exactly 100 miles. The route was basically one recommended by some random guy we met at some now-forgotten campground, which means it was anyone’s guess as to how this road trip would work out.

But “work out” it did. We got an idea we were in for a treat when the signs at the start of the Iron Mountain Road cautioned:

Narrow Winding Road
Very Narrow-Low Bridges and Tunnels
Trucks and Trailers Prohibited,

stopping just short of saying “Ignore These Warnings and Die.” And what followed was one spectacular vista after another. And, and this cannot possibly be a design accident, each of the narrow tunnels, no more than eight feet wide and ten feet high, pointed at and perfectly framed Mt. Rushmore. We found ourselves back to a world where things like this just don’t happen in real life.

Then we entered Custer State Park and, after paying the $20 entry fee, turned onto the Wildlife Loop. Although we love watching wildlife, and can do so for hours, we generally are not wildlife gawkers. In fact, the long lines of traffic jams in Yellowstone, with hundreds of cars stopped to look at a buffalo, are just not the way we like to spend our time. But Custer State Park was different. Wildlife was everywhere–bison, pronghorn, and deer–but without long lines of stopped cars and with all of the wildlife roaming freely in their natural settings.

 

 

Then it was down to Wind Cave National Park. More buffalo. Lots of ’em. Ho hum. Although we did have one exciting moment when a herd of buffalo on the road in front of us got spooked by an oncoming car, turned around, and stampeded by us. Snorting and darting left and right on either side of our car. That was memorable. As to the National Park itself, it was not much to see, at least above ground. Supposedly it’s a long and complicated cave system, one of the longest in the world, but it’s closed to the public except for a few short tours, none of which did we have time to do. So we stopped for a picnic lunch and headed out.

Next was the Needles Highway.

Seriously? This is a road? They said it was eight feet wide, but Wendy’s little Toyota sure didn’t feel like it had room to spare. And on either side of the road was this…

 

…mile after mile of it. Tight, twisting turns, pull-outs for awe-inspiring vistas, and with the occasional impossible tunnel thrown it for good measure.

So, back to that random guy from some forgotten campground: thank you. The recommendation was perfect, something that easily compares with any of the national parks in Wyoming. And that ended our stay in the Black Hills.

And what of the campground itself? It’s hard to rate. On the one hand it’s in the middle of some spectacular terrain, only minutes from Mt. Rushmore and miles of spectacular motor-touring. The facilities are excellent and the staff is helpful. But, there was something wrong with the place. It was too much like Panama City beach, with putt-putt miniature golf, trampolines, water slides, ATV rentals, and even tie-dye t-shirt crafts. In some cases, things like that might add to the enjoyment, but here, amidst everything else there is to see and do, such things, as Wendy pointed out, somehow subtract from the experience. Would we stay here again? I doubt it. Especially if we had the Little Darlings along with us, we’d find something more compatible with area. I would hate for anyone to leave this area with memories of putt-putt golf.

Next stop: Devils Tower.

 

 

Mt. Rushmore, as a scenic view, is so well known that, although we took approximately one hundred photographs, none of them, except for our presence in the images, show anything not seen countless times before. What photographs do not show, though, is the reason that Mt. Rushmore even exists, something I guess I had never really paused to consider. Unlike other national monuments that exist to preserve physical beauty, or as a refuge for wild animals, Mt. Rushmore exists not to restrain certain human tendencies but to celebrate and encourage certain human tendencies. Mt. Rushmore’s mission is patriotism, but not in some simplistic form of nationalism. It is based on the concept that there really is something unique about American ideals, and Mt. Rushmore depicts four presidents each of whom, in ways that are different but complementary, assured the success of a grand American experiment. It is, in essence, American exceptionalism carved into stone.

