July 10, 2020
Coincidentally, this last week both Steve’s Dad and my Mom ended up in hospitals. News like that always stops you in your tracks and this was no exception. At the time we were contemplating leaving South Dakota and moving to North Dakota. We discussed multiple options and at one point we were going to turn back. As things turned out, both parents recovered and are back in their individual living places in Bothell and West Seattle, and we have decided to move forward, cautiously.
If you’ve been following the US COVID cases, you know that recently many of the northern states and northeastern states have experienced an uptick in positive COVID cases. Consequently, Steve and I have decided to forgo our original plan of visiting friends and family in MN, WI and MI and instead start traveling slightly southerly, likely into the state of NE next. Right now there is a low-case corridor leading through NE, MO and KY which could still get us to Washington DC by November 2nd. But things are changing all the time. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks.
July 20, 2020
Got word from brother Matt that Mom was having difficulty swallowing/breathing last night. She was treated at her care facility, but there are murmurs of Hospice and we’ve decided to circle back West. Steve’s working on a route, likely through MT, ID and then staying in Eastern WA for a while. One day at a time.
August 1, 2020
As mentioned earlier, Steve and I have turned back West to visit my Mom. As we slowly rotate West, we think back on some of the great people we’ve met thus far. Larry and Judy Lang in Stanton ND. Stopping by in the evenings and introducing us to their grandkids and bringing us brochures of the Native American tribes in the area, meant a lot to us. The very generous invitation to a delicious chicken salad on fresh spinach greens dinner from Bobby and Gerry Sloat. Complete strangers, but we shared great food, wine, conversation and a love of the stars and NEOWISE comet. Out of the Blue, but what a treat! In that same community, Astrid, the owner of Summerville Grocery who owns the cutest, and cleanest, restaurant and convenience store. Not only are there some of the best pinochle players in the world residing in area (according to themselves), but Astrid offers a great selection of delicious hard ice cream flavors. And our young kayak fisher-people Brigette and Shane from Pierre SD. Nicest young people to engage in conversation with us old farts and share their fishing stories. In times of trouble, I’ve always envisioned leaders of the world coming together for an ice cream social and bringing toppings from their home country. Sharing food, sharing stories, extending yourself to others. Doesn’t have to be world peace, just sharing a little bit of Love.
October 21 & 22, 2020
The Catholic priest was summoned. Family members were either in Mom’s apartment or attending the Last Sacrament virtually thru FaceTime. A relatively short ceremony of washing and anointing and giving a final blessing to the dying – my/our Mom. As my brother so eloquently stated “Mom’s eyes were open. She wasn’t relying on oxygen or tubes in her arms. Her long hair was pulled close to her head and back into a ponytail. She was calm and beautiful.”
On October 22, 2020 at 4:45 am, my/our Mom passed peacefully from this world to heaven. She is with so many of her family and friends that have passed before her. She will be loved in heaven and missed here on earth. But there are so many memories, that she’ll be with us in mind and heart for years to come.
October 29 – November 9, 2020
Arrived on Thursday 10/29 at Bull Run Regional Park in Centreville VA, our headquarters in and out of Washington DC. On 10/30 at 10:30 am took the White House tour starting at the East Wing and exiting at the North Portico. The next 10 days were a whirl wind of tours, museums, galleries, visiting family and enjoying the woods, scenery and unusually balmy November weather in Northeastern VA. What we did NOT have is Internet. So, my apologies to friends who were concerned for our safety in DC. Overall, the Capital was very quiet, very few people and although we did not visit DC on Saturday 11/7, we did go in on Sunday and people were just happy. Steve and I congratulated each other on “Black Lives Matter” Blvd, and sit today on the Holden Beach coastline of NC. It was quite a trip!!
October 26, 2020 Thanksgiving at Camden/Columbia RV Park, Camden SC. Today was the first tinges of homesickness since leaving Washington state. Obviously, the Thanksgiving holiday was a trigger. Thanksgiving was Mom’s favorite holiday – good, homemade foods, family and no gift giving. Simple. But we adjust. There were a flurry of emails from family and friends, so the heart strings were calmed, No turkey, but some good Carolina BBQ, sweet potatoes and good wine. It’s alright.
March 2, 2021 Galveston TX
Left the state of Louisiana yesterday. I’ve told Steve I’d like to go back to SW LA next February, when COVID is over. This year, the annual Cracklins and Boudain festival at Palmetto Island SP was cancelled, no musicians were playing Cajun music at the local restaurants, and the TABASCO factory on Avery Island was closed to visitors. We were fortunate to hit crawfish harvest and ate boiled, fried and crawfish etouffee during our week stay. Just a note that crawfish traps are placed in the flooded rice and sugar fields and look like little red floats up and down the fields. I’ll take pictures next year. Also some interesting geology with 5 (?) salt domes in the area, including one owned and operated by Morton Salt. Hoping to do a tour of a salt cavern next go around.
