Road Trips
Chronological road trip stories and travel journals from our journeys across the country. These posts follow our routes day by day, sharing the experiences, stops, and memories that define each trip.
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May 2013: East Bound and Down – Prelude
Above is the track for our trip, which I have planned using the Trimble Outdoors website Next month, we’ll be hitting the road for the East Coast. This will be mine & Pat’s final trip east for a while. For the past few years while my daughter’s been in school, I’ve been taking her and my grandson east to visit family, but with this being her final year of school, next year, she can venture out on her own if she likes. Pat and I will thereafter be focusing our attention on pretty much every other direction of the country. We’ve talked about places we wanted to visit, like South…
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March 1-3, 2013: Grease is the Word!
Overview Map The following map was created using the Trimble Outdoors Navigator app for my iPhone. For an interactive version of the map or to see a closeup of the route, click the “Bigger Map” link. Prelude We wanted to get away for the weekend to relax from the strain of several circumstances as of late. Between work, family concerns, household projects, due to lack of time, we haven’t allowed ourselves a road trip for a while and we were long overdue! We just had a few days, so we couldn’t travel too far and we kicked around several possibilities. Looking at the map, I suggested that we continue following…
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September 1-3, 2012: Lake Michigan Loop Redux
Prelude We haven’t been on a road trip or camped in a while and with our 10th wedding anniversary coming up, decided to take a trip over Labor Day weekend. Only two snafus: we needed to watch our 18-month old grandson until noon Saturday while my daughter was in college classes; and then the remnants of Hurricane Isaac were heading to the Midwest. While tossing out ideas, I wanted to originally camp in northern Indiana and visit the Marshmallow Festival in Ligonier, Indiana and the Blueberry Festival in Plymouth, Indiana. I’d just enjoyed 7 wonderful visits to the Indiana State Fair a couple of weeks ago and was having major…
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August 9-12, 2012: Kerola Campers Big Little Rally, Transfer, Pennsylvania
Photographs Below is a slideshow of all Pat’s photos from Kerola Campers 2012 Big Little Rally. Click any photo to stop the slideshow and view the photos on my Flickr site. [flickrslideshow acct_name=”11019355@N03″ id=”72157631042938200″ width=”600″]
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September 2011: Impromptu Lake Michigan coast road trip
Pat and I decided on a last minute overnight road trip. Not being able to decide where to go, I fired up Google maps on the iPhone and sized the map to fit an area within 5 or so hours’ drive. We then closed our eyes, turned the phone and pressed down an area along the map’s edge. That would be where we’d go. No offense to Pickneyville, Illinois, but we weren’t thinking that would be our prime destination. Plus, it was still too close. So we scrapped this plan and simply opted to head north into Michigan. We thought it would be nice to stay as close to the…
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Tri-State Route 66 Festival — Day 2
Sorry for the lack of posts! Unfortunately my internet connection at the Joplin Holiday Inn was AWOL until yesterday morning before we left, so I’m just now able to get a new post up. Oklahoma is HOT this time of year! It was in the low-mid 90’s and it felt it. We stopped off in the morning at the World’s Largest Rocking Chair where we met a couple from Minneapolis who were cruising Route 66 from Chicago to L.A. We found a neat little diner in St. Robert where we had a late breakfast. After a visit with Ramona Lehman at the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, we jumped back…
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Tri-State Route 66 Festival — Day 1
After getting a somewhat late start out of Indy this morning, we made it to Springfield, IL in a record 3 hours for lunch at the Cozy Drive In. Afterward, we picked up Route 66 and headed south through Farmersville, Litchfield, and Mount Olive before arriving in Collinsville. I was on a mission. It’s been more than 6 weeks since we ordered our Serro Scotty trailer, and I needed a fix…bad. The first time I saw one in person was at an RV dealer there back in November. We arrived at Randy’s Trailer Town to a scorching 92 degrees, but that didn’t stop me. I was pleased to find not…
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Tri-State Route 66 Festival — The Prelude
Here it is Wednesday morning and we’re getting ready to head off for five (hopefully) peaceful days on the road. Our day will start off with a drive out to Springfield, Illinois where we’ll have lunch at the Cozy Dog Drive In, well known as the restaurant where the corn dog was invented 50-some years ago. From there, we pick up that grand old two-lane highway, Route 66 and take it south into St. Louis, where chances are we’ll be diving into a concrete from Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, another Route 66 icon dating back to 1941. After that, we meander our way through the Ozarks of Missouri before picking…
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April 11, 2010: Indiana Road Trip
Since it was a gorgeous day, we decided to hit the road today and scout out some more nice campground sites at Indiana State Parks and Recreation Areas. First, we headed down to Spring Mill State Park, where we already have a campsite booked for a gathering of teardrop trailer owners next month. Pat has already gotten together with them once, at their winter camping trip in January called “Shiveree.” It wasn’t too cold that weekend, it was in the 40’s, but for me, it was enough to keep me home! Brrrr! We scoped out the site we had booked, and several others that looked nice. As we visit campgrounds,…
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April 2010: Ouabache State Park
Fellow T@B owners Alan and Carie, Tom and Ella and Pat and myself decided to get together for another fun weekend of camping. With our busy schedules at work, Pat and I could only camp on the weekend. It was rainy on the way up, cleared up when we arrived, and then another storm came, but it was mercifully brief! All in all it was a nice weekend and Ouabache is a very nice state park. Pat and I scoped out some sites we’d like to stay in sometime so I am sure we’ll be back! I didn’t take too many photos this weekend, but here a few shots of…