Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

–William Butler Yeats,The Second Coming, 1919

I stand with Minnesota, and refute the lies the regime claims as justification for the military-style invasion.  I grew up in Minnesota in the 1940s and 1950s, and worked for a quarter century for a Minnesota-based major technology company, primarily at customer sites on all three coasts.  Minnesota has always been a diverse cultural and ethnic population.  Those of us born in the 1940s are, at most, 3rd or 4th generation Americans, largely from Scandinavia, Germany, and eastern Europe.  Our elders spoke their native languages at home, giving rise to the unique regional accent.

No matter where your neighbors or their grandparents were from, across the state, the door was always open, the coffee pot was on, and if you dropped in, you were greeted with “Have you eaten yet?”  If someone in your house was sick or injured, neighbors would show up with a “hotdish,” certain that, with caring for your family, you didn’t have time to cook.  Others would help with farm chores, if needed. Today’s immigrants flocking to the farms and factories that dot the Minnesota landscapes and cityscapes come from southeast Asia, central America, and central Africa, fleeing from conflicts or famine in their ancestral homelands, as our great-grandparents and great-great grandparents fled from conflicts and famine in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  They didn’t invade our country.  They were invited here, to become part of us, to sustain the economy in a state where many of us raised there migrated to where we were needed in other parts of the country, spreading the “can do” work ethic.  Minnesotans take to heart the poem displayed at the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,”

Minnesota is a heartland gem, with well-kept houses and farms in small towns across the state, thriving businesses and industries, excellent schools, churches of every denomination and major religion filled on worship days, and well-maintained roads and highways in one of the harsher climate zones on the continent.  Like most of the surrounding regions, rural areas tend to be conservative, while urban areas tend to be progressive, politically.  But, all are equally proud to be Minnesotans.  Taxes are high, but the value returned is visible, across the state.

In a region where nearly everyone is an immigrant or descendant of immigrants seeking opportunity for a better life and freedom from tyranny, everyone is equal, including the original inhabitants.  The mayor of the state capital city is Hmong-American; the Lieutenant Governor is Ojibwe, of the indigenous people of the north part of the state, a congressional representative is Somali-American.  All are women. This is the true melting pot and land of opportunity that made America already great before the current regime came to power in 2017, ruled in exile in 2021, and returned for retribution in 2025.  In 2026, Minnesota, and now Maine, are under siege.  The urban areas are targeted first, but the invasion is spreading across the states, seeking “undesirables” and “illegals” in the rural areas as well.  No place and no one is safe.

It is becoming clear that the “Land of the free and home of the brave” no longer exists.  Over the past 45 years, an inexorable tilt farther to the right has accelerated during the implementation of Project 2025 such that the United States as we knew it has ceased to exist. We’ve seen the first wave of the shock troops of the Kingdom of Trumpistan roll over the civil rights of city after city, and now the entire states of Minnesota and Maine.  We were forewarned during the Bush II administration, when he declared, “If you aren’t with us, you are against us.”  The master plan just took a little longer to manifest.

The slogan translates in 2026 to “obey or die,” and, though the purported Nazi slogan “One of Us, All of You” was photoshopped on a social media meme of the podium of the head of Homeland Security and ICE, the secret police division of the regime (Geheime Staatspolizei in German, aka Gestapo), it isn’t far from the truth. We are seeing the evident punishment of entire states for not bestowing their electoral votes “correctly” in the last three–and most likely final–elections seems to indicate that is the plan.  Residents of Minnesota have gotten not-too-subtle hints that lethal force is available to be administered, and has been, in brutal and swift action, to those who impede or annoy the masked men, as seen on cell phone cameras.

Further records of those threats and atrocities may be rare, as we have also seen masked agents stalking citizens who are recording them, and taking said citizens down, violently.  The recent murder of a citizen observer has been met with the Orwellian pronouncement that “You didn’t see what you saw.”  A favorite tactic is stopping cars, smashing the side window, and dragging the hapless citizens into the street, to be disappeared, the vehicle left in the street to impede traffic, exposing more citizens to scrutiny. The namesake head of Trumpistan has promised total lockdown and military force if the Gestapo is deterred in their mission of ethnic cleansing, indigenous genocide, and domestic terror.  The secret police numbers already far exceed the public safety personnel in the metropolitan region of Minnesota, and the cordon is widening as more agents pour into the state.