Through dozens of exhibits and lectures, this theme emerges. The connection of Washington and Jefferson to American ideals is obvious. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…,” and that governments derive legitimacy only by “consent of the governed,” were radical views then and probably only slightly less radical now. Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle At Philadelphia made a point that has never left me: the American revolution was the only revolution in history instituted not by the “have-nots” but by the “haves,” privileged people who had everything to lose and nothing to gain except fidelity to what they viewed as a moral duty to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to philosophical principles.

The exhibits at Mt. Rushmore also make the point that Jefferson actually gets double credit, adding to his role in the founding of the country the accomplishment of doubling the size of the country by one stroke of the pen, expressing his commitment that the American experiment would apply not just in lands originally signing on in 1789, but by projection to everywhere that American influence could come to bear.

Lincoln’s entitlement to presence on Mt. Rushmore is also self-evident. The Mt. Rushmore message is plain: whatever differences we may have, we cannot and will not ever tolerate deviation from our founding ideals, and that our unity on those points, the unity of our Union, trumps contrary views, no matter how sincerely (or lawfully) held. Lines from the Gettysburg address abound at Mt. Rushmore, conveying the theme that as to people who die in pursuit of American ideals, “these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Teddy Roosevelt’s entitlement was less clear to me, so upon arrival I asked the ranger. What he told me, and then what we saw again and again in the exhibits and displays, is that Roosevelt embodied that idea that American ideals would survive only if manifested in action. Everything that Roosevelt did, from the “trust busting,” to the expansion of American military power, to the brokering of peace accords, and even conservation of precious national resources, was based on his view that ideals are too fragile, too easily lost in the pressures of unrestrained commerce and other forces, to be left to carry on only in the abstract. The essential democratic nature of national parks, for example, was not just a few spectacular vistas; there needed to be tangible preservation in thousands of instances (230 million acres to be precise) making it plain this is our country, our land, and we, the people, own it for our benefit and the benefit of our children.

Over and over again, these themes came through. But it wasn’t just the exhibits and displays. One more thing. Every night, there is an “illumination ceremony,” where there is a powerful symbol: in the stark blackness of the universe, while “American the Beautiful” plays in the background, a light shines suddenly on the men who created, preserved, and assured the success of the American ideals.

At the conclusion of that, all members of the military, active and veterans, are invited to come down to the stage for the lowering of the flag. The ranger, a former Marine, announces to the audience, “Ladies and Gentlemen, these men and women were willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of American ideals expressed by these presidents, and we should honor them for that now.” The entire audience applauded, really, as the a few dozen veterans made their way to the stage, and after the colors were retired, each veteran was introduced to the audience by name, branch, and rank.

Wendy made an important point. During the entire evening ceremony, all of the audience was attentive and respectful, even the teenagers. She noted that most of the young people could probably tell you something about Washington and Lincoln, maybe a few would have something to say about Jefferson, and it’s likely that not many could say anything about Teddy Roosevelt. Still, they sat there, absorbing all of this (even if dragged their by their parents), the message recurring, over and over. It has often been said that American ideals are always within one generation of disappearing, but after experiencing Mt. Rushmore, it is easy to be confident that in the future, those who were here will hear an echo of the Mt. Rushmore experience, and in that faint recollection will do whatever it takes to assure the essential American character will never “perish from this earth.”

We’re here, and all I can say is that this place is fake. Really, it’s not an actual, natural, environment. It’s a fabrication done by some anonymous author who thought it would be fun to make a weird and synthetic landscape. Even the National Geographic guidebook to national parks says the same thing, describing the sights presented by the Badlands as “theatrical.” Exactly. Like the matte for a 1950s, grade-B, science fiction film, like maybe Amazon Women From Venus or something.

Imagine a 100-mile long block of rock, consisting of layers of sedimentary deposits and volcanic ash, eroded at breakneck pace (at least by geological standards), up to one inch per year, over a very short period of time (500,000 years), leaving hundreds of thousands of fantastic ridges, cliffs, pinnacles, and gullies. The Badlands starts suddenly on the plains, so suddenly that explorers to the north didn’t even know it existed, and disappears just as suddenly. And the geological process is so rapid that in another 100,000 to 500,000 years it will all be gone.

