Category: 2018_012 Winter

February 18

Hi from Clarksville, KY. We’ve been traveling for the last 2 days. Yesterday we drove for about 8 hours from Tampa to Dalton GA, just south of Chattanooga TN. We decided to take a little time today to visit a few National Parks that were on our route. We passed several yesterday, but we were focused on making time. It was hard to pass them by, but we wanted to get as far north as possible. Today, though, we decided to make a few stops, so we didn’t quite make it as far as we originally planned.

Our first stop today was Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Battlefield which straddles Georgia and Tennessee. We didn’t get a chance to see the entire battlefield, but they had a very nice visitor center and a great movie that explained the battle. It’s not one of the more famous Civil War battles and we didn’t know that much about it, so the movie helped a lot.

Then in Murfreesboro (about 30 miles south of Nashville) we made a short stop at the Stones River National Battlefield. We knew even less about this battle so, again, the movie was helpful. It turns out that all three of these battles involved the same participants on both sides. Stones River was first over New Year’s 1862/1863, followed by Chattanooga and Chickamauga in Sept 63. The final battle at Chickamauga is considered the “death knell of the confederacy” as their loss opened up the path to Atlanta.

Finally, we stopped at Andrew Jackson’s home, Hermitage, just east of Nashville. It’s not a National Historic Site so Lynn didn’t get a stamp in her Passport, but it was fun anyway. This was the stop that made it impossible to get to Indianapolis tonight, which was our original plan. We spent over 2 hours there, but it was worth the extra time. The first floor of the mansion is undergoing renovations, so it was covered in plastic, but the upper floor was beautiful. We wandered the grounds a bit before heading back to the car.

So, tonight is the last night of the first half of our very first wintering over adventure. It truly was a great adventure. We left Chicago on Oct 24th, so we’ve been gone almost exactly 4 months. During that time, we put over 12,000 miles on our Honda CRV, we traveled through 10 states and all four time zones. We visited 22 National Parks/Sites/Monuments and two foreign countries (okay so we were only in Nogales MX for 2 hours, but we had to show a passport, so it counts). We spent time in the desert, the mountains and the beach. We had temps from 32 in San Antonio TX (go figure) to 95 with 88% humidity in Costa Rica.

There were several reasons for this trip. The first is that we’re homeless so why not be warm and homeless. But the second reason is that we’re searching for someplace to winter over every year. Given that Chicago is having a brutal winter, we so glad we were in a position to start our search this year. As much as we enjoyed Costa Rica, we’ve crossed it off the list of places to winter over. We would enjoy another vacation to see the things we missed, but we think we’d be bored there for an entire winter. We’re not big beach people and what little golf we found is quite expensive. Besides the heat and humidity, while better than cold and snow, was difficult on Lynn’s joints. Not only that but she hasn’t had a good hair day since she left Arizona. The same can be said for Florida so that’s off the list as well.

Henderson NV was great, but we enjoyed Green Valley even more so right now that’s in the lead, but who knows what we’ll find in Europe. We’ve heard that the Algarve region of Portugal is a terrific place to retire. We are not sure we’d want to retire to Europe, but it might work for the winter. We’re spending some time there next month, so we’ll check it out.

Thanks so much for spending the last 4 months with us. We’re going to go quiet as not much is happening this week other than unpacking, repacking, getting taxes done, visiting doctors, running errands, etc. But, a week from tomorrow (Monday) we’re heading to Lisbon, so we won’t be quiet for long. Talk with you soon.

Love to all…. Lynn and Peter

Friday, January 19

Well….it’s still winter in the south and they have no idea what to do. We left San Antonio on Thursday heading for New Orleans. But because of the side trip we had to take to Austin to fix Lynn’s work computer, we only made it as far as Lafayette, LA. The temperature was in the low 30s, but it was sunny and there was no wind, so it really wasn’t too bad. At least we didn’t think so. The locals on the other hand weren’t very happy. The hotel parking lot was a sheet of ice and when I mentioned it to the Assistant Manager who checked us in, he said that yes, he knew it was icy but since the sun didn’t hit that side of the parking lot there wasn’t anything he could do. When I suggested getting a bag of sand or kitty litter, he looked at me as if I were crazy.

Interstate 10 was shut down for 155 miles between Lafayette and New Orleans because of ice. Once again, the strategy was to keep the road closed until the sun came out and hopefully melted the ice. It still wasn’t open on Thursday morning when we left for New Orleans, so we had to take the longer way around to the south.

After getting to the New Orleans area, we decided to first visit the Chalmette National Battlefield but when we got there it was closed. You guessed it…. closed because of the cold. There was a side gate open so we were still able to get in, but we had to walk so we only got as far as the first cannon, took our pictures, then turned around and went back to the car. We figured that we couldn’t have gotten into the Visitor Center anyway so why bother walking too far.