I hesitate to use the name of the former republic, preferring my coined term, as the situation should not be possible if the Constitution still holds, and it most clearly does not.  The luckier victims of the violent kidnappings, mostly citizens, eventually turn up, bruised and battered, at random distances from where they were taken. Some victims of home invasion are dragged into the freezing weather scantily clad.  Possessions and personal papers are seldom returned.  The others, who cannot verify their legal status, or whose legal status is disputed (the regime has declared the intention to revoke citizenship of “undesirables”) remain among the missing.

A further disturbing aspect is the increasing attacks on and kidnapping of Native American residents of Minnesota. This is not immigration control, it is an obvious continuation of the genocide of indigenous peoples that began soon after Europeans arrived in the Americas.  Naturalized American citizens have been detained, natural-born citizens have been attacked and detained, young and old alike, and two citizens, so far, have been brutally murdered in an onslought of bullets. This is not about immigration control, this is institutionalized white supremacy.  The brutality against persons and property is escalating.  Observation is labeled obstruction.  Accidentally entering an area where ICE is operating is grounds for being stopped and forcibly removed from your vehicle.  Citizens are being attacked with flash-bang grenades, tear gas, and pepper spray.  Businesses are closing, as they cannot guarantee the safety of their employees and customers with roving bands of armed and belligerent agents liable to show up at any time.  Schools have closed.  Citizens are barricaded in their homes, warning neighbors by remotely triggering car alarms in threatened neighborhoods.

Ultimately, the current situation across the world is a battle between the faction that feeds on fear and the growing segment of humanity that lives by love, of their family, the land, and fellow man.  Fear is stoked by random acts of unprovoked violence: relentless bombing of homes and public buildings in Ukraine and Gaza, mass abduction and incarceration of segments of the population based on skin color and violent traffic stops in American cities by faceless men in battle gear.

The rise of fascism will not succeed.  We are Americans: our ancestors did not struggle for freedom from oppression across the world for us to give up that hard-won freedom. We cannot allow our local governments to become vassals of our new would-be oligarch lords, nor are we, though labored by debt and wealth inequality, serfs and tenants, and the planet is not a fiefdom to be divided among them.We, as a society, must overcome the fear and stand up to this tyranny, in the non-violent tradition of Ghandi and King. As Frank Herbert so eloquently put it inDune, his 1965 novel of galactic feudal empire:

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

At Sydney, Nebraska, after the storm, we awoke to a sea of ice across the parking lot.  We shuffled across to the restroom, then made breakfast and coffee and assessed our choices.  Soon, it became obvious that the roads were clear, so we headed north to Scotts Bluff and west into Wyoming, where there was a lot of snow, but not on the road, so we proceeded up I-25, then I-90 into Montana, where there was less snow, but extreme cold. We put in for the night at Harding.

We woke the next morning to 2C/35F temps in the van and -5C/23F temps outside, so we quickly made coffee and headed west on I-90, stopping in Laurel to make breakfast.  We ended the day at our friend Connie’s house in Florence, where we were able to plug in to run our small heaters.

After breakfast at Connie’s and a trip up the Bitterroot for lunch with our friend Theresa, we headed back down the valley to Missoula and west on I-90 into the snowstorm over Lookout Pass, which turned into a downpour from Post Falls through Spokane and down through Ritzville.  Past Ritzville, we were treated to an extended and brilliant sunset peeking under the rain clouds, which faded to deep red as we rolled into Moses Lake for another cold night, after another 560-km long day that didn’t start until mid-afternoon.  Are we anxious to get home?  It does look like it.