So, after setting up at the Cedar Pass campground, we traipsed off to the visitor center, learned about this strange and awe-some place (hyphenated to convey the actual meaning), and then spent the afternoon exploring the area.

That night it was off to the evening ranger program on archeology in the grasslands, and then, still trying to adjust to the mountain time zone, and still exhausted from driving the profile-equivalent of a billboard for 250 miles in winds at 20 mph, gusting to 30, we collapsed, happy as ever to be in such a strange and wonderful place.

The next day started with two hikes, although hiking in Badlands is based on a different concept. The park is entirely open; people are free to walk wherever they want, climb whatever rocks they can, and generally explore without rules or limits. Not being so adventurous, though, we stuck to a few of only about a half-dozen marked trails. The first hike, the “Notch Trail,” was recommended by Robert, about 0.8 miles each way, although there was an obstacle to be surmounted first:

But it ended with a spectacular view, through “the notch,” to the White River valley below:

Then it was a 4.1-mile hike out into the grasslands, although even on that footpath, we found ourselves meandering through what might be called “badlands in the making”: rapidly eroding terrain creating deep gullies.

 

Then, after lunch, it was a driving tour around the rest of the park, where we saw bison, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, and, of course, countless prairie dog towns.

 

Then, just to confirm the theatricality of the whole experience, as we left the park and found ourselves stopped at a road constructions site, someone (either the Park Superintendent or God, I’m not sure which), arranged for a small group of bison to pose in a nice lineup at the entrance sign.

So that ends the Badlands portion of the trip. But first, one small digression. Once again we are struck by the nature of the camping population: lots of young couples camping in tents, families in pop-ups (including one with FOUR boys all aged five or under, which is way too many boys by anyone’s reckoning), tourists in rented Class C’s, and old farts like us in motorhomes, ranging from smallish (like ours) to full-sized luxury units. Everyone is out, hiking and exploring the area, being captivated by the ranger talks, and chatting with nearby campers, comparing experiences. It’s a whole subculture, mostly of families. We recently watched the Ken Burns National Parks series, and one recurring theme of that series struck a chord with us: time and again, the commentators remarked that they came to love the outdoors because their parents or grandparents took them camping, and they’ve taken their children, and now the grandchildren are going too. So, looking around us we don’t see so much of a campground as the continuation of a legacy, and it warms our hearts.

Tomorrow we’re off to Mount Rushmore. Further posts to follow.

So, here’s the story… Most of the places we want to see, in general and for this trip in particular and for the trip we are planning for next summer, are all “out west.” They call it “out west” because it’s way out west from the east, which is where we live, which means to see the places we traveling to see, we have to drive and drive and drive before we even get started. I guess that’s perfectly obvious to anyone who has ever seen a map of the U.S., but the reality of that indisputable truth is that we are experiencing a kind of travel that is new to us: hit the road, drive for a while, walk the dogs, drive for a while, have lunch and walk the dogs, drive for a while, walk the dogs, drive for a while to a stopping place, walk the dogs, set up, have dinner, walk the dogs, and then go to bed. Repeat over and over again for days on end, and then start the vacation.

And the stopping places are just that. Places to temporarily stop the aforementioned travel routine. So far, they’re basically just parking lots, cheek to jowl with RVs, with electrical and plumbing connections sticking up between the sites. In other words, these are definitely not the kinds of destination campgrounds we would travel to for the atmosphere they offer.

So, this phase of the trip must be awful, right? Wrong. In fact, it’s compelling. Northern Alabama was beautiful; driving through Arkansas and Missouri gave us chances to watch crop dusters in action (certainly the last of a dying breed); southern Missouri is a surprisingly picturesque terrain of gentle rolling hills. Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, is the opposite of picturesque, unimaginable in its sprawling ugliness, crass consumerism, and endless traffic. And that was contrasted the next day by historical St. Charles, Missouri, with charming shops and restaurants, a huge Memorial Day party along with river, and the Lewis and Clark Boat House and Nature Center, a fine local museum marking the place where the Corps of Discovery assembled and began their trip “out west” (that term again, although going “out west” had a degree of reality to them that far exceeds what confronts us). And traveling along, as we criss-cross the Lewis & Clark route, we’ve been listening to Undaunted Courage, which not only passes the miles, but it serves as a historical commentary to the area we’re traversing.

