Month: January 2019

By Jim.

As we left Austin and headed west, there was a Texas-sized surprise waiting for us.

The Texas Hill Country begins west of Austin and continues along U.S. Highway 290. Johnson City, ancestral home of President Lyndon Johnson (the city was named for LBJ’s great-uncle, James Polk Johnson, making him the namesake of the President who annexed Texas into the Union), is the first noteworthy town in the Hill Country. It’s also longhorn country.

Fredericksburg, the largest town in the area, is another 30 miles west of Johnson City. It’s a charming town of about 10,000 people, and it was one of the unexpected delights of our entire trip. It has a vibrant downtown, great nightlife, one of the best World War II museums in the country, a good wine scene (yes, as we learned, Texas wine isn’t an oxymoron) and a unique Germanic flavor to the whole place.

That summary demands some splainin’, so here goes.

Fredericksburg, founded shortly after Texas became a state in the 1840s, is named for Prince Frederick of Prussia. Its Germanic settlers refused to learn English (hmmm) and adopted a dialect called Texas German (no, it doesn’t include “Dawnkershain, Herr Podner”). One of Lyndon Johnson’s first social functions as President was hosting a state visit in the Hill Country for West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, including taking him to a Lutheran church in Fredericksburg where the service was read in Texas German and the hymns were sung in native German.

One of the five most important American military leaders of World War II, Chester Nimitz, was born in Fredericksburg. He was the Commander In Chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC), equal in stature to General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific Theater. The hotel owned by the Nimitz family (one of Chester’s motivations to join the military was to escape having to work at the hotel) is now the site of a marvelous museum about the war against Japan. Fun Fact I: Nimitz turned down the CINCPAC command when he was first offered it in early 1941, fearing that being promoted over 30 more senior admirals would compromise his effectiveness. That meant another admiral, Husband Kimmel, was in charge of CINCPAC when Pearl Harbor was attacked, resulting in Kimmel being relieved in disgrace and demoted, while his replacement, Nimitz, went on to greatness. Fun Fact II: Nimitz wanted to attend West Point, but the only service academy appointment available when he applied was to Annapolis; Eisenhower wanted to attend Annapolis, but the only appointment available to him was West Point. Fun Fact III: Nimitz was the Navy’s first five-star admiral, promoted by FDR the day after Congress approved legislation creating the rank of Fleet Admiral.

Only a few miles from Nimitz’s home, Lyndon Johnson came of age in and around Johnson City. His daddy, Samual Ealy Johnson, Jr., served in the Texas state legislature and he instilled a passion for politics in his oldest son. Lyndon was the most powerful member of the U.S. Senate in the 1950s, became John Kennedy’s Vice President due to an epic political accident at the 1960 Democratic Convention, and then succeeded JFK as the 36th President of the United States. Few Presidents were (and still are) more enigmatic and controversial. As President, LBJ spearheaded the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare…and the Vietnam War.

The LBJ Ranch is only a few miles east of Fredericksburg. The ranch house was closed due to the Trump shutdown, but I was able to glimpse it from across the Pedernales River (which drivers had to cross via an underwater bridge built by LBJ, to get to the ranch).

All that history is one thing, but the new thing Fredericksburg is getting known for is wine. Dozens of vineyards have started growing grapes and making wine in the last 20 years and, based on the tasting rooms we sampled, the product is pretty darn good.

It was back to longnecks on our final – and favorite – night in Fredericksburg, at a cowboy bar, Hondo’s, where we bellied up next to guys in Stetsons and snakeskin boots and were entertained by a band that had all the locals doing the Texas two-step.

From the Hill Country, we headed west and down…literally.

Sunday, we visited the Sonora Cavern, where we marveled at the subterranean beauty, 155 feet below the surface.

The next day, we leaned a few miles across the northern Texas border into New Mexico (after an almost other-worldly drive through the Permian Basin oil fields to get there)…

…to visit the newly-reopened Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Sonora is cool, but Carlsbad is amazing, due in part to its scale (over 700 feet beneath the surface and caverns the size of gymnasiums). This is one of those times when the pictures need no captions.

Then it was back to Texas for the final leg of our 17-day journey through the Lone Star State. Ginny’s gift for writing from the heart is the perfect description of our visit to El Paso and beyond.

By Ginny.