Saturday morning, still jet-lagged from driving across three time zones in as many days, we got up in the cold, made breakfast and coffee, and headed west on I-90 for the last leg of our long journey.  Winter found us again at Easton, with slush and snow on the road, but turning to rain.  We expected the usual gloom and rain into the Puget Sound basin, but the skies cleared, the temperature rose into the teens (Celsius, 50s Fahrenheit).  We stopped in Lacey to restock at Costco, one last refueling, and a rare lunch at Starbucks.  We once traveled across country from Starbucks to Starbucks, for breakfast and lunch, but since the Pandemic of 2020, we’ve been frugal, making excellent coffee and our standard breakfasts of banana, dates, and granola in the van as we travel.  We were surprised to find that Starbucks now serves “to stay” drinks in real crockery.  We got the familar bento boxes of cheese, fruit, and eggs, and divided up two different ones for variety.

Home at last!  We rolled into our driveway in early afternoon, after stopping at the post office to collect our six weeks of mail.  Plenty of time to unload the refrigerator, laundry, our computers, and the bicycle.  After catching up on domestic chores and settling in, we took some time to review the statistics:

Statistics:

10243 miles (16481 km) driving, through 28 states: WA, OR, CA, AZ, NM, TX, LA, MS, AL, TN, NC, SC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, DE, NY, OH, IN, IL, MO, KS, CO, NE, WY, MT, ID.

67.6 miles (109 km) bicycling in six states (AZ, TN, SC, NC, OH, MO)

2 ferry trips, (Galveston, TX – Port Bolivar, TX, Cape May, NJ – Lewes, DE)

46 nights, 47 days:

• 18 nights “moochdocking” at relatives and friends houses
• 2 nights in grocery store parking lots (Fred Meyer, Whole Foods)
• 1 night in restaurant parking lot (Cracker Barrel)
• 2 nights at a state park (Goliad, TX)
• 23 nights at truck stop parking lots (Love’s).

3 laundromats + several washings at relatives and friends

2 public libraries for WiFi: Springfield, OH, Boonville, MO.

Total cost of camping and showers: $144

Total cost of fuel and oil, car servicing: $1577

Total cost of tolls and ferry fare: $40 (NJ-DE ferry)

Cost of repairs (bike rack): $10.29

Challenges: High winds, freezing weather, roads in poor repair, toll roads that require transponders to use (we had to take back roads and long detours to avoid). Snow and ice. For the most part, we avoided restaurants, preparing meals and coffee in the van, shopping at supermarkets.

Problems: bike rack broke from bad roads, broken chain on bike cut last ride very short.

Highlights: visits with family and friends in AZ, NM, TX, TN, NC, NJ, and MT. Ferry rides in TX and NJ to DE. Gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. Presque Isle State Park, Erie, PA, Bike trails. Mingling with the Haitians in Springfield, OH, at the laundry. Beautiful people.

Wednesday morning, Binghamton, New York: We got up in the dark and made reservations for an oil change at the local Ford dealer, at the next town west, having traveled nearly a thousand miles past the ‘next change’ sticker on the windscreen.  Once again, we had surged north into the cold with no clear plans for the day or a firm destination.  The traffic around the megapolis running from Washington, DC to Boston is just unthinkable, so we tried to avoid that.  Our intent was to watch the weather and work our way northward with warming.  Unfortunately, the warming trend was only local and short-lived.

Halfway to Albany, over bagels and cream cheese at a coffee-shop/brew-pub, we made a decision: head west and seek warmer climes farther south on the way home, dashing our intent to revisit Quebec and Ontario and return via the prairie provinces.  The late winter and early spring is just too cold north of the border.

Again, we faced the problem of toll roads: I-90 is the New York Thruway, and is toll.  So, we made our way slowly across New York, through Utica, Syracuse, and all points in between, first on NY 5, then sparsely-populated stretches of winding road, until we called it a day and headed south to a truck stop at one of the toll-road exits, putting in well before dark.  With the cold night coming on, we chose a hot meal, but this time from our own stores, cracking the roof vent to  avoid the butane fumes.

With a promise of fair weather, we headed for Erie, Pennsylvania on Thursday.  Interstate 86 is no-toll, but rough and bumpy.  Pennsylvania wasn’t much different.  We got off at Erie and made our way to Presque Isle, the spit that shelters the city from Lake Erie.  This would be a good bike ride, had we planned it.  But, this time, we drove to the end and walked out to the old lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor, where ice floes swirled.