And then there are places that are just weird. Like the world’s only “corn palace” in Mitchell, SD.

Each and every one of these experiences is, for reasons hard to capture, a memorable part of  the trip, even if we weren’t enroute to the “real” end points.

We’ve had the usual number of challenges, like we decided we didn’t trust the transmission pump for the toad and rented a U-Haul tow dolly for peace of mind. (For the non-cognoscenti, a “toad” is a vehicle that is “towed” behind a motorhome.) Nothing major so far and, as explained in the post describing the breakdowns on one Florida trip, for some reason a “challenge” on a road trip is utterly inconsequential. Especially so for a trip like this.

So, after 1375 miles spread over 4-1/2 days of driving, tomorrow we head to the first destination worthy of that word, seeing as how the words “destination” and “destiny” share the same etymology: Badlands National Park. Further posts to follow.

The “Big Trip” starts tomorrow. Well, it sort of started last weekend with a small trip. As we’ve done several times, we headed over to a Corps of Engineers campground, 5.1 miles away, for a weekend of camping with the Little Darlings. And once again, Cliff joined us with his pop-up.

 

Jennifer’s photo album pretty much tells the story: West Point Lake Camping – 2016. Someday, though, I’ll try to figure out why “The Cousins” (as they call themselves) think that the most enjoyable aspect of camping at the lake is digging “canals” along the shoreline (fitting, perhaps, since we’re at a Corps of Engineers campground?), getting caked in mud in the process. Really? Canals?

So, having said goodbye to the local family, we’re prepared to head out cross-country to see the other part of the family. Outbound, it’s a sixteen-day trip, with stops including Badlands National Park (never been there), Mt. Rushmore (never been there either), Devils Tower, (ditto), and Little Big Horn (ditto again), before arriving for a three-week stay in Olympia, Washington.

We’ve prepared ourselves for the trip by watching the Ken Burn series on the National Parks, reading Custer and Crazy Horse by Stephen Ambrose, loading Undaunted Courage into our audio player to listen to as we drive out, and reviewing and completing sixteen pages of checklists. Seriously. Eisenhower launched D-Day with fewer checklists and not half so much logistical preparation.

And words can’t convey how excited we are about this trip. Sure, going out to see the new grandbaby is nice, but with eight grandchildren, I mean, who cares? I’m reminded of the Ogden Nash poem, written after the birth of a similar number of his own children: “Is it a girl, or is it the reverse? How should I know? Call the hospital and ask the nurse.” But traveling around the country, seeing as much as we can of the places that are worth seeing, has been a dream of ours for nearly 44 years! It’s what kept us going through decades of a rewarding-but-demanding profession, the exigencies of twenty-five years of child-rearing, and the myriad episodes in the unfolding story of our family.

So, further posts will follow once we complete the hurry-up-and-get-someplace-good phase of the outbound trip, sometime in the next week or so.

[Self-preservation footnote: OK, so I’m kidding about the newest grandchild. Sheesh.]

As described in our camping history, one of our very special camping traditions as the kids grew up was an annual Thanksgiving trip to the Fort Wilderness campground at Walt Disney World. At one level, of course, it’s hard for a trip that combines camping and Walt Disney World not to be special. We’d always spend at least one day at the Magic Kingdom (which the kids loved), where we’d have Thanksgiving dinner at the Crystal Palace restaurant. Back in those days, Walt Disney World was essentially deserted on Thanksgiving day. (I understand that now it’s one of the busiest of the year.) And we’d spend one day at Epcot (which they also loved). And we’d take a day or two doing nothing but hanging around the campground (which they may have loved the most), where we would ride bikes, play at the petting zoo, go to Hoop-Dee-Doo Review or the Chip-n-Dale chocolate chip pancake breakfast, drive the little racing boats, go to the evening movie and campfire, ride horses, play on the beach, and I can’t remember what else. Given Disney’s commitment to excellence, those family camping vacations could not possibly have been anything but incredible.

