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It’s been a long time since our last post. And it’s been an exhilarating few weeks!

From Carlsbad Caverns, we headed across southern New Mexico to Arizona. We made it through Tucson shortly before its 71st day of measurable snowfall since 1894. From there, on February 2, we drove north to Sedona, AZ, one of the most beautiful cities we’ve seen on our trip. Red rocks are everywhere, and they uplift the soul.

There was a snowstorm brewing in northern Arizona, so our plan to go to the Grand Canyon didn’t work. Instead, we drove to San Diego to hang out with Dr. Gwen. As we arrived in San Diego, we thought we’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in Seattle – yes, it rains in San Diego!

We had a wonderful week (the sun finally came out) visiting Gwen and her buds…

getting some beach time…

reconnecting with our dear friends from Snoqualmie, Doug and Janine Cherry…

and seeing our first Pacific Coast sunset in 11 months.

We then headed up to Thousand Oaks to visit our magical granddaughter, Mia – oh, yeah, and to see her parents (Pete and Angela)!

We had three weeks of being grandparents – painting Mia’s room, taking her to a park, chauffeuring her tired parents to a just-the-two-of-them Valentine’s dinner, laughing at MiaSpeak (Roxy and Sting are now Woky and Dinger), “helping” her play the purple guitar we bought her in Nashville, reading her books and just being with her!

Ginny also spent a day at Hermosa Beach with her niece, Christina Craw Donovan, and grandnephew Jack.

On the day we left Thousand Oaks, we saw our first rainbow in months!

Weather again dictated our route. Our destination was Oregon at a time it was getting clobbered by snowstorms (yes, plural!). So we got creative, which also allowed us to hit the 47th state of our journey – Nevada. Our most direct route would have been up California through the San Joaquin Valley, but that would have led us through major mountain passes over the Siskiyous and the Cascades. For us, “Chains Required” is synonymous with “NFW.” So we skirted the mountains by driving east to Las Vegas, then up through the Nevada high desert.

In the classic RV movie Lost In America, Albert Brooks’s wife blows their entire savings at a casino on the first night of their cross-country trip. Having no interest in a life-imitates-art moment, we avoided The Strip. A safer adventure was visiting Hoover Dam, a remarkable engineering feat. Fun fact: Lake Mead, formed behind Hoover Dam, is big enough to submerge the entire state of Connecticut under 10 feet of water.

Other than Vegas and Reno, Nevada is, shall we say, sparsely populated.

Five hours north of Vegas, we finally saw a gas station and stopped to top off our tank. It turns out that diesel fuel isn’t the only thing for sale at that little oasis. We wondered why there were so many big trucks in the parking lot of the building next to where we filled up, until we saw the sign.

Moving right along…we headed to Bend, Oregon, on the eastern side of the Cascades. Bend was experiencing its biggest snowfall in 100 years, but we timed our drive to be within a nice little window of clear weather. We charged through Nevada, the northeastern tip of California and up central Oregon – our hardest driving of the entire trip (820 miles in two days). We obsessively monitored weather forecasts. When we were only 30 minutes from Bend, it started snowing lightly, but the roads were clear so we kept driving. We got to our RV park just in time – we woke up the next morning to a fresh dump of snow.

Arriving in Bend means our journey is over. This is our new home.

Arriving here also meant reconnecting with our friends Ralph and Kim Klinke. No brewpub will be safe now.

Bend has always been on our list of possible landing spots, but it wasn’t until we arrived (on March 6) and started exploring the area that we concluded it’s the place for us. It’s beautiful, vibrant, cool, healthy, unpretentious and full of nice people. We found a great little house across the street from a riverfront park and walking distance to downtown, where – building inspection willing – we’ll move next month.

Our first two weeks in Bend have been a rush of activity – house-hunting, learning our way around a new place, remembering how to walk carefully on ice and snow. But overriding these practicalities has been a tide of emotions about the end of our grand adventure – wonderment at all we have seen and learned about our beautiful country; sadness that our trip of a lifetime is over; satisfaction that we made our dream come true; a sense that, as a couple, we’ve never felt closer or happier; and excitement about all that we still have to look forward to in life.

Ginny, with her gift for writing from the heart, will have more to say about all of this in a future post.

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!

From St. Augustine, in the northeast corner of the state on the Atlantic coast, we headed southwest to the Tampa Bay area on the Gulf of Mexico.

Our first stop was at the celebrated new golf resort, Streamsong, in the middle of nowhere east of Tampa. It’s built on the same if-you-build-it-they-will-come concept as Bandon Dunes. Except for the clubhouse and lodge, which seem to have been designed by someone who likes the looks of minimum-security prisons, the place is beautiful and first-class in every way.