April 8, 2021 Big Bend NP
A nice couple, Mike & Kim, took our picture as we watched the sun set at Window View, Chicos Basin, Big Bend NP. It was fun talking with folks after the sun set. Although nearly everyone was masked, little by little, it seems COVID is getting controlled. It’s such a pleasure to talk with nice people and learn their stories.
April 29 – May 13, 2021 From Monument Valley, Navajo Tribal Park to Mesa Verde National Park near Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Reservation, the internet has been bad. So today I’m at the Delores Public Library, CO downloading pictures and doing my best to remember who, what where and when we’ve been and done in the last 3 weeks of travel and touring. Also, it’s been on my mind how “unfair” limited access to the internet is to rural communities. Not just tribal members on the Tribal reservations, but rural America in general. Without access to a strong, reliable internet signal, students especially are at a disadvantage in accessing the vastness of information on the internet, also in learning the how to use various programing tools, like downloading pictures, creating presentations, zoom meetings that urban students and teachers take for granted.
Elon Musk and his Starlink idea of having internet capabilities transmitted world-wide by satellite sounds like a equitable solution. But at least one downside of this proposal is the requirement of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of satellites in the sky and how that reality would affect astronomy, space travel, etc.. I don’t have the answer, but it is very frustrating not to have a strong, reliable internet signal.
October 1 – 9, 2021 Detroit MI
For about one year, with the help of my cousins from around the country, I’ve been planning a Mass/Mind’s Year Celebration (Mom)/Re-reunion in Detroit. Long story short, many shots of Jameson later and in summary, all went well. Highlights included the Mass said by Fr. Dan O’Sullivan, a boy from Mom’s neighborhood, who became a local priest and included many anecdotes of growing up on Gladwin Avenue into his Homily; visiting the Mt. Olivet and Holy Sepulcher Cemeteries to view great-great, great and grandparents’ grave stones; and a chance to visit with my cousins whom I haven’t seen in 5+ years, and to hug my siblings. It was a great week.
Oh what that Jameson will do. After the Reunion’s Finale dinner, and a 3 1/2 hour drive from MI to OH, we started to unpack, only to realize that the jade plant that had travelled with us for 19 months, had been left back at the hotel. Steve drove back to MI, picked up our lost plant and at 5:00 pm, we all were once again reunited. Reminded us of when Hannah, age 5-6 yo, left her stuffed dog Butterfly at the castle in Germany, but that’s another story.
October 2021 Kentucky and Tennessee Admittedly, Steve and I do not camp near larger cities in most of the states we visit. But it’s been particularly noticed in these last two states that there’s so little in way of fresh fruits and vegetables at grocery stores. These same small towns will have Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and Arby’s, but few have grocery store(s) with fresh produce. Organic is extremely rare. Processed foods lead to obesity, diabetes, slow learning, hormonal and reproductive disorders. Is this a way to keep America suppressed?
November 3, 2021 Blacksburg SC
Homemade, from scratch, pancakes on a cold SC morning. Hot maple syrup and hot black coffee, what a way to start the day!!
November 23, 2021 Holden Beach, NC Recently, we’ve had some trailer maintenance issues and thought we’d pass the issues and solutions along for those interested. The FIRST problem/solution was the discovery that there is an anode rod in the hot water heater that attracts minerals like Ca, Fe, Mg in the incoming water, and chemically binds them on the anode rod so the minerals do not form salt crystals and become small crystalline deposits in your small water lines – like the water hose going into the toilet bowl tank. (See Travel Blog entry for 10/22/21). Save yourself the stress and expense of replacing a toilet by getting both Al and Mg anode rods to use in soft water and hard water conditions. The SECOND problem/solution occurred with the slide out. Sorry no pictures. For the last few months, the slide room was becoming more skewed as it came in and went out. In early October, we had someone look at it. He added a dry lubricant and petroleum jelly to the skids. DO NOT DO THIS on a Lippert slide. Instead hire a repair person knowledgeable about Lippert mechanisms and willing to teach (gearituprv@gmail.com, Bill & Jackie Brown if you’re in Holden Beach NC area). They will remove the lubricant and petroleum jelly and the accumulated grit, they will find the slide control box (in our case, bottom drawer to the right of the kitchen sink), they will teach you how to read the red-light code with the aid of LippertNOW app, how to jockey the slide back and forth until, viola, your slide room is back in sync! Hopefully, that is all for now.
Samuel Ullman
YOUTH
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.
The above poem by Samuel Ullman (1840-1924) was on the wall at the “Natchez in Historic Photographs” in Statton Chapel. I apologize for the small print. Could not figure out how to enlarge the font. But the theme of the poem is what Steve and I are experiencing, seeking and appreciating.
Ref: 9/23/2021
This post is out of sequence and very late (it’s now May 14, 2022).
