Category: United States
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Day 444 – Tucson, AZ – Discovering the ancient saguaro cactus.
Tucson sits about 60 miles north of the Mexico boarder in Arizona between California and New Mexico. This area has been populated by native people for over 12,000 years. The first European settlement happened in 1700 when the Spanish Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino founded the Mission San Xavier del Bac in 1700. The…
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Day 411 – South Padre Island, TX – Gulf Coast Paradise
After several long spurts of driving and active sight seeing, we were ready for a brief repose. I had packed for a beach adventure a year and a half earlier and had been carrying it with me without ever making it to a beach. So when we were looking for a place to go…
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Day 405 – San Antonio, Texas – Looking for the basement of the Alamo.
It wasn’t until 1691 that Spanish explorers first met the Payaya Indians of the San Antonio River Valley. It was June 13, the feast day of Saint Anthony, and so they named the area San Antonio. In 1716, to prevent French expansion and illegal trading with the Payaya, the Misión de San Antonio de…
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Day 394 – Austin, Texas – In search of TPS reports and high weirdness
Austin is a city I’ve always wanted to visit. I kind of thought I might have waited too long and all the tech hipsters might have drove the prices up and all the cool places might be replaced by soulless condos and expensive margarita joints. But to my surprise it was still pretty fucking…
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Day 393 – Driving from Arkansas to Texas
Our next stop was Austin, Texas, a 7.5 hour drive from Hot Springs, so we decided to break the drive up into two days and head through Shreveport, Louisiana which added another hour to the drive. We wanted some Louisiana food and neither of us had been to Shreveport. Then on to Tyler State…
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Day 394 – Hot Springs National Park
For more than 8000 years, native people had been visiting the area for the healing powers of the springs located in present day Hot Springs, Arkansas. Many tribes had come together to share the springs agreeing to put aside their tribal conflicts and weapons while in the valley that they called the “Valley of…
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Day 393 – Graceland – The Home of Elvis Presley
“I’m going to Graceland For reasons I cannot explain There’s some part of me wants to see Graceland” – Paul Simon Graceland After Elvis Presley’s first house purchased in 1956 became too overrun with fans outside, he gave his parents a $100,000 budget to find a farm style house further outside of Memphis. The…
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Day 374 – Winter is coming. Out of time for the east coast.
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My main goal for the summer was to visit my daughter in New Jersey and see her new apartment, visit my family in West Virginia, and see the east coast. I’ve seen almost all of the rest of the country below New York. But with the month we lost in Wisconsin and the COVID…
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Day 366 – Driving the five great lakes.
In the course of a week we drove through all five great lakes and took a few side trips along the way. We killed a couple of weeks exploring Michigan’s Upper Peninsula waiting out our time (for covid restrictions) before we could enter New York and visit my daughter. Then looped around the lakes…
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Day 346 – Driving Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the fall
One of my main goals driving cross country is to visit my daughter and see her new apartment in Jersey City. And after an unexpected month in Wisconsin, we’re starting to run out time with the weather. And to complicate things a bit more, the east travel restrictions for covid are much stricter than…