We got to our hotel just after noon, so we walked to the WWII museum for a visit. Have you been there? It is an amazing museum; the #1 tourist attraction in New Orleans. When you buy your ticket, you’re given a dog tag of someone who served in the war. There are several places in the museum where you can hear the story of your hero. It was very cool. We were there for 4 1/2 hours and only went through one building, but it was the one with the Road to Tokyo and Road to Berlin exhibits. They took us through all the major battles of each campaign with artifacts, videos, sign boards, and stories of the people who served. It really was incredible. There was so much to look at that we spent nearly 2 hours in each of the exhibits. We also saw a movie narrated by Tom Hanks that chronicled the war from Dec 1941 until the end of the war. Being the history buff that he is, Peter was in heaven but even he had difficulty absorbing all the exhibits. We could have easily spent several more hours there, but the museum closed at 5pm so we headed back to the hotel.

We decided to only spend one night in New Orleans but after we checked out this morning, we stored our bags and went out for a walk in the French Quarter. We stopped at the Visitor Center where Lynn was able to get her passport stamp for the battlefield before heading to Jackson Square. By this time the temp was into the 50s, so it was actually a very pleasant morning. We wandered around the French market then down Bourbon Street where we had drinks and a shrimp po’boy. We wanted to stop at the Jazz Museum, but it was closed because…right again…the cold. We realize that they don’t have the same infrastructure to deal with the weather that we have in Chicago but seriously, it wasn’t that cold. Anyway, we had a very nice time in the Big Easy before hitting the road again around 1pm.

It’s now Friday night and we’re settled into our hotel in Pensacola, FL. Because we only spent one night in New Orleans instead of the two, we’re one day ahead of schedule. After looking at the map we decided that there was nowhere else we wanted to visit between here and Orlando, so we changed our reservation at the resort to arrive tomorrow instead of Sunday. We’ll spend 8 days there before heading to Tampa for a couple of days prior to leaving for Costa Rica.

That’s it for now. Have a great weekend and we’ll chat soon.

Tuesday, January 16

After almost 3 months of summer-like weather, we finally ran into winter in San Antonio. We arrived yesterday (Monday) to partly cloudy skies but 70 degrees. But we knew the cold was coming so we saw everything we wanted to see yesterday afternoon.

First, we visited the 4 remaining missions that make up the San Antonio Missions National Park. All of them were in remarkable condition and relatively close together so it was easy to go from one to the other.

Then, after checking into our hotel, we walked the few blocks to visit the Alamo, which is actually the 6th mission. It was originally called the Mission San Antonio de Valero and is most famous as the site of the 1836 battle. There’s a very nice museum there where we saw Davy Crockett’s rifle as well as the rifle Fess Parker used when he played Davy Crockett in the old TV show. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but it was very cool.

Finally, we strolled for a while on the Riverwalk. It is a beautiful area with lots of restaurants and shops along the cobblestone walk. Of course, we had to stop for margaritas, chips and salsa. It was a beautiful evening, so it was a nice way to spend a few hours.

This morning was an entirely different story. By late Monday evening the city was under a winter weather advisory, and they were closing schools. A winter weather advisory for us is a foot of snow, but all it was here was temps below freezing. There had been a little rain during the night but by morning it was dry. It was cold (low 30s so we thought it was no big deal. Apparently though in Texas if it drops below freezing, they shut the town down and that’s exactly what happened. Downtown San Antonio was a virtual ghost town with only a couple of restaurants being open. All the museums and most of the shops were closed and bus tours were cancelled. Peter found an LA Fitness and went to swim while Lynn worked but he came back saying they were closing the center because of the weather. It really was a hoot. We walked a few blocks to the local AMC movie theater and luckily it was open, so we spent the late afternoon at the movies. We saw “The Post” with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. It was an excellent movie and was quite timely given how the current administration likes to deny access to the press if they report things he doesn’t like. We highly recommend it.

We’re off toward New Orleans tomorrow but must first take a side trip to Austin, about 70 miles north of here. Lynn accidently locked herself out of her client provided laptop and the only way to unlock it is to hook to the company’s network. Of course, that can only happen from one of the offices so, we’re off to Austin for what we hope is a quick trip. It means, though, that we won’t make it all the way to New Orleans but hopefully we won’t be too far behind schedule.

Talk with you again soon.

Love from us.

BTW. We took down the registration page as it wasn’t working properly. We submitted a tech support request so, hopefully, it’s working soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

January 14

Today’s adventure was at Big Bend National Park. This is a beautiful park in southwest Texas on the Mexican border about 100 miles south of Texas Rt. 90. It took about 2 hours to get there from where we spent the night in Alpine. The Park is huge, with over 100 miles of paved roads and many more miles of improved and primitive dirt roads. Even though we were told that our Honda CRV should be fine on the dirt roads, we decided to stick to the paved roads.