Tuesday, we crossed the border from El Paso into Mexico via the Paso Del Norte footbridge. It was not an easy decision.  We talked about doing it for a few days, maybe even weeks, before getting to El Paso. And yet when the day came, we were both a bit uncertain as to our “comfort” level in doing so.  Trump was winning.  He had seeped into our otherwise generous, open-hearted view of Mexicans and immigrants. We wondered if they would target us for their anger over Trump’s insults. Fear was winning. Damn you, Trump. 

We drove around – somewhat in circles – not really talking much.  Looking for a parking lot that felt “safe”.  Each of us was looking to the other to make the decision – do we or don’t we? This is one of the few times during our journey when neither of us could really articulate what we were feeling. Why?  Were we weighing risks?  What risks?  Were we worried about something on the other side? 

Thankfully, finally, Jim parked. We each paid 50 cents at the border crossing at what felt like a movie ticket office (where we weren’t required to show any ID or documentation) and walked over the bridge (perhaps a 1/4 of a mile) spanning a highway, railroad tracks and the Rio Grande, from El Paso into Juarez. I will admit, I slipped my arm into Jim’s as we crossed up and over. We looked very white – the only caucasians we saw on the walk. I felt self-conscious, but no one appeared to care about us one bit.  Not one single bit. Men and women of all ages just headed for somewhere on the other side.  They didn’t even laugh at us when we’d stop to take pictures. 

Juarez gave the impression you might think – crowded, a bit run down, bustling with street vendors. But it was harmless.  We didn’t stay long (not knowing the language made us unsure where to go or what to do – that made us think admiringly of the bravery of immigrants who come to our country without being able to speak our language) – so started our trip back into the US. Same drill – this time a turnstile-type machine that charged us 25 cents each to let us through. Again we walked with many Mexicans who paid zero attention to us. No one was threatening.  Once into the US, we showed our passport cards, declared that we had purchased nothing in Mexico and that was the end of our excitement.  It was nothing.  It was harmless. NOTHING TO FEAR!  

Wednesday, crossing other borders brought tears.  We left Texas and passed through southern New Mexico before stopping for the night in Tucson, Arizona.  When I saw the “Welcome To Arizona” sign on Interstate 10, an indescribable feeling came over me and I teared up. The timing wasn’t good – I was driving at the time! – but tears were just streaming down my face. I had this feeling that we’d come full circle, that the end of our journey was near. Last May, Arizona was the first state of our trip that was new and different to us (we’d already done our “training wheels” RV trip to Oregon and California in 2017).  That was nine months ago, only a month into our trip. Now, the “Welcome to Arizona” sign means we’re on our way “home” – to wherever that may be.  It uncorked me.  We’ve traveled the entire country. 

More reflections will come.  Some will come easier than others. But for tonight, like every night, I’m thankful and grateful for Jim and his undeniable love, our family and friends, our two wonderful pups, and our safe journey through our amazing country. 

Texas never sneaks up on you. When you cross the border, you start seeing lone stars embedded in the concrete on freeway underpasses, state flags flying everywhere and an inordinate number of businesses and services with Texas in their names. What the Northeasterners in our reading audience know as EZ Pass, an automated toll-paying system, is called Texas Tolls down here. My favorite is the license plates – in every other state, there’s one form of plate for all vehicles, but here, if you drive a pickup truck, your tag says you have a Texas Truck.

So there was no doubting where we were when we rolled into Texas last week. We drove through Arkansas to get there, stopping not in Little Rock to see the (temporarily shut-down) Clinton Library but in Hot Springs, a nice little spa town that’s not far off the main highways.

We got a mini-Clinton fix by visiting Hope, the President’s birthplace, where his childhood home has been restored.

We did brief side-trips to Louisiana and Oklahoma, meaning that by the time we arrived in Texas, we had visited 46 of the lower 48 states.

We headed for Dallas sooner than planned so we could see Pete, who was in Fort Worth to do his latest round of simulator training.

We even got to do a brief simulated flight and were able to avoid any simulated crashes (thanks to some rapid-fire instructions from Pete when I nearly stalled us out).

Although he’s been flying for quite awhile now, we’re still mighty proud of Commander Noel.

We braved Dallas rush-hour traffic one morning so I could have a nice visit with my former boss, AT&T’s General Counsel David McAtee. He’s a true gentleman and a class act.

