November 18, 2021

Good afternoon from Mountain Brook, Alabama  where we've been in residence for the past few days. Since we arrived, we've celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary (16th) and my 68th birthday (17th). The weather has been stellar and we've gotten to catch up with old friends and eaten in a few of our favorite restaurants.

​It's been nearly a month since my last posting while we were in Columbus, Georgia for my 50th high school reunion. 

There's not much to report about the reunion. Those responsible for organizing and making it happen during these pandemic times deserve much praise and thanks for making the gathering of classmates happen. The venues and weather could not have been nicer or more appropriate for the times.

I was very pleased with all the in person contacts made with old friends and acquaintances which,  while fewer than I may have wanted, were nice nevertheless. I had no real expectations of what would happen and had a nice time catching up with folks. 

Because of the pandemic we'd been unable to visit with our longtime friends, part of our extended family, Trip and Teresa Tomlinson and John Woodward. We're very grateful for the Tomlinsons hosting us in the mountains of North Georgia and their home in Columbus during the reunion festivities.

John is currently living in North Georgia so we were able to spend some extended time with him too.

Trip, John and I have a long and rich history and it was more than great having some extended time to be with them again.  It always feels like being home to me when I'm in the mountains of North Georgia at Trip and Teresa's home. 

As we moved south out of Vermont in September, I admit to doing some spoiled-camper-traveler pouting about missing Fall in New England where we'd spent our summer, but getting to see Fall happen in the mountains of North Georgia more than made up for what ever lingering entitlement I was experiencing. 

One of the many benefits of this life on the road is the extended seasonal changes we often experience as we move about. Moving from the southwest, for example, where we spend winters to more northern climes, we get what seems like a never ending Spring. Likewise,  moving from northern climes where we spend summers south we get an extended Fall or leaf peeping on steroids.

Leaving the Tomlinson's home, we traveled towards Nashville to spend some time with one of our sons, Tate, and his girlfriend, Zoe. Melanie also had a work obligation in Baltimore so she flew from Nashville and spent a few days working with fellow EPF'ers.

Another benefit of full-time travel is being able to spend extended time with friends and family without being in their space for too long.

We spent some time in a campground not too far away from Tate and Zoe and even spent a few nights sleeping in Miranda on the street outside their apartment in Hillsboro Village. We were able to house sit for Tate and Zoe this time through and get some great time with our/their beloved Gus (and Poppy). We'll pivot back to Nashville for a continuation of my birthday season tomorrow.

We are fortunate to have a most wonderful place to park Miranda while visiting Birmingham. Another part of our extended family, Jennifer and Wade Anderson (Drury and Martha), have the perfect driveway space in Mountain Brook and they are gracious and generous in allowing us to spend time with them while we're in and about Birmingham.

We'll leave Nashville this coming Monday and travel back here for a few days before spending some time with Melanie's father for Thanksgiving.

We have work in Columbus, Georgia and are looking forward to again connecting with some of my high school classmates and their wives and, as most always happens, making new friends at St. Thomas Episcopal Church there. Thanks to Rick McKnight for making that happen for us.

September 1, 2021

​When I wake up, the first thing I do is pick up my phone, it's 6:45 a.m., and look at the local weather page. It's 49 degrees in Twin Mountain. Welcome to chilly September, y'all.

We drink a bit of coffee and Melanie suggests, since she's off today, we get Miranda ready for travel and find breakfast along the way. We have a relative short distance to travel to day. We're headed south and east to Meredith, New Hampshire for at least two days.

Retracing our travels of a few days back we travel through the Franconia Notch area. This time through the clouds are high and we can see the mountains stretching out before us. Cannon Mountain Ski Resort is also completely visible this time through.

Melanie finds breakfast for us in Plymouth, New Hampshire. We leave the Interstate and travel into downtown Plymouth and park on the street near The Main Street Station restaurant.

As we near the end of breakfast, Melanie declares it possibly the best breakfast she has ever eaten. She shares this declaration with our waitress and explains that since we travel full time and have eaten breakfast in many parts of the U.S., she knows.

