Eight weeks and more than 5000 miles – wow, an adventure to say the least! We are currently in Cave City, Kentucky, and tomorrow we’re going to tour Mammoth Cave. Yep, I can hear you saying, “What? That’s not on the way to Montana!” Good, you remember your geography. Give yourself an A+.
Since we left Maine nearly four weeks ago, we saw fabulous 110 mile views from the top of Mt Washington, we were awestruck by upstate New York waterfalls in the Adirondacks and around the Finger Lakes, we cruised under the mighty Niagara Falls, we fell in love with little towns along Lake Michigan’s shore, we ferried to and explored Mackinac Island, we walked the beaches of Lake Superior, and we saw miles and miles of farmland, farm houses, barns, siloes, and acres of crops throughout Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, the rolling hills of our beautiful heartland. It’s been incredible, and a geography lesson for us! We have a new awareness and love of parts of our country that don’t normally come to mind as “must sees”, but are spectacular nonetheless.
So you’re still wondering why we’re in Kentucky. When Larry and I arrived at Grand Marais, a little town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on Lake Superior, we knew we needed some down time. We had what we term cumulative fatigue, and it was catching up with us. The park we stayed in was right on the shore. We walked the rock-covered beach, enjoyed a stunning sunset, and began to plan our trek west to Montana. The more we planned the miles ahead, the more we realized we might be pushing ourselves too much. It was roughly 1500 miles to Glacier National Park or 1500 miles home, so we were at a crossroads and a decision point. After weighing a long list of pros and cons, we decided to turn southward and to modify our plans for next year, making the Rockies from the Tetons to the Jasper Icefields our focus in 2019. The change would insure we wouldn’t arrive in Montana less than 100% raring to go, and would allow us to plan the Rockies adventure with knowledge from this trip.
These past eight weeks we learned about the style of RV travel that works for us. We prefer having most of the stops scheduled or preplanned versus freestyling. (Too many years in accounting, I guess. Give me a schedule to follow, and I’m good.) We enjoy boondocking. This one was a surprise - our favorite nights were on farmland with no hookups. Generally speaking, we found four nights is enough in one spot. We tend to get restless otherwise. To incorporate these preferences into our travels out west next year, we need to do a lot of research. The planning, however, is always a large part of the enjoyment, so we look forward to the tasks ahead.
We still have about a week of fun activities left on what I guess I should call our Maine to Michigan adventure before we get back to St Augustine, hug the grandkids, and enjoy the vacationland we call home. We also have many, many gigabytes of video to share with you. We hope you’ll gain an appreciation for the heartland of our country the way we have!!!