Only a few blocks from AT&T’s headquarters is the Texas Schoolbook Depository and Dealy Plaza, where President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. The top two floors of the Depository (the sixth floor was Lee Harvey Oswald’s sniper perch – the extreme right pair of windows in the next-to-top floor in the pic below), now are a museum, and include a chilling perspective of where history happened.

We caught a minor break while we were in Dallas. The George W. Bush Presidential Library is located at nearby SMU. Unlike the other libraries, it’s open during the government shutdown because it’s staffed by SMU employees instead of National Park Service workers, so we paid it a brief visit. Brief. I’d already seen it a couple of years ago, and after visiting the place where the Era of Camelot ended, it was hard to get in the mood to hang around President Dilettante’s digs again.

From Dallas, it was off to Houston. Even though the GHWB Library (in nearby College Station) was closed, this was a must-do stop. When we visited my Uncle Lee in Durham last November, it inspired me to reconnect with one of Lee’s sons, my cousin Andy, who lives in Houston. We had a delightful dinner with Andy and his lovely wife Katie.

I also stopped by the office of one of my former clients, the AT&T SportsNet in Houston. It was great to see old friends David Peart, Jim Colasanto, Janice Schmader, Murphy Brown and the perpetually cheerful and helpful Sharla Watkins.

We’ve spent a lot time in this blog talking about all the great sights we’ve seen. In the interest of candor, we should report on a clunker, too. That would be the Johnson Space Center in suburban Houston. It’s mostly a series of kid-related exhibits – not much history, although the mission control console from Project Apollo is pretty cool. Plus, courtesy of David Peart, we got the address of Neil Armstrong’s house from when he was training for Apollo 11 and did a drive-by. The neighborhood is depicted in the movie Apollo 13.

Also courtesy of Mr. Peart, we went to the Rockets-Lakers NBA game at the Toyota Center Saturday night, which ended up being an exciting come-from-behind win for the home team. Before the game, we got to lift a glass with my old Sig-Ep brother Scott Wynant and his splendid bride Nancy – Go Ducks!

From the largest city in Texas, Houston (the fourth largest city in the country and closing in fast on #3 Chicago), we headed to the fastest-growing city in the country, Austin (#11 and growing at 20% per year).

On our way, we saw a jarring reminder that we’re in Texas.

Austin has a reputation for having a cool vibe. We agree!

Sixth Street is home to the local music scene.

What we discovered, however, is that there are two parts to Sixth Street. After walking past all the nightclubs and honky-tonks, then crossing the Main Street where the state capitol building is, there’s a string of great restaurants, featuring Cafe Josie, a farm-to-table spot that’s flat-out one of the best restaurants we’ve ever enjoyed.

We also scraped the rust off of our hiking muscles and enjoyed a long amble through the Barton Creek Greenbelt, only a few minutes from downtown.

Austin is only about 80 miles from San Antonio, so we did a day-trip there to tour the Alamo and enjoy the River Walk, an oasis in the middle of downtown.

Why do we remember the Alamo? The story is ironic in this day and age.

After Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, it had trouble attracting settlers to its northernmost state, Texas. That led the Mexican government to offer incentives to Anglo-Americans to settle there. By 1830, there were so many white settlers in Texas that Mexico passed a law severely restricting further immigration. (Is this starting to sound familiar?) The new Mexican immigration restrictions didn’t work (ahem). By 1835, Texans were in open rebellion against Mexico, seeking independence (uh-oh, don’t tell Trump about an immigrant uprising in the Southwest!).

Texas declared its independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836. Four days later, 200 Texas nationalists who were occupying a small military garrison at the Alamo Mission, a former Spanish religious outpost, were massacred by a Mexican army led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. “Remember The Alamo!” became a rallying cry for all Texans. Seven weeks later, a Texas army led by Sam Houston routed Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto (present-day Houston), solidifying the Texas Republic’s status as an independent nation. Texas joined the union nine years later.

After San Antonio, it was time to head west, first to West Texas and then to California. We’ll explain our remaining itinerary more in our next post.

(Sorry this post is longer than usual. Call it Texas-sized!)

In all of our holiday rushing around in recent weeks, we’ve been driving mostly on interstates. When we left Red Bay, AL and headed to Nashville, we took the Natchez Trace Parkway, a designated National Scenic Trail. During our 185-mile trip, we only saw about 100 cars, and the scenery was wonderful.

