Airplanes, Food, Cars, Family, Indians, Explorers

Five days in, here's a collection of sights so far.

To the left, Jim in front of Bockscar - the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. (from the Air Force Museum, Wright-Patterson - Dayton)

Next, here we have Janet skydiving in Dayton. It was all I could do to strap her in the chute and get her on the plane. But I think she ended

up really liking it.

Because we were just a little bit hungry, the sandwich Janet ordered at Lumpy's in Cambridge City, Indiana. Have been making meals from this for days.


Corvettes from Midwest Motorsports in Effingham, Illinois. According to the literature, 3 of these are valued at over a $1M each. (The CERV-I Indy Car model (1960?) in the first photo - of which only 4 were made - is valued at $2.5M!!!.) Is that possible?

Jim reading his Dad's Lindbergh letter at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis - plus the actual receipt signed by Charles Lindbergh for his Ryan "Spirit of St. Louis" aircraft.

The "Arch", our first ever World Heritage Site at Cahokia Mounds outside St. Louis (incredible - why didn't we learn about this in school?), and Lewis and Clark stuff we continue to study as we travel along the Mississippi and Missouri.

All for now. More narrative the next time around but I'm so thrilled to have successfully downloaded photos that I wanted to do this catch-up. Tomorrow we head to Springfield, Missouri, dodging tornados, and then on to Iowa.

Next:

And We're Off

Hey! Day 4 and just getting to our 1st on-road update. I know there is a problem with viewers trying to post comments. We're looking into this and will hopefully be able to post a solution sometime soon. My frustration continues as tonight I've had to overly struggle just to pull up even this one photo.

We've hit VA, WV, OH, IN, IL, and now MO. We've had a great time and so far have only counted 17 dents in our car from the hail storm that greeted us in Dayton, OH. Yikes. I know everyone has been suffering through some horrible spring weather but this was incredible. Guess that's why we have insurance.

In spite of this mild annoyance we loved Ohio. We were 1) wonderfully surprised with our visit to the Hopewell Culture Indian burial grounds (200 BC!) in Chillicothe - see Janet photo above, 2) not too surprised (due to reputation) but loved the incredible US Air Force Museum in Dayton, and 3) gave horizontal thumbs to the Aviation Heritage National Historic Site also in Dayton (though Janet and I did vote it as having the most informative National Park film so far - about the Wright Bros. -in our 2 years of traveling.)

Today we stumbled upon the Midwest Motorsports Museum which houses one of the premier Corvette collections in the U.S. Incredibly, some of them were for sale. We bought a t-shirt.

All for now. Frustrated about photos. HELP! Jim

Our trip to Voyageur National Park

Hey, It's 2011 and we're on the road again. We are traveling through the central -mid-and upper-central-mid and northern mid upper central USA. What the...? Just know that we're going west to St. Louis, then north to the Minnesota Canadian border (and Voyageur National Park where we kind of turn around and begin our trip back home), then east to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, then south and east back home. It will take us 3+ weeks.

Mostly we're seeing the landscape and sights as identified by the National Park Service. And we'll sneak in some local haunts along the way. Fortunately for us we are seeing family and friends at a number of our stops.

Here's our old fashioned map with stick pins of our route. You old hands will recognize it. Follow the yellow pins starting along the bottom leaving Washington DC. If you can enlarge the photo you'll see pin numbers. If you follow the red pins you'll be covering our Grand Canyon trip of last year - and you'll just be confused (plus you'll fall off the edge of the photo.).

OK I've spent too much time trying to figure out why I can't edit this to bring the map photo right here rather than at the top of this entry. I'll work on this during the trip.

Hope you check in with us from time to time. And please add a comment or two. Bon voyage.