Back on the highway, we heard a loud thump, but couldn’t identify anything inside.  But, when we got to our destination for the evening in Canton, Ohio, we discovered the bike leaning precariously, held on only by one bolt, with the gear cassette wedged in the bracket that is supposed to hold the tire.  As it turned out, the constant hammering of the exceptionally bad roads in New York and Pennsylvania had severed the nylon belt that held the tire on, allowing the bike to bounce off the rack, which pulled on the vertical support hard enough to snap one of the bolts and bend the remaining one.  We were fortunate not to have lost the bike or destroyed it, as the tire didn’t touch the ground.  We took the wreckage apart, checked out the bike, which worked fine, stowed the broken bike rack inside, and locked the bike to the safety chain rings on the trailer hitch for the night, too tired to figure it all out.

On Friday morning, we removed the broken end of the bolt from the fixed nut (it just screwed out by hand), loaded the bike into the van (thank goodness I made provision in the design to do that), and went to Ace Hardware to get replacement bolts.  We couldn’t replace the broken strap, but the rack came with one we don’t really need, because we have a different way of securing the front wheel.  We then went to the nearby Lake Street Trailhead for the Ohio & Erie Canal Trail, suited up, and rode 12.5 km to Heritage Park, where a mile of the canal has been restored to Lock #4 and a replica canal barge and horse team pulls tourists on the canal.

Exhausted from the warm day, rough limestone trail, and the longest ride of the season, we reassembled the bike rack, carefully mounted the bike, and set off for Springfield, Ohio for the night, a 260-km drive in building winds and heavy traffic.  Having missed a meal, subsisting only on bananas and bars for the ride, we stopped at a Waffle House on the way and chowed down on their famous waffles.  These restaurants are ubiquitous throughout the east, so we felt obligated to stop at least once–the last was on our 2016 bike tour, in Kingsland, Georgia. Judy got extra bacon, because it would have cost more to omit the bacon from my order. Ah, the Midwest: “We don’t serve your kind here,” if you are vegetarian.

The rain came during the night, with hail, and wind in the morning.  We declared a maintenance day, bought a shower at the truck stop, and headed into town to a laundry.  Our fellow wash day crowd were mostly Haitians, pleasant folk who chatted away in Haitian Creole as they took care of business, and one woman sang in the brilliant acoustics of the laundromat.  It dawned on us that these were the people lately in the news, who were absolved of the vicious election campaign rumor that they were eating the pets of the genteel population of Springfield, Ohio.  The Haitian influence in the community was evident with colorful and significant murals on building walls downtown, as well as their happy demeanor.

We spent the rest of the morning at the new Clark County Library downtown, an impressive L-shaped edifice with the stacks on one leg, meeting rooms and classrooms on the other leg, and a commons area under the towing peak of the intersection.  The WiFi was free and fast, so we were able to catch up on some work.

We chose to head west on side roads, avoiding Interstate 70 and the freight lifeline.  Just out of Springfield, we stopped by the Roger Clark Historical Park, where there was a replica Native American village, though in disrepair.  The park was popular with hikers and dog walkers on a blustery Saturday.

Leaving the park on US40, we resisted the pleas of the GPS to take even more remote roads to the south.  We finally relented after losing US 40 in one of the towns and stopping for grocery resupply at a giant Kroger superstore, akin to our West Coast Fred Meyer branch of the Kroger family.  We got drenched by a sudden downpour as we left the store. The GPS route took us on a tortuous route back and forth, farther south, over the Interstate, through small towns and one closed road (we took our own detour, which was, of course, in the wrong direction).  As the day wore on, the  gusty winds tossed us around the slick wet roads, and we decided to call it a day not far into Indiana, just north of Knightstown and east of Indianapolis.  The wind was supposed to subside by 7:00 pm, but the rain continued through the night.

We watched the weather for freezing conditions and tornado warnings farther on before planning our next day’s route and destination.  At this stage of our journey, we devolved into a non-plan characterized by “No where to go, and nothing to do when we get there.”

Our next day’s travel took us across Illinois via a circuitous route, thanks to asking the GPS to avoid highways and save fuel.  Redirecting it to use the most direct, we turned south from what looked to be a detour far up the Mississippi, back to the beltway around St. Louis, and I-70 to Boonville, Missouri, where we had stayed before, with the intent of riding our bike on another segment of the Katy Trail State Park, along the Missouri River.