Nashville was named Music City not by the Grand Ole Opry but by Queen Victoria. A singing group from Fisk University, founded after the Civil War to educate slaves, performed in England in 1873 during a worldwide fund-raising tour, and their performance so impressed Her Majesty that she said the singers “must come from the Music City.”

But country music has long been the trademark sound of Nashville.

Back in 1927, promoter George Hay made a deal for a radio show on NBC called Barn Dance.  Its time slot was after a classical music-themed show called Music Appreciation Hour. Hay introduced Barn Dance by saying, “For the past hour, we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera. From now on, we will present the “Grand Ole Opry.” And one of music’s most famous names was born.

After World War II, the Opry’s live concerts moved to the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville. Legendary performers including Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl got famous at the Ryman. The Opry began appearing on television in the 1950s (the first TV series shot in color was Stars of the Grand Ole Opry). Country music crossed over into the cultural mainstream in the 60s and 70s when stars such as Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, Reba McEntyre and Tim McGraw became household names.. The Opry left the Ryman in 1974 for a massive new venue across the Cumberland River in the Nashville suburbs. The burgeoning Christian music scene located itself in Nashville at about that time. Recording studios, licensing companies, cable TV network studios and entertainment law firms for all aspects of the music industry are located on Music Row on the outskirts of downtown. That’s Taylor Swifts Ferrari parked outside her studio.

The Ryman Auditorium is around the corner from Broadway, a thoroughfare where a number of honky-tonk bars now are the center of Nashville nightlife. That’s the scene we checked out while we were in town.

The atmosphere in the honky-tonks is great, and where else can you get served a fried bologna sandwich? However, the crowd and the bands are relentlessly white. That’s the image country music has always had – straitlaced and conservative. Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis each only got to play once at the Opry (Elvis was told his style didn’t suit the Opry’s image; Jerry Lee was told he could perform as long as he didn’t play rock ‘n roll or cuss, rules that he broke immediately when he took the stage). The Byrds were the first, and for a long time pretty much the only, rock band to play the Opry, and they were booed off the stage as “longhairs.”

Nevertheless, the whole scene is infectious. We even bought boots!

As fun as the music scene is, there’s a lot more than that to Nashville these days. The self-proclaimed Athens Of The South is home to 20 four-year colleges and universities. Vanderbilt, Abby’s alma mater, is the largest employer in the region (it’s big into healthcare). There is a beautiful re-creation of the Acropolis, the city is the state capital, there are plenty of parks and cool neighborhoods and it has been ranked as one of the five fastest-growing cities in the nation.

From Nashville, we planned to go to Louisville and explore the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. However, a looming snowstorm messed up those plans. We settled for a tasting at the MB Roland Distillery in southwestern Kentucky, where we saw an unlikely car window decal in the parking lot. Cheers!

Oh, by the way, our RV park near the distillery didn’t exactly have an award-winning view.

Then we were off to Tennessee’s other music city, Memphis.

Before Nashville’s recent growth spurt, Memphis had been the largest city in the state and one of the largest in the South since antebellum times. Transportation and music have always been two of the biggest industries in the area. Memphis’s location on the Mississippi River makes it a natural shipping port. More recently, Memphis is the headquarters of FedEx.

Beale Street is the heart of the city. It has spawned an astonishing array of musical genres and artists – blues, rock ‘n roll, soul, gospel, rap and “sharecropper” country. Artists who were born or got their starts in Memphis include BB King, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, Al Green, Sam & Dave, Booker T & The MGs and Justin Timberlake. The sound is grittier, edgier and livelier than the “rhinestone country” of Nashville.

We visited the BB King Club, which had a kickass blues band. The only reason we didn’t stay there all night was that we had dog curfew.

And, of course, there’s Graceland, home of Elvis. Having never been fans, we didn’t spend much time there.

There’s another special place in Memphis – the Lorraine Motel, site of Martin Luther King’s assassination and now the home of a memorable civil rights museum that freezes in time the way the hotel looked on April 4, 1968.

From Memphis, we prepared to drive to Little Rock to tour the Clinton Presidential Library, the first of four Presidential Libraries on our itinerary over the next three weeks (along with LBJ, Bush 41 and Bush 43 in Texas). Then we learned that they’re all closed due to the government shutdown. So thud went our goal of seeing all 14 of the libraries on our trip. Thanks, Trump. Assuming your library ever gets built, I have a lot of time to plan something suitable to do when I visit it.