 

With that in mind, it should not be surprising that son number 1, who about a year ago joined the camping ranks with his own pop-up camper for his family, immediately set his sights on a camping trip to Fort Wilderness.

So, off we go! Cliff and the girls got an early start (his wife, very pregnant, staying home). (I’ve learned that men should never, ever refer to pregnancy as a “lame excuse.”) We left a little behind him in ACE, and all of us met up at the half-way point, a Moody Air Force Base MWR campground in Lake Park, Georgia.

 

Next day, off to Disney. Cliff raced ahead and we took the girls in ACE, so that he could get there early, snag a couple adjacent sites, and otherwise get things set up for when we would arrive, about 30 minutes behind him.

 

I know I go on and on about Walt Disney World, but here’s another thought. Fort Wilderness is basically, well, what a campground would be if it were designed and operated by Disney. Imagine the same guys who did the Magic Kingdom sitting around and one of them says, “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s do a campground!” Imagine what a campground built to Magic Kingdom specs would be like! As you would expect, the “campground” (that word seems inadequate) is essentially an inexhaustible supply of activities, events, and facilities:

• There are two pools, one of which consists of a big pool with a twisting high-speed water slide, a wading pool for toddlers, and a water play area with fountains and little slides for pre-schoolers. The larger pool has several life guards, who are conspicuously observant and diligent. A snack bar is adjacent to the pool. And during the day there are half a dozen games, contests, and other organized children activities.
• There’s a nightly sing-a-long musical show with Chip and Dale, followed by a campfire and s’mores roast, followed by a Disney movie shown on an outdoor screen.
• There are archery events, horseback rides, carriage and hay wagon rides, and pony rides (on, of all things, Cinderella’s actual ponies).
• There’s a nightly light show on the lake, followed by fireworks. And the marina at the lake also offers boat shuttles to various resorts, pontoon boat rentals, and rentals for little speed boats that older kids can drive themselves.
• There’s hiking and biking on a 2.5-mile trail that connects Fort Wilderness to the Disney Wilderness Lodge resort; fishing in several ponds; playgrounds galore; tennis courts; tetherball thingies; at least one dog park; separate paths for walking and biking; free shuttle buses that run every few minutes to ferry campers not only to all of the campground activities, but to the transportation area where other buses connect to the resorts.
• There’s an onsite restaurant and tavern, along with two dinner shows, the Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue and Mickey’s Backyard BBQ.
• And lots more that I can’t even think of. And remember, this is a campground! I haven’t even gotten to the theme parks yet.

On top of all of this, there is ample staff, all of whom are courteous and helpful. Even more, Disney refers to its employees as “cast members,” and the designation is apt. The staff, even down to the cleaning crews, are part of the entertainment experience, and they know it, and they act like it.

So, enough of that. After setting up on the first day, we just hung around in the campground.

Next day, it was off to the Magic Kingdom.

And the day after that was spent just enjoying the options at the campground the campground…

 

…before heading off to Mickey’s Backyard BBQ. I’ve been through Disney experiences for almost 60 years (since I first visited Disneyland in 1958), and Mickey’s Backyard BBQ is by far the best child-oriented Disney experience I’ve ever seen.

I think this video captures why the Disney experience in general, and the Ft. Wilderness experience in particular, and the Mickey’s Backyard BBQ experience in even more particularity, seem to me to constitute the perfect experience for families. First of all, it just plain fun for the kids. They get to sing, and dance, and clap hands, and stomp around, and be silly, and let their imaginations run wild, and just generally be kids, all in a way that must be increasingly rare for them in today’s over-structured, high-pressure world that they live in. Second, watching all of that is just unbounded amusement for the grownups. Really. In fact, if you don’t find an experience like that to be fun, check your pulse–you’re probably dead.