In early morning, we walked the Katy Bridge, a short section of the lift bridge that spans the Missouri, which must be frozen perpetually open for river barge traffic, so the Katy Trail detours across the US 40 highway bridge.  We caught up on some computer tasks at the local public library while waiting for the temperature to get to comfortable riding zone.

We thought we might ride from the New Franklin Trailhead east to Rocheport, where we had turned around on our 2023 ride, but the trailhead was on a remote gravel road in a sketchy campground, so we opted to drive to Rocheport instead and start there.  We had lunch at the Meriwether Cafe and Bike Shop, during which we had a nice conversation with another tandem couple, locals who live in Columbia, a 25-km ride from Rocheport, on their Santana (our other tandem is a Santana).

Then, we suited up and set off on the trail, through the tunnel and past our 2023 turnaround point.  But, at 1500 meters from the start, the timing chain fell off, probably derailed by a twig thrown up from the path, as it has done several times on this winter trip.  But, this time, the chain wedged between the chain wheel and the crank and no amount of repositioning would yield a way to easily pry it loose.  I thought of just uncoupling the quick link to free it, but my arthritic hands simply wouldn’t budge it, and I forgot we had my Leatherman tool in the handlebar bag, so we hike-a-biked back to the bike shop, which turned out to be simply a bike rental shop, with no mechanic and no tools.  At the van, I fished out the pliers and unhooked the link.  But, with the chain free, inspection showed that the violent wedging had bent the side plate on one of the links, so the chain was useless.  We carry a spare link, but it is for the drive chain, a narrow 9-speed chain, while we had replaced the timing chain with a more rugged (and cheaper) 6/8-speed chain, so it wouldn’t fit.

Discouraged, but practical, we packed up and headed north, thinking we might end up the next day near Des Moines, Iowa, get the chain fixed or replaced, and ride some of the Raccoon River Trail.  We ended up for the night at the junction of I-35 and US 36.  A check of the weather showed a late winter storm due to hit Iowa the following day.

After a check of the weather elsewhere, we decided the best bet was to head west and try to get around the edge of the storm, to avoid both snow and extreme cold.  We headed west on US 36 across Kansas, heading for Colorado, in a stiff and gusty side wind that shifted through the day as the storm approached.  But, as the weather reports grew more ominous, we diverted northwest into Nebraska, cutting through the corner of Colorado and back into the Nebraska panhandle, stopping for the night in Sidney, which was predicted to have the least snow but cold temperatures.  The storm hit, and the van rocked and shook all night with the gusts.

On Wednesday, we headed down the mountain in western North Carolina after a blustery night of wind and rain,  taking I-26 southeast. As we approached the South Carolina Border, the winds picked up again, buffeting us all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, where we stealth camped for the night at the Whole Foods Market, near where we wanted to ride our bicycle.

Thursday broke clear: we drove to the James Island County Park to find a quiet place for breakfast.  Unfortunately, we were early, but the night gateman let us in anyway, since we were senior citizens, despite not being local card holders.  The park was beautiful, even in winter.  After having our coffee and breakfast in the van, we drove downtown Charleston, parking near the Battery, which was closed for renovations.

We walked the residential streets to the waterfront park, through the Market, and back to the van.  We then drove to Stono River County Park, the western terminus of the West Ashley Greenway, and rode as far as thet Whole Foods Market street.  The many street crossings were beginning to get busy, so we turned around and rode back to the park, put the bike away, and hiked out to the islands in the salt marsh, since the boardwalk called for walking bikes.

By now late afternoon, we drove up to I-95 and spent the night at a truck stop.  In the morning, we drove to Wilmington, North Carolina to walk the Cape Fear River waterfront and explore the historic downtown a bit, then drove back to  I-95, but farther north, for the night.  Our trip to Wilmington was a bit disappointing due to finding out that it cost a nickel a minute to park our van.  We stuffed enough quarters and nickels into the meter for a 53-minute dash through the downtown and to grab a couple of gelatos, which we finished off standing by the meter to make sure we used every nickel, but were on our way the instant the meter expired.  After all, we are on a pensioner’s budget, and can’t afford parking fines on top of the fee.  We wanted to see the ocean, so we drove out to the barrier island, but couldn’t see over the dunes and parking was a nickel a minute everywhere, so we stopped at an Aldi (free parking!) for snacks and headed up to I-95 on back roads to a different truck stop further north.