First, we did the 30-mile Ross Maxell Scenic Drive stopping at many scenic overlooks. At the end of the paved portion of the drive was the Santa Elena Canyon where we took a short walk to the Rio Grande. The river was narrower than we thought and while we were easily able to walk down to it, the Mexican side was at the base of gigantic canyon walls. It was really beautiful. Since we didn’t want

to drive on the unpaved roads to do the loop drive, we turned around and went back the way we came. Even though it was the same road, the view from the opposite direction was quite different so it was almost like a different drive.

Once we got back to where we started at the Panther Junction Visitor Center, we drove in the other direction to Rio Grande Village. This is a 20-mile drive and while not nearly as beautiful as the Ross Maxell drive, the view of the Boquillas Canyon made the drive worthwhile. We thought about taking a side drive to the Historic Hot Springs, but the road was one of the primitive dirt roads so after only about a mile we turned around and went back to the main road.

We spent about 6 hours in the park, most of it in the car but we’re so glad we made the trek. It pretty far off the beaten path so you’ll need to make an effort to get there but its’ definitely worth the trip.

We planned to spend the night in Sanderson Tx before heading to San Antonio tomorrow but when we got there, we found the one motel was quite rundown. So, we decided to keep driving the 120 miles to Del Rio, which is a good-sized town. Since Sanderson also didn’t have a restaurant, we ate Fritos and Swedish Fish to tide us over until we could get dinner. Not very healthy but it was better than nothing. Ah….the joys of traveling through West Texas.

The upside of driving so far today is that we’re only about 2 1/2 away from San Antonio so we’ll have much less time in the car tomorrow. We’re certainly looking forward to it. Talk with you soon. 

January 13

On Thursday, after what seemed like a very short month in Green Valley AZ, we packed up the car and headed east to Orlando. We plan to take about 10 days to get there so we can stop and sightsee along the way. Our first stop was at Chiricahua National Monument about 90 minutes east of Green Valley. It reminded us of Arches National Park, except that it didn’t have any arches. But the rock formations were very similar with the columns, pillars and balanced rocks. It was quite beautiful. We took the scenic drive then headed off to Ft. Bowie National Historic Site about 30 minutes away.

The most interesting part of this park was the drive to get there. We had an 8-mile dirt road, only some of it improved, before arriving at the parking lot. But then we discovered that to get to the visitor center we had to hike 1.5 miles down a rocky, dirt path. It was the hike down that bothered us so much but the fact that we would have to hike back up to return to the car. Luckily, they had a handicap option, so we drove another 5 miles on the unimproved dirt road to get to a spot closer to the visitor center. We still had to walk a little way, but it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, there isn’t much left of this fort. It was very important in its day, though, especially during the Apache Wars from 1861-1886. We did stay long as there wasn’t much to see but the history is quite interesting so here’s a link to the Wikipedia page if you want to read more about it. Ft. Bowie

Ruins at Ft. Bowie

Then it was off to Las Cruces, NM where we spent the night. Before checking into the hotel, we stopped at the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument just west of the city. There was even less to take a picture of there than there was at Ft. Bowie. Apparently, it is best known for its Paleozoic Era fossils, none of which can be seen from the parking lot. And because we had no interest in hiking who knows how far (no visitor center means no map) through the desert to find them, we took a picture of the sign and left.

On Friday morning, we headed off to Organ Mountains Desert Peak National Monument which was about 20 miles east of Las Cruces. While the mountains were pretty, they didn’t seem to be that spectacular, so we asked the volunteer at the visitor center about its designation as a national monument. He told us that it was known for ruins of a Tuberculosis Sanitorium and an old hotel. In order to see the ruins, we would have had to hike 3 miles on an unpaved road. Not surprising to anyone who knows us, we took a pass, got our passport stamp and left.

Then it was off to White Sands National Monument about 40 miles northwest of Organ Mountains. This was truly spectacular. It was amazing how the terrain suddenly changed from brown desert to beautiful white sand dunes. There was a drive that took us through the dunes. We got out to walk a couple of times and had our picnic lunch surrounded by the dunes. As we walked on the boardwalk through the dunes, we kept expecting to see an ocean, but there was no water to be found. There are only a few gypsum sand dunes in the world, and this is the largest. It was well worth the side trip.

After a few hours in the small town of Alamogordo just east of the Monument so Peter could visit the New Mexico Museum of Space History (Lynn ran errands) we headed to El Paso where we spent Friday night.

Then today (Saturday) we left El Paso for Fort Davis National Historical Site. This was about as different from Ft. Bowie as you could get. While Ft. Bowie was all ruins, Ft. Davis had some very well-preserved buildings. Of course, many buildings were ruins, but there were several we could walk through, and many were furnished as they would have been when the fort was open. Ft. Davis was established in 1854 to protect travelers on the San Antonio-El Paso Road and is one of the best remaining examples of an Army fort of that era. We spent a very pleasant 90 minutes there walking around the buildings.

We’re spending the night in Alpine TX before heading off to Big Bend National Park tomorrow. We’ll talk with you soon.