We had a delightful visit with Ginny’s aunt, Mary Vishney, who lives in the gulf coast town of Dunedin. She is vibrant, warm, wise and loving, and it’s no wonder that Ginny and her husband are crazy about her.

During this leg of the trip, Ginny and I were both able to re-connect with special friends.

Bob Best and I met 39(!) years ago when he worked for the Buccaneers and I was with the NFL.

Barry Mazer and I go back ever further – we sat next to each other in Miz Stutts’s second grade class at Crestline, and have been arguing about Alabama and Auburn football ever since (Best and I used to do the same thing about Alabama and Notre Dame, but there hasn’t been much room for debate in recent years).

En route to Naples, we stopped at Sanibel Island to have lunch with Ginny’s long-time work colleague, Bill Hotchkiss.

When we got to Naples, we got to visit with a lifelong friend of Ginny’s father, Tom Lofgran.

Naples is a short hop down the gulf coast from Tampa. Speaking of which, when we arrived there, the weather was warm enough for us to wear shorts for the first time since Labor Day weekend (there’s no sense in showing a picture confirming that, since my legs would be indistinguishable from the white background on this page)!

We had dinner and played golf with Karen and Dan Bennewitz and got to spend an evening with some other Weston pals, Rick and Lori Allen, Barb Seymour and Kathy Meighan.

Golf at Royal Poiciana with Karen and Dan also involved playing through a foursome of iguanas and birds.

From Naples, we kept heading south until there was no more south to go.

We drove through the edge of the Everglades and picked up Greg at the Ft. Lauderdale airport (what a trooper – after spending a week taking finals at WSU, he celebrated by getting on a red-eye!), then headed to Key West, the southernmost place in the continental U.S.

Happily, the 150-mile drive from Miami was not stressful. U.S. Highway 1, a.k.a. The Overseas Highway, used to be narrow and lethal (it was originally built on top of an old railroad bridge), but most of the road and its 42 bridges have been replaced in recent years. Now it’s as scenic as any drive we’ve had on the entire trip, and not just because RV drivers find special beauty in roads with wide shoulders. The road traverses more than 30 keys, starting with Key Largo just south of Homestead, FL, en route to Key West.

Key West is a combo of New Orleans, Vegas and Disney World. It has an historic, old-town feel, it’s full of street vendors, bars, restaurants, live music, kitschy shops, roosters (they’re everywhere) and quirky characters, plus there are plenty of sites and activities to check out. Fun fact: Key West was one of the five largest cities in Florida as recently as the 1930s (when Florida was the least-populated state in the South) – now it’s #142.

Our busiest day included both jet-skiing and a sunset cruise. Otherwise, we enjoyed plenty of local seafood, rum-based hydration and sightseeing.

On the sailboat, Ginny and I reprised our favorite wedding photo for our 7th anniversary two days later!

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From Key West, it was back to the Miami area to put Greg on a plane to Connecticut, see our dear friends the O’Connors and get ready for Christmas with the Rosensweigs!

One of our better pieces of trip-planning was getting to enjoy, back-to-back, two of the most scenic and historic old cities in the nation.

After Charleston and my dogleg to Atlanta, Ginny and I met back up in Savannah, GA.  It was settled in 1733 by James Oglethorpe as the first city in the colony of Georgia, located at the mouth of the Savannah River.  It was the southernmost commercial port in the 13 colonies and was an important trade and shipping hub for the cotton industry in the early 19th century and during the Confederacy.  Fortunately, at the end of Sherman’s march through Georgia, the General spared the city from the fate of pretty much everything else in his path during his Union army’s march to the sea from Atlanta.  As a result, one of the most beautiful and unique cities in the nation was preserved.  

Oglethorpe laid out Savannah in a series of small town squares, a configuration now enjoying a renaissance among modern urban planners. The original squares and their surrounding buildings (most of which are antebellum in vintage and are now restored) are the soul of the city.  They comprise one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the nation.

Tourism is now Savannah’s biggest economic driver.  The place is loaded with great restaurants and has a thriving arts scene.  Many of the old houses are now owned by beautiful people.  This is because Georgia has become the largest state in the U.S. for production of feature films (thank you, tax incentives!).  As only one example, we saw the town square where the bus stop scenes in Forrest Gump were filmed.

From historic Savannah, we drove south to even more historic St. Augustine, FL, which is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the U.S.

St. Augustine was founded in 1565 and was the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years.  After Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. in 1819, it became the first capital of the Florida Territory.  

After the Civil War, Henry Flagler, Standard Oil’s co-founder and then the real estate speculator who created modern Florida, tried to revitalize St. Augustine by making it a winter resort.  However, two other Flagler-developed cities located farther south in Florida, Palm Beach and Miami, eclipsed St. Augustine due to their warmer winter weather.  