On Friday, we drove the short run to Raleigh, North Carolina, stopping for breakfast at a freeway rest area on the way, for a bike ride on the Neuse River Trail.  We arrived at Anderson Point Park, unloaded the bike, and set off to the north, intending to ride upstream to the dam, but we didn’t check for closures and soon found ourselves in a construction zone where the trail had been obliterated, and temporary city sewer lines laid on the ground, with pools of raw sewage on both sides of the trail.  We beat a retreat back to the park and headed south, downstream for a delightful ride, though punctuated with hills.  This section has many bridges and boardwalks over the many streams that feed the river.  We turned around where the trail climbed steeply away from the river.

By this time, the parking lot was full, so we drove east to find a quieter park to have lunch, then drove back to US 301 and north to Virginia, where we rejoined I-95 to pick up maps at the Virginia welcome center.  We time our travels to arrive at truck stops at sunset, joining the Saturday evening high-speed traffic through Richmond, arriving at dark, where we topped off the fuel and bought some peeled boiled eggs, our go-to food purchases at truck stops.  Dinner consisted of a salad, with Feta cheese purchased at Safeway in Shelton a month ago, Romaine lettuce purchased at Kroger in Nashville, grape tomatoes and crostini purchased at Whole Food in Charleston, and cucumber and hummus purchased at Walmart in Lebanon, North Carolina, and our Virginia boiled eggs. topped off with dessert of chocolate purchased at Aldi in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Sunday, we headed north toward Washington, DC, advising our GPS that we didn’t want to pay the $24 tolls on the way to north New Jersey, which we couldn’t anyway, because the tollways now only accept the electronic subscription devices that we have no need for back home.  The GPS routed us west around DC, then north to Pennsylvania, around Harrisburg on country roads where we met and passed many Amish horse-drawn buggies filled with families out for church on a brisk and windy Sunday.  Then, east on I-78 through Allentown and into New Jersey, where we were routed hither and yon through a maze of freeways and crazy drivers to our grand-niece’s house.  Our bike rack couldn’t negotiate their driveway angle, so we parked on a side street and we treated to a guest room, with dinner and a good visit.

Monday morning, we decided to head south again to wait for the warmer weather to move north.  Again avoiding the toll roads that seemed to be everywhere in this part of the world, we threaded through the continuous megacity until we finally reached the forested interior of New Jersey, headed for one of the places I had visited several times when the children were young and we were newly arrived in New Jersey to work on the U.S. Navy’s Aegis project.  Our destination was Barnegat Light State Park, at the north end of Long Beach Island.  As expected, the inlet had changed drastically in the 55 years since I was last there:  the ever-moving sand had finally been tamed in 1987 when the Corps of Engineers constructed a massive stone quay to stabilize the channel.  The lighthouse, however was still the same.  With the beach stabilized, the dune had become covered with trees and shrubs.  We had a good morning watching the tide flow out of the inlet and the ducks finding eddies along the shore to stay in one place.  We had a pleasant conversation with a birder, walked the trail through the dune, and decided to head for Cape May, a historic town.  Again, our route took us wandering through the pine barrens and small towns to avoid the expensive tollways.

We visited the Cape May Lighthouse, drove through a few streets of Victorian houses for which the town is famous, then headed for the Cape May – Lewes Ferry for a sunset voyage to Delaware.  Our bike sticks out in back far enough to earn us the oversize vehicle fare, partially offset by our senior discount, but $40 was better than driving back through New Jersey.

Tuesday, March 11–Judy’s birthday–started with a laundry run.  Laundromats are now card-oriented: we had to buy a debit card ($1) and load it with increments of $10, so we now have a “souvenir” with value if we ever return to Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.  Again, our GPS, programmed to avoid the ever-present toll roads, took us through towns and villages north through Dover and into Pennsylvania, up and down hills, sometimes at horse and buggy speeds as we followed Amish buggies.