Finally, on our last full day, we did something that was just perfect for the occasion: nothing. We spent a large part of the day on the beach, where we had a picnic lunch and the girls spent hours filling up zip-lock bags with sand and pouring them out to create a, well, giant sand cone.

 

Well, we did do one thing. We took the girls on a pony ride, with Vivian on Rapunzel’s pony and Ansley on one of Cinderella’s ponies.

 

The album for this Disney trip can be found here: Disney 2016 Album.

So, we’ve already started planning the next trip, maybe even a “family reunion” at Ft. Wilderness. We’ve got another trip already scheduled in October, which may work out to get some of the family there, or maybe it waits until we’re all in the same quadrant. Either way, we’ll be back!

(P.S. My comments about “lame excuses” not withstanding, Summer did a great job planning our Magic Kingdom visit, getting the right FastPass+ tickets and staying up until all hours preparing, no kidding, a scheduling spreadsheet of what attractions to see at the Magic Kingdom. She was definitely on the trip in spirit!)

Now, back from the Florida excursion, it’s time to grade ourselves on how we did.

Early bailout: A. Exactly the right decision. As noted before, it is tremendously liberating to be free to make the right call at any given moment, free from constraints imposed by external considerations. By the time we got home, Wendy’s foot plainly called for attention and had we been sitting around at Chokoloskee Island, basically crippled at the campground with little to do but stare at the mangroves, we would have been scolding ourselves for not being smarter and heading home.

Trip Planning: B. Each stop in our itinerary presents several factors for evaluation: the locale of the stop (what is there to do in the area?), the campground itself, and the duration of the stop. Evaluating the stop, though, isn’t as simple as a weighted average of the scores for those three factors.

During our trip, we met, as you would expect, a number of snowbirds. These folks often stayed at a single location for months, maybe as many as six. A campground with scores of long-term residents becomes less of a “campground” and more of a retirement community. We’ve always thought of ourselves as traveling to see and do things near the campground, not participating in activities in the campground, which means that, for all practical purposes, we’d never want to stay somewhere for more than a week or two. Even in Yellowstone, for goodness sake, one would exhaust the activities in a matter of a few weeks, not months. And we’ve never seen ourselves as going someplace in order to play shuffleboard, pickleball, golf, bingo, or Texas Hold’Em. That, in turn, means that heading south for the winter means we either need to keep moving every week or two (and rarely repeating the stops from one year to the next) or we need to change our expectations and spend time enjoying living in an annual retirement community that blooms for a while and then disappears.

Or maybe that’s not the right way to think about it. In brick and mortar homes, we all have things we enjoy doing. Many RVers just continue doing those same things on the road. We met guys who play golf and go fishing while they travel, just as they would at home. I met a guy who brings his radio-controlled model aircraft with him. I’ve even heard of a guy who brings his model railroad setup with him.

So, as to this trip, which was it? A number of quick stops in succession, seeing the local sites, or longer stays, relaxing, staying warm, and doing what we like doing while there? The plan didn’t actually do either as well as I would have liked. At several stops (Cedar Key and the Everglades, for example), we didn’t schedule enough time for local sights. At Naples, I didn’t schedule enough time for internal activities. And at others (the would-be stop at Chokoloskee Island, for example), I can’t figure out what I was thinking when I booked the stop for as long as I did.

We’re planning next year’s trip, and we’re still gravitating towards the series-of-stops concept, but the jury is out. We may want to try a longer-term stop at an activity-intensive campground, just to see if it fits us.

