Home at last

On December 23, 2011 we ended our three and a half month circuit of the country. 

We didn't know what to expect as we made the wide turn onto our driveway.  But the gate worked.  The gutters beside the driveway were not clogged with leaves.  No fallen trees blocked our passage.  The lawn was in decent shape.  The big house and our garage apartment looked like it did when we left.  No squatters had occupied the property.  Our neighbors Alex and Delores had done a great job of maintaining the premises.

Our 840 square foot apartment felt palatial to us after those months in the motorhome.  At first our dogs didn't appear to be excited, but they settled into their old routines pretty quickly.  For Nancy and me it was weird being home, and it took a little time to realize that we didn't have to hook up the water and sewer hoses and electrical cable every day - that the handle for flushing the toilet was above the bowl, not below - that we didn't have to carry plastic poop bags whenever we took the dogs for a walk - that we didn't have to level our home every few days - that the stairs we use to exit the apartment don't retract and extend when we open and close the door - that we didn't have to strap down our dinette chairs so they wouldn't slide across the floor.  Like that.

It was wonderful seeing friends and celebrating the holidays.  The contrast with the scenery of the southwest we had driven through made us appreciate the beauty of California more than ever.  It's fun being home.  But we're still afflicted with wanderlust.

I'll take this opportunity to talk about some of the high and low points of our trip.

Our favorite city was Asheville, North Carolina.  It's a beautiful place, the people are young, attractive, and friendly, and the climate is relatively mild, because it's around 2000 feet in elevation.  Asheville is a college town, so there's a lot of music and culture.

We also liked Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Walla Walla, Washington, and Missoula, Montana.  Everywhere we went, people were friendly and interested in what we were doing.  I think that the folks in southwest Louisiana were the nicest we came across.  Now if we had talked politics or other controversial subjects, we might have a different opinion, but in general southerners were our favorites, for their kindness and gentle manners.

Our favorite driving experiences were Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Natchez Trace.  Just sublime, all of them, and Shenandoah was especially beautiful because of the recent snowfall. 

For me, the loveliest sights were Glacier Park up in Montana and the Teton ranges in Wyoming.  Of course the fall colors in New England were spectacular.  The prettiest campgrounds were Poche's Fishing Camp in Breaux Bridge, La, Mama Gertie's RV Park in Asheville, NC, and the Elks Lodge in Waynesboro, Pa.

Our favorite museums were the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, and the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.

We didn't eat out a lot, and many of our favorite meals were home grown, some cooked outside on our propane grill.  The restaurant dishes we'll remember best are the Fried Shrimp Po-Boys in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the taco lunch at the Trailer Park in Austin, the pork belly pizza and deep fried wild boar meatballs at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, and the bison cheese fondue in Missoula.

On the other side of the ledger, our worst driving experience was the poorly maintained toll roads in the suburbs of Chicago at rush hour.  Frightening.  The traffic we experienced in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee was the heaviest and slowest I'd ever seen anywhere, and we lived in the greater Los Angeles area some years back.

As I said earlier, the scenery on the drive home through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and eastern California was just plain ugly and by far the worst of our trip.  I apologize if I've hurt anybody's feelings.  Things hit rock bottom when our dogs were covered by stickers in what we consider to be the armpit of the nation, somewhere near Alpine, Texas.

Another low point of our adventure was about a month into it when something on the motorhome seemed to be breaking every few days.  Miraculously, at some point the glitches stopped, and we had no mechanical problems at all the last month and a half of the trip.

By the time we finally pulled into Ben Lomond, we felt like veterans of the RV lifestyle.  We had discovered that we can live happily in what some would consider cramped spaces, that we enjoy sharing new experiences together every day, and that our dogs make us happy. 

We are already talking about where we want to go next.  Up north to Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia?  A swing through Colorado and Utah?  Yosemite?  Tahoe?  We'll let you know.