All tagged Adventure
We’ve been home for a while from our nearly three-month-long journey. This post shares some random thoughts, a quick summation, and some of my favorite images from the trip. Random thoughts first. With apologies to the more-is-better crowd, as a society, we need to use less electricity.
Morning found us on the way to Old Quebec City. We found a parking garage that, at 18$C, seemed like a bargain compared to Montreal. We made our way to the tourist information office, immediately impressed by the old, well-kept buildings, the profusion of flowers, and the street art.
Our hostess at Camping Amerique Montreal spoke excellent English, which was good. Our French is abysmal! Moneau patiently showed us on the map how to get to Montreal, a 30-minute drive. She also showed us where to park, explaining that the 25$C we'd spend for parking was the best parking value in the city.
Susan asked, "Why are we going to Ottawa?" "It's the country's capital," I said. "There ought to be something worth seeing there." As it turned out, I nailed it. Ottawa boasts several world-class museums (and quite a number of smaller ones!), two of which we got to visit.
Early in the morning we left Leith Run and took the Ohio River Scenic Byway, OH-7, up the river to near the Pennsylvania border. There is a power plant every 30 minutes or so all along that stretch, belching huge amounts of coal exhaust.
he hills in southeastern Ohio were unexpected. We crossed the terminal moraine left by the last glacial advance shortly after passing Canton. Without the grinding action of the glaciers, the topography was relatively unaffected. The soils and groundwater were not affected either.
After thanking them as best we could, we took our leave of Dave and Beth, and wonderful, cheesy Wisconsin, on a Sunday morning. The best route to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, our next stop, was on the interstate. We had to get through Chicago!
Dave and Beth met us at their door. It was so good to see them! There was laughter, and tears, and stories old and new, and food, and drink, and it went on deep into the evening. Good stuff, all. I wondered what to do the next day.
We'd left the Badlands, heading east on Interstate 90. Coffee! I want coffee! Starbucks are few and far between in this part of South Dakota. Siri directed us to a gas station. Gas station coffee is uniformly disgusting, but this gas station had a satellite coffee shop within.
One of the places I wanted to visit during our trip was the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Here the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes combined forces in a last-ditch effort to protect their homes and way of life. Pitted against them was the US Army's Seventh Cavalry, led by General George Custer.
Never been to Idaho. Always wanted to go. Beautiful scenery, awesome rivers, great trout fishing. Why wouldn't you go? We left Portland on I-5, crossing the Columbia River and hopping off in Vancouver.
We read the weather headlines with a touch of disbelief. "Triple-Digit Temperatures!" "Record-Breaking Heat Wave!" We were on the Oregon coast. In spite of the record heat only 100 miles away, we often wore our cold-weather jackets, at the end of July. Frequently, those jackets were not warm enough.