Our first destination of 2019 was a modest drive from Tuscaloosa up to Birmingham to visit old friends and make a side trip to Montgomery to explore the rich civil rights history of Alabama’s capital city.

The pendulum of Montgomery’s racial history swings a wide arc. It’s the city of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace – and of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Judge Frank Johnson.

In the early 19th century, Montgomery was the hub of the Alabama slave trade. In a backroom deal in 1846 that typifies Alabama politics then and now, the state legislature selected Montgomery to replace Tuscaloosa as the state capital. Fifteen years later, Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America on the steps on the new capitol building in Montgomery. On the same spot, in 1963, newly-inaugurated Governor George Wallace vowed, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

As Wallace snarled those infamous words, he could see, two blocks down the street from where he was speaking, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, which then was already a hub of the modern civil rights movement that was shifting the ground under the feet of Wallace and his ilk. In 1955, the church selected a new pastor, 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. Later that year, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a municipal bus to a white person, and Dr. King was selected by the local NAACP chapter to lead the black community’s bus boycott to protest Jim Crow segregation laws. The church was the site of public meetings and private strategy sessions throughout the boycott, which started as a one-day protest but ultimately lasted more than one year, as the city vowed never to give in to the protesters (sound familiar?).

Approximately six months into the boycott, just a few blocks from both the church and the state capitol building, a newly-appointed Federal District Judge, Frank M. Johnson, cast the deciding vote on a three-judge panel ruling that Montgomery’s bus segregation law was unconstitutional under the then-recent precedent of Brown v. Board of Education. When the panel’s lower court decision was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery City Council passed an ordinance eliminating racial criteria from bus seating, ending the 381-day boycott.

Now named the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the church conducts a wonderful tour showing Dr. King’s office as well as the sanctuary and pulpit where history was made.

Less than a half-mile from the church is the Frank M. Johnson Federal Courthouse. Although Time magazine put his portrait on its cover in 1967 and called him ”one of the most important men in America”, Judge Johnson is on the honor roll of unsung heroes of Alabama’s civil rights movement (along with the likes of E.D. Nixon of Montgomery and Fred Shuttlesworth and Chuck Morgan of Birmingham).  In 1965, he enjoined Wallace’s prohibition of a 25,000-person march from Selma to Montgomery, which was a catalyst for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Judge Johnson also ordered the desegregation of public schools and colleges, parks, libraries, museums, depots, airports, restaurants, restrooms and other public places, as well as the Alabama State Police. Other decisions by the Judge cleared the way for registering black voters, outlawed poll taxes, struck down bans on blacks and women serving on juries, expanded the rights of the poor to court-appointed lawyers, and issued the first anti-gerrymandering court order in the nation’s history. Ironically, he and Wallace were classmates at the University of Alabama School of Law, which didn’t prevent Wallace from calling Johnson an ”integratin’, carpetbaggin’, scalawaggin’, baldfaced liar.”  (Where have we heard name-calling like that recently?)

Last April, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery. It has already received worldwide attention as a powerful tribute to the victims of racial lynchings in America. Most of the components of the monument are hanging objects. Walking around the memorial for even a half-hour leaves you emotionally wrung out – take it from me. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lynching-memorial-montgomery-alabama/index.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/28/lynching-memorial-backlash-montgomery-alabama

On a lighter note, while I was in Montgomery I had lunch with two law school classmates, Mary Lil Owens and Bill Little. It was great to catch up with the two of them and with news about other classmates. It makes us look forward to our 40th class reunion this spring.

Back in Birmingham, I got to see two nearly-life-long friends, John Hall and Bent Owens, plus Ginny and I had an evening of good food and good cheer with Livy and James Abele (I’ve “only” known Livy since high school). Old friends are the best friends!

Then it was on to Rocket City – Huntsville, AL. In 1950, over 200 German scientists and engineers, led by Wernher von Braun, who defected to the U.S. at the end of World War II, were brought by the U.S. Army to Huntsville to form the Ordnance Guided Missile Center. Huntsville became an integral resource in the development of the rockets that powered the U.S. space program. There’s a wonderful museum containing lots of artifacts that recalled my excitement and passion for NASA and the space race in the 60s!