Today, St. Augustine is a relatively small city of fewer than 15,000 people.  Starting in 1965, at time of the celebration of its 400th anniversary, St. Augustine began revitalizing its inner city by reconstructing a number of buildings to their original appearance.  The historic district retains its narrow streets and historic aesthetics.  

The signature structure in town, however, remains the Castillo de San Marcos.  This fort was built by the Spanish over 300 years ago and remains the oldest masonry structure in the continental U.S.  

For us, it wasn’t all sightseeing, history and merriment, however.  Our campground was right on the Atlantic Ocean – lots of beach walks and sunsets.     

From St. Augustine, it was off to central and south Florida, where friends and family awaited!

By Jim.

Atlanta was always going to be on our trip itinerary, because it’s the site of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum (the seventh official Presidential Library of the trip, with six to go).  Then we got lucky when we could time that leg of the trip for the same weekend that Alabama and Georgia were in town to play in the SEC Championship Game.  Ginny decided to stay in Charleston to spend some extra time with Coley, so one of my best friends from law school, Woody Sanderson, was able to juggle his work schedule (it wouldn’t be fair to let loose a retirement zinger right now) and join me.

The Carter Library and Museum also includes the Carter Center, which is dedicated to providing facilities and services to resolve conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, prevent diseases and improve mental health care.

The Carter Center sets this one apart from all other Presidential Libraries, and exemplifies why Jimmy Carter is America’s greatest ex-President.

The buildings housing the Museum, Library and Center are unpretentious and understated, just like President Carter.  

The Library’s exhibits on the Carter Administration caused me a nearly-overwhelming sense of nostalgia and sadness. I passionately supported Carter’s out-of-nowhere run to the White House in 1976, which I mostly experienced in Alabama, having moved there that summer to start law school after living in California and Oregon for 12 years. Carter personified what was then called The New South – the success of racial desegregation made the region seem receptive to other forms of progressivism. Reagan’s defeat of Carter in 1980 snuffed out that spirit, with ramifications that went beyond the South. For example, one of Reagan’s first acts as President was to remove the solar panels Carter had installed at the White House.

Jimmy Carter’s life story is the American dream come true.    Born in a small town in rural Georgia, he served his country by going to the Naval Academy, then earning an assignment to Admiral Hyman Rickover’s elite nuclear submarine program.  However, Carter’s sense of family was stronger than his ambition.  When his father died, young Lieutenant Carter resigned his commission to return to Plains, GA and rescue his family’s farming business.  A few years later, he entered politics, first as a state senator and then as Governor of Georgia.  After one term in the statehouse, he ran for President, prompting a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution headlined, “Jimmy Carter Is Running for WHAT?”

President Carter started the tradition of newly-inaugurated Presidents walking from Capitol Hill down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House after taking the oath of office.  January 20, 1977 was an exhilarating day, filled with hope and goodwill.  But Carter inherited a lousy economy (remember Gerald Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” buttons?) and an even worse national mood (the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate).  He still achieved important legislative victories, such as creating the Department of Energy, establishing the environmental Super Fund and deregulating the transportation, media and banking industries.  His greatest triumphs were as a diplomat – the SALT II arms limitations agreement, the treaty implementing our decades-old commitment to return control of the Panama Canal to Panama and, most importantly, the Camp David Accords and the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty.

Ultimately, the Carter Presidency was doomed by the Iran hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days, including the entire year of 1980 when Carter was running for reelection.  Carter got the blame for a long-shot military rescue operation that failed in April, 1980, but not nearly enough credit for his gritty, patient diplomacy and tough, pragmatic seizure of billions of dollars of Iranian assets that punished Iran’s outrageous behavior and created negotiating leverage.  His tireless efforts culminated in the return of the hostages – with no loss of life – on the day Reagan, his successor, was inaugurated.  In recognition of Carter’s achievement, Reagan asked him to travel to Germany to greet the hostages on their return to freedom.

In the 37 years since he left office, Jimmy Carter has devoted his life to humanitarian causes worldwide.  He has overseen elections in foreign countries.  He has brokered peace accords.  He has written 31 books.  Rosalyn has advocated tirelessly for the mentally ill.  As a couple, they have been the faces of Habitat For Humanity and raised funds and awareness for public health initiatives – one of which is the distribution by the Carter Center of a drug preventing onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, a triumph commemorated by a statue of the grounds of the Museum.

Jimmy and Rosalyn both received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.  President Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.  He even won Grammy Awards for narrations of his audiobooks.  These achievements are displayed at the Museum and should make every citizen proud of how our country has been served by this honorable man and the splendid wife who has been at his side during 72 years of marriage.

I regard it as a supreme irony that the two U.S. Presidents whose hands I’ve shaken are Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump – polar opposites in morality and character.