We partook in a harrowing search through Reading (“Take a ride on the Reading” in the Monopoly card deck refers to the railroad which is now part of the Schuykill River Greenspace) for a trailhead.  Once we found it, we were too tired and it was too late to break out the bike, so we walked the trail to the bridge over the river, then escaped from the downtown traffic jam at rush hour, retreating back south to get on the freeway and zooming around the city while the GPS frantically searched over and over for a path north.  Finally, we wandered north on rolling country roads until finally reaching I-81 into Binghamton, where we arrived after dark and missed our exit, having to double back to find the truck stop where we “dined out” at the fast-food restaurant, before turning in for the cold night.

We spent a couple of days in Las Cruces before moving on to El Paso.  Home cooking at Shawna and Steve’s, and a coffee stop at The Bean in Mesilla after catching Claudissa and Jonathan at her Valentine’s Day bake sale, where we indulged in a fabulous cheesecake and red velvet cookies.  But, the dread of every traveler plagued us.  First Judy, then Larye, came down with upper respiratory distress.  We kept it at bay a bit with nasal irrigation, cough drops, and over-the-counter remedies, but got worse over the days.  We still managed to get in dinner in El Paso with son Jason and Melissa, and breakfast with grandson Cage and Melly.

We ended up spending an extra day in El Paso, mostly sleeping, finally getting collected and on the road again mid-day on Monday, February 17.  We arrived well after dark in Sonora, Texas, and took the first likely parking spot at the fuel stop, which was sloped quite a bit.  We had a fitful but largely restful night back in the van again after several days of guest room stays.

Back on the road after breakfast in the truck, we ran into mist and light rain, though a warm day.  This part of Texas is characterized by sheer limestone cliffs formed by the freeway cuts through the rolling hills.  Not far down the road, we decided that it was best if Judy sought some medical advice and a bit stronger attack on the coughing and hacking.  This took us into Kerrville and a strip-mall urgent care center, which didn’t accept our out-of-state Medicare Advantage.  So, a couple of hundred dollars later,we left with a new stash of medication and a few groceries from H-E-B, where the pharmacy was located.

The GPS led us into a maze of freeways through San Antonio and out the other side into farmland and small towns, and eventually to the Goliad State Park by mid-afternoon, for a rest and electrical hookup in anticipation of the cold front moving in mid-week.  At least, the fuel prices have been lower than anticipated and much lower than at home, but the freeway speeds have eaten into our good mileage a bit.  The next few days promise to be on back roads.

And, the cold front did move in, freezing overnight and not promising to rise much over that through the day.  So, we registered for an additional day, took our laundry to the laundromat in town, and spent the day catching up on computing things.  Near the end of the day, we were entertained by a flock of buzzards swirling in the wind above the campground, disturbed by another camper hiking on the river trail. The next night was even colder.  The water spigot in our campsite froze, so we left without refilling our drinking water supply.  We did stop and tour the restored mission complex.  We had seen it two years ago when we stopped through, but it was always good for a second look, and we enjoyed the weaving, spinning, and natural dye exhibit.

We took the back roads from Goliad to Galveston, refueling on the way.  Through Galveston, we took the ferry to Port Bolivar and continued up to I-10, stopping for the night as darkness overtook us as we crossed into Louisiana.  With the cold snap still with us, we quickly bedded down for the night before the van temperature fell.  In the morning, we dressed and drove up the road to the next gas stop to get the van warmed up before breakfast and coffee.  Then, up US 165 to Alexandria, and east to Natchez, where we made lunch at the closed Mississippi Welcome Center before refueling at a local gas station.  Coming out of Texas, we noted the live oak giving way to cypress and southern white pine as we crossed Louisiana and into Mississippi.