Huntsville is far from a one-dimensional place, however. In fact, it’s one of the coolest cities we’ve explored during our entire trip – brewpubs, great restaurants, scenic vistas, a factory-turned-craft-center, and even an axe-throwing gallery (who know that was a thing?)! It’s full of construction cranes and vacant lots surrounded by fencing saying, “Coming Soon…” At the rate it’s growing, it soon will be the largest city in Alabama. Plus, the sun came out while we were there, after two woefully soggy weeks!!

The highlight of our time in Huntsville (other than getting to spend so much time with our hosts, Woody and Myra Sanderson) was our night at the town’s performing arts theater to see the hilarious musical Kinky Boots. It’s a special evening when you see an audience of Alabamians give a standing ovation to a show about transvestites.

On the other hand, the lowlight of our time in Huntsville, of the entire trip and of my recent lifetime was having to watch the Alabama-Clemson game. Okay, it wasn’t all horrible – it was nice to see Bobby and Cathy Wooldridge, who drove up from Tuscaloosa to watch the game. But that’s it. It was bad enough that, for the second time in three years, an undefeated Alabama season ended in a loss in the championship game (both to the Auburn With A Lake School), but to go thud by 28 points was…well, I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Still in semi-shock the morning after the game, we were up and on the road at 5:00am to drive from Huntsville to Red Bay, AL, home of Tiffin Motor Homes. We lucked into an earlier-than-expected service appointment to take care of a few nagging things we’ve been driving around with, but it meant we had to get to Red Bay by 7:00am. There’s no bay in Red Bay, nor is there much of anything else there, so when our punch list of items got fixed, we immediately headed to Music City – Nashville.

Where did the holidays go?  They were magical for us and, like magic, they’ve disappeared!

After leaving Key West, we put Greg on a plane to Connecticut to spend Christmas with his brothers from other mothers.  Then we checked into the nicest RV park we’ve been to during our entire trip.  

From there, we did some last-minute shopping at the endless malls and storefront plazas in the Pompano Beach / Ft. Lauderdale area.  

We had a great evening with our special friends from CT (to call them friends seems an understatement), the O’Connors.  

Abby and Clark arrived from Chicago on December 23, and we spent Christmas in Delray Beach at Larry and Nora Rosensweig’s house, whose driveway was a snugly perfect fit for The Big T.  

Delray Beach has a cool, old-Florida-meets-new-Florida vibe.  We savored the restaurant scene, the beach and the Intracoastal Waterway running through town 

But mostly, we enjoyed family time and the warm (literally and figuratively – shorts on Christmas Eve!) hospitality of Larry and Nora. Christmas Day provided extra fun, with the family of Nora’s brother joining us for dinner (and an interesting appetizer).

We then pushed hard to get from South Florida to Tuscaloosa. Our drive through rural South Georgia featured something we haven’t seen before on the trip – a water tower in the middle of a road (U.S. Highway 82).

JJ flew down from New York and joined us to watch the Alabama-Oklahoma game with the Wooldridge and Sandersons, then ring in the New Year on Lake Tuscaloosa at the house of Robert and Ruth Reynolds (who, luckily, also had an RV-friendly driveway!).  

We also played a soggy round of golf and had a nice boat ride on Lake Tuscaloosa. That little patch of blue sky in the boat pic is as close as we got to sunshine in Alabama from the day we arrived until the morning we left.

It’s not a visit to Tuscaloosa without going to the greatest rib joint in the world, Dreamland!

Ruth Reynolds is an expert on the healing power of minerals. She provided me with an amazing diagnosis and treatment for my sorer-than-usual wrist! I’m glad to provide an unsolicited plug for Ruth’s products, available at ohmstateofmind.com.

And this saga wouldn’t be complete without admitting to a sheepish incident in Tuscaloosa. The amount of rain in Alabama in the past few weeks turned it into Seattle Southeast. As we pulled into our space in the RV park where we stayed for a couple of days before going to the Reynolds’s house, I backed up a foot too far and got off the gravel and into some grass. Some very wet grass. Which turned into mud as I tried to get out of it. Predictably, my efforts accomplished nothing but spinning our tires deeper and deeper into the muck, so we eventually swallowed our pride and called AAA for a tow. Not a good self-esteem moment, but we did get a full ROI on our annual AAA membership fee.

On January 2, it was back on the road, with fond memories of a special holiday season and gratitude for family, good friends and their welcoming hospitality.

Happy New Year, everyone!