After my time at the Library, I headed into nearby downtown Atlanta and started counting down to kickoff for the SEC Championship Game being played the following day at Mercedes Benz Stadium, Atlanta’s new $1.6 billion sporting pleasure palace.

I rode a Ferris wheel that provided an interesting perspective on Centennial Park (of 1996 Olympics fame) and not much else…

and walked over to the remarkable stadium. 

After meeting up with Woody and having a nice dinner in town, we went back to The Big T, which was parked on Stonewall Jackson Drive, near Robert E. Lee Blvd. at Stone Mountain State Park in Stone Mountain, GA.  The New South hasn’t fully taken root yet, even in Atlanta.  

Championship GameDay was rainy and tense.  After a noon-time get-together with our classmate and good friend Scott Phelps, Woody and I got to the stadium well before kickoff.  As luck would have it, recently-elected Alabama Senator Doug Jones was sitting three rows behind us.  He agreed to a picture and was as gracious  and classy as could be.  

The game was epic.  For Alabama fans, the mood swings included (in order) confidence, surprise, shock, disbelief, terror, hope and redemption.

The storyline of Jalen Hurts was too implausible for a Hollywood script.  He lost his job as Alabama quarterback on this same field against this same team in last year’s National Championship game; then he came off the bench Saturday in the 4th quarter when his replacement, Tua Tagovailoa, got injured; he passed for the tying touchdown and ran for the winning score with one minute left in the game.  It’s why sports is the greatest form of entertainment – reality can be more amazing than fantasy.  

By the end of the game, all the Bama fans around us had become our new best friends.  We’d shared a lot in four hours, and there were multiple high-fives and hugs when it was over.  College football at its best.  

Roll Tide!

 

When we planned our trip, Thanksgiving in Charleston, SC was one of the must-do tentpoles we planted, along with Mount Rushmore for Fourth of July, New England in October and Florida in December.

Charleston is one of America’s great cities…size doesn’t matter.

It was one of the ten largest cities in the U.S. as late as the 1840s.  Today, it’s population is “only” about 135,000, yet it remains one of the coolest, classiest and friendliest cities in the country…and beyond.  In 2016, it was named the Best City In The World by Travel + Leisure.  It’s full of great restaurants, classic architecture, nice people and lots of water (not all of it under control – there are these tides that work mischief all over the place, including the city streets…).

Be all that as it may, the main reason for spending so much time in Charleston is that our daughter, Coley Kaeser, had the good sense to move there a few years ago.

During our drive down from Myrtle Beach, we knew we weren’t just in the South, we were now in the Deep South, when we drove past some cotton fields!

And as we arrived at Coley’s house, we were reminded we were in the city where the Civil War started…

We arrived on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and had a big adjustment to make – we stayed at Coley’s house instead of on The Big T.  It was nice for us, and pure joy for Sting and Roxy, who had a fenced backyard to romp in (not to mention a playmate, Coley’s dog Hunter).  Roxy also spent much of the week obsessing over the squirrels in the trees in the backyard.

We had big plans for sightseeing in the historic downtown area of Charleston (more sightseeing than we’ve already done, actually, since we’ve been here before), but we ended up spending a lot of time being semi-slugs, because it was so nice to lounge around a real house.

Thanksgiving dinner was at Dap’s, the downtown restaurant where Coley works (her smile is one of Dap’s most important assets!).  The owners closed the place and threw a big dinner for the staff and their families and friends.  We felt sorta old, but had a blast.  

A few days later, Ginny and I got to play a special golf course, the Country Club of Charleston (site of the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open)…

and I also played a notoriously hard course, the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island (site of the 1991 Ryder Cup and the 2012 and 2021 PGA Championships).  

Both courses were challenging, and picturesque, and the fact that CCofC was way more fun to play than the Ocean Course was partly due to the 25 mph winds and 50-degree temperature at Kiawah the day I was there!

Charleston is a foodie paradise.  We had a couple of epic meals, including at R Kitchen, which has a different menu every night (and you eat what’s put before you – the kitchen, not you, decides what gets served)…

…and Magnolia’s, a local classic.  There are also wine bars, whiskey bars, brewpubs…every culinary vice imaginable.

We got to see both family and friends during our stay.  We had a nice visit and dinner with Ginny’s brother, Mike Dysart, his wife Lauri and their daughter and son-in-law, Ann and George Schneidmuller (Ginny also got some bonus time with Mike and Lauri the following week).  We also had a great evening with our old Weston pals, Scott Willard and Marilyn Reap, who recently moved to the area.

Charleston is so special, it was with some reluctance that I left on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, to go to Atlanta to attend the SEC Championship Game and hang out with my classmate and good bud, Woody Sanderson.  Ginny stayed in Charleston through the weekend, and we planned to re-unite in Savannah the day after the game, for a couple of days in the city that’s described as a mini-Charleston, before we head to Florida.