Living in a Confined Space: A. When we tell people we spent a month in a 10’x20′ box, we are often asked how it is that we didn’t kill each other. Maybe it’s just us, or maybe Wendy harbors some secret plan that will someday put an end to these postings, but we were fine. We never felt cramped, never got on each others’ nerves (much), and never longed for the trip to end. Even in our smallish RV (at least by Class A standards) there seemed to be plenty of room for living. Based on this trip, I think it’s more likely Wendy will kill me at home than in ACE, so I count this aspect of the trip as a lifespan-enhancing success.

Overall: A. The trip was wonderful. We enjoyed every place we went. Cedar Key was a great first stop, the side trips in Sarasota were fun, the Naples RV resort was luxurious and the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary was a special treat, Everglades National Park was everything we hoped it would be, and the last stop at the Miami-Everglades resort gave us a perfect opportunity to pick off a few final checklist items and wind down before returning. The weather was cooler than we hoped for, and indeed was unusually cold, wet, and windy, but it was still way warmer than in Atlanta, so we count that as a success. And the RV people we met along the way were were, as always, friendly and engaging, and at every stop we found something special about the folks we met.

It is a testament to how good the trip was that when we returned we immediately started planning our 2-1/2 month trip out west this summer!

[Before then, we have a quick trip to an FMCA rally in Perry, Georgia, to tend to a few motorhome matters, and then a trip to Walt Disney World with Cliff, who will be hauling down his pop-up and treating the girls to their first Fort Wilderness experience. Further reports to follow.]

Well, it’s not exactly Miami. Miami-Everglades RV Park is just outside the eastern boundary of Everglades, and we thought it would be a suitable location to explore those aspects of the Everglades that we missed while at Flamingo (like the Shark River tram tour), plus Biscayne National Park, plus being a lookie-loo at places like South Beach. And maybe even a day trip down to the Keys somewhere. Or, if I got really bold, I was toying with the idea of a ranger-guided “wet walk” through the Cyprus swamp in the Big Cyprus National Preserve (not Wendy’s cup of tea). From here, we’d head to Chokoloskee, then Lake Okeechobee, then The Villages, then home.

Great plan. Except that we had to flush it. Here’s the deal. We’re basically old geezers. Proof? We’ve got Social Security, Medicare, and we’ve developed an irresistible urge to play shuffleboard. And one more thing: we now have “afflictions.” You’ve probably noticed that when geezers get together, they engage in a social ritual of sharing stories about their afflictions, using words that have no functional significance for anyone less than 60 years old, words like “sacroiliac,” “presbycusis,” “incontinence,” “prolapse,” “stroke” (not rowing-related), “joint” (not marijuana-related), and so on. It’s great fun, especially when combined with another ritual of showing each other one’s surgical scars and swollen body parts. [On edit: my sister-in-law tells me that in their community, these sessions of sharing afflictions are referred to as “organ recitals.” An apt designation!] So, we thought that talking about afflictions would be a great way to slide into senior living until we realized that talking about our afflictions means having afflictions, which is not fun.

Ever since we left, and actually before we left, Wendy had been nursing a minor foot problem that she had resolved to get addressed after we returned. Unfortunately, while on the trip it turned into an “affliction.” We were able to work around it up through the Everglades stop, but by the time we got here it had progressed into an Affliction, with a capital “A.”

So, it’s basically time to bail out. We’ve had a chance to do some things around here, checking off a few stops, like a trip back to the Everglades visitor center, to the Biscayne National Park visitor center (one of the best we’ve ever seen), a drive down to Key Largo, and generally relaxing. We had a great time at a pot luck soup dinner, where Wendy brought her jambalaya, and which was a great hit. We can also check off having a Type 2 Breakdown, as enumerated previously. But we’ve done essentially all of the major things we wanted to do on the Florida trip as originally planned, and not hanging around here with a Nagging Affliction makes a lot of sense. Better to disengage than to push a bad position.

And here’s the good news: being retired means that there’s no pressure to do something just because it’s on The Schedule. We now control The Schedule, rather than The Schedule controlling us. Of all the aspects of retirement we’ve encountered so far, that has got to be the most liberating!