We spent the next two days cruising up the Natchez Trace, enjoying the lack of traffic between cities, arriving in Tupelo after dark and finding our way north to the Love’s Travel Center, where we repeated our cold-weather drill to stay warm through the night in our cozy 15-degree Big Agnes sleeping bag, as the temperature inside dropped to 5 C/41 F and freezing outside.  We stopped at a supermarket for breakfast bars and a gallon of drinking water, stopping later up the Trace to make coffee.  The 80 kph National Park speed limit brought our gas mileage back up quickly, and there was little traffic on the parkway except near the cities, where the locals use it as a bypass.  As we moved North, the foilage changed again, to more cedar and hardwood forests, and rocky outcroppings of the Nashville Dome karsts and limestone as we entered Tennessee.

We arrived in Nashville mid-afternoon, to cruise down Broadway past honky-tonk after honky-tonk and the crowds gathering for Saturday night festivities, then out the other side to Matt and Darice’s house, where we enjoyed a warm guest room and a promise of warmer weather in the next week, but a frozen weekend.

One of the advantages of our continent-spanning travel is we generally know which grocery chains carry the food brands we get at home.  We shop at H.E.B. in Texas, which doesn’t, but it’s ubiquitous.  In Nashville, we found Kroger’s, which owns the Fred Meyer chain at home, but they were out of Judy’s lactose-free yogurt.  However, we know from previous trips that Publix does carry both lactose-free products, and we found both there.  Dinner out at a local brew pub was excellent, with a good selection for vegetarian for me and bacon-laced dishes for Judy, who still enjoys bacon and shrimp when available.

Once again,we enjoyed guest quarters, in a future rental apartment at Matt and Darise’s house, which the temperature plummeted below freezing outside at night.

In preparation for warmer weather, we cleaned, lubricated, and adjusted the tandem bicycle in anticipation of exploring the Music City bike trail that winds around the city from nearby.  We took a walk on the trail as the temperature moderated.

The weather cleared, and we drove to a nearby trailhead.  We zoomed down the hill and over the pedestrian/bike bridge to ride on the Music City Bikeway through Shelby Bottom along the river, exploring the many side paths and circling a small lake in a park at the west end of the trail.  Naturally, for us, we had to push up the spiral path to the bridge and again up the hill to our van.

On Thursday, we formed a two-vehicle caravan headed from Nashville to Maggie Valley, North Carolina, to open the kids’ Glamping tent for the season.  The trip took us on I-40 to Newport, Tennessee, where we detoured up US 25 to bypass the closed section of I-40, destroyed by hurricane Helene last fall.  The French Broad River along US 25 was also the site of much devastation wrought by the hurricane, with much of the lowlands along the river scoured of trees and structures.  The route twisted and turned, becoming tortuous as we departed the river, winding through a maze of country roads over the foothills of the Smoky Mountains.  One climbing set of tight curves knocked over our drinking water supply, which Judy hastily righted, but several liters spilled on the van floor, spreading in rivulets as the van shifted from side to side on the mountain road.  The spout broke, but the pump still works.

We finally arrived up the mountain, leaving our van at the tent site and walking the rest of the way up the mountain to the cabin, where we discovered the water pump had burst a seal, due to failure of the pressure shutoff.  Freezing weather is expected at this altitude nights this week.  Lots of repairs in addition to the usual pre-season prep, and the water system is a priority.

After draining the water system to keep essentials running, carrying water up the hill from the truck and the water lines, and Matt making several trips to town for parts, the water was back in operation.   Over the next few days, we helped out at the tent site with sanding and varnishing the picnic table, and a bit with installing the new sink counter on the outside sink.

Numerous trips hiking up and down the 30-meter elevation difference between the glamping site and the cabin is getting us in shape, if nothing else.  The weather is holding for now, with cool days and cold nights. The mountain proved to be a good place to observe the string of planets overhead as darkness fell on the last day of February.  At this latitude, the ecliptic is 13 degrees higher than at home, putting Jupiter and Mars almost vertically overhead.

As our visit drew to a close, we took a trip to Asheville, ostensibly to look for a bike trail while the weather held.  But, the trail along the French Broad River was still mostly closed and unsuitable for biking.  We did hike the trail along the river, observing the devastation to the Arts District across the river and the incredible height of the flood debris around us and above us, while the trail stayed well above the normal river level.

As the clouds and wind moved in from the early March storms, we decided to head southeast to the coast instead of following our 2023 path north into the worst part of the storm path.