In September, on the reference date above I lost my father, Robert (Bob) Pierson. He was 89 and from a family of long-lived individuals so 89 was not an age when we expected him to leave us. He is survived my sister and myself and by an older brother, Don, age 92, who is an accomplished artist and retired art dealer in Sedona, Arizona.
Dad had been ill for some time with the primary contributor to his decline being COPD. It’s a horrible affliction and it was heartbreaking to hear him struggle to talk when I would call to give him updates of our travels. There came a time where my calls became more a source of frustration than comfort for him and I stopped making them, leaning on my sister and her husband Scott for updates.
The last time I saw Dad was a year almost to the day prior to his passing. Kathy and I were preparing to leave for a second time to complete on our long-planned adventure. We had returned after getting as far as the Dakotas when both Dad and Kathy’s mother, Pat, ended up being hospitalized. After about a month back in the Northwest we took off again with our goal to reach Washington DC for the 2020 election.
Before our re-departure in September of 2020 I stopped at a Dairy Queen for his favorite, a strawberry Blizzard. I asked him how he felt about my leaving, with him in a retirement home and feeling the increasing impact of his loss of breathing function, knowing that the COPD was going to be his end. Both of us knowing that this was likely the last time we would sit together. He of course said that Kathy and I should make good on our plans and to not look back. And if something were to happen to him, he told me that we should just keep going. Which was I expected him to say but it still left me with a sense of some duty unfinished.
Fortunately, Dad had and I have a sister and brother-in-law who took great care of Dad when he was with us and of his affairs when he passed. I will always be grateful for their selflessness.
My Dad had a wickedly off-beat sense of humor and this is what I plan to honor and take forward.
Rest well, Dad.
July 19, 2022 Return trip in Warrensburg, NY
Our next trailer over neighbors, Diane and Arnie, shared this rule of thumb, the 3/3/3 rule:
- don’t drive more than 3 hours
- arrive at your camp site by 3:00 pm, and
- stay for a minimum of three days.
Great advice! And this is from first-time RVers! They’ll be setting trends in the future.
December 15, 2022
Steve and I knew as we planned this initially two year, and in reality three year trip, that our parents who were in their late 80s, early 90s would likely pass while we were on the road. That was the case with my Mom who died October 22, 2020 and it was the case with my Dad who died on December 15, 2022. It happened that Steve’s Dad was hospitalized at the same time as my Mom back in August 2020, so we turned around in North Dakota and returned to the Pacific NW, staying for a month. No regrets. With Dad, my sister and I arranged to meet in Seattle (she from WY and me from AZ) and spend several days visiting Dad and family. No regrets. We had some lovely visits. Dad was telling his stories and was so appreciative of our efforts to see him. Local sibs visited regurlarly and and his Mt. Rainier climbing buddy visited him on the fourteenth. He died in the early hours of December 15th.
Always at the conclusion of Dad and my weekly Sunday calls, as Steve and I were travelling through the states, Dad was adamant about how happy he was that we were doing this trip. He knew how much I/we enjoyed adventure, challenges and history.
I miss my parents tremendously. I’m anxious to get back to family. There’s no place like home.
Winter/Spring 2023 Camping along the Pacific Coast, heading north from central CA to WA from January through April, we’ve negotiated near freezing nights with hail, snow, wind and rain during the day. Under these conditions it’s difficult to escape Mother Nature’s moisture from getting into the trailer. The tipping point was at Cape Lookout SP near Netarts OR when we heroically ventured out into the 70% chance rain and started to collect garbage along the beach. We were out for about two hours and got soaked to the point where water was dripping into our boots. What’s really different when living in a trailer versus in a brick-and-mortar house is that all those wet clothes need to dry in a relatively small porous box that doesn’t necessarily have good air circulation to begin with. Long story short, after about three days of drying out, we discovered condensation on the inside of the windows, on clothes in cupboards and underneath the bed mattress (despite having wood runners installed to elevate the mattress about half an inch). The next step was purchase of a space heater (perfect aire 10″ oscillating ceramic heater) and operating it about half an hour at a time in various locations in the trailer as well as installing Eva-Dry High Capacity Mini-Dehumidifiers throughout closets, storage spaces and cupboards. As long as this weather continues, we’re also keeping the temperature at 68 – 70 degrees throughout the day and night and even though the weather continues to be wet and cold, the windows are now clear and there isn’t that cold and damp in the air.
Hope this advice helps other travelers have less headache during their stay in the great Pacific NorthWet.
April 15, 2023 Copalis Crossing WA
We have returned to our home state. It is rainy, wet and windy, but that is the Pacific Northwet this time of year. We’d forgotten, since we successfully avoided winter weather for three years while travelling. As we end our cross-country journey and shift our time from exploring new environs to the rather serious “work” of finding a new home, the Travel Blog will be coming to an end. Before finally signing off, we’ll list out some of our FAVORITE or noteworthy events, places or foods – yum! The adventure isn’t over yet and wish us luck on our new endeavor.