Our server thinks it's "sick" we travel full time. I show her a photo of Miranda and she declares it larger than her apartment. We surmise after she leaves she must be referring to her dorm room at Plymouth State University located in Plymouth. Melanie has often compared living in Miranda to living in a dorm room.

After breakfast, Melanie walks to the post office to mail some items and buy stamps. I go to Monte Alto and buy coffee beans.

We travel on. Seeing diesel fuel at $2.84 a gallon is a good reason to top off Miranda's tank at the Citgo on the way back to the Interstate.

We arrive at our campsite at a bit after noon. I go in to the office to check in while Melanie calls her father to check in. 

The folks in the office don't have a record of me making a reservation. I tell them I didn't get a confirmation email as promised, but I do know I've paid as I recently checked our bank account. 

One woman goes to another building to check payments, I go for my phone left in Miranda. I pull up our bank account and, yes, I'm right, I've paid. The woman comes back and verifies I'm paid in full. We finish the check in process and she apologizes for the delay. All I've got is time.

​While it's her day off, Melanie has a Zoom Call scheduled. We'l travel back into Meredith to check things out afterwards.

After Zooming, we travel back into Meredith and walk around town for an hour or so before deciding on an early dinner at Lago Costa Cucina.

We enjoy drinks and appetizers and I order an entree. I eat about half of that and take the remainder back to the van for another dinner.

Once back in the van we quickly set up and move to the back for an evening of streaming. Sleep.

September 3, 2021

Travel day. We're not traveling too far today, less than 150 miles north near the Canadian border so I'm up around 7:00 a.m. for coffee making.

We sip for a bit before remembering we'll be traveling by Plymouth, New Hampshire on our way which means we could have breakfast again at The Main Street Station. 

After I shower, we quickly ready the van for travel and we're on the way by 9:00. The distance to Plymouth is short and we're eating by 10:00. It's another good experience with the exception of the intermittently screeching baby in the booth behind us. 

After Melanie makes a brief stop at the local post office, we're headed north on the interstate again. 

We need to make a grocery store run so we choose the Price Chopper in Northport, Vermont. Melanie works while I go in to restock supplies.

Wanting to ride a local rail trail, I put in coordinates for the trail head of the Beebe Spur Rail Trail. I find the trail head and what looks like a good spot to park Miranda.

We travel a bit farther to downtown Northport and find a nice spot to park. We take a walk around town and on a nice board walk overlooking Lake Memphremagog. It's beautiful here and there are a number of people on the streets on this holiday weekend. And it's Friday afternoon around quitting time.

Afterwards, we travel about 8 miles out of town to our Boondockers Welcome location, Hurdland Farm. Our hosts were dairy farmers up until recently and are becoming retired in methodical fashion. They both enjoy travel and own a nice diesel pusher RV that they've graciously moved to make way for us and another couple.

Their farm is east of the Green Mountains which makes for a most bucolic setting. The sun setting over the Green Mountains and great conversation around a camp fire as the temps dip into the 50's. Perfect.

I've touted the virtues of the Boondockers Welcome service before, but when one gets the warm welcome we got and within minutes has fresh produce and an invitation to join them around a fire after dinner, it becomes camping at it's finest. We, of course, hope to see them again in the future.

We discover we have sporadic connectivity and realize quickly streaming is not going to happen when we retire to the back of the van. Melanie reads some and I finish an essay by Carl Sagan in The Sun magazine given to me a few weeks ago by a friend in Burlington. 

An excerpt:

​I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I've had have been sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds.  A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feeling of what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word "crazy" to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: "did you hear what [comedian] Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy." When high on cannabis I discovered that there's somebody inside in those people we call mad.

August 27, 2021

It's been very warm in Wellfleet the past few days. Today is not an exception. Melanie works in the van and I help Ann close down her home here for the season. 

There are tables and chairs to be moved into storage. Cars are moved into the garage. Melanie and I travel to a nearby RV park to empty our gray and black tanks in anticipation we'll be off the grid a few more days after leaving Wellfleet.

I'm placing this here as a reminder of the insanity that is the Southern U.S. now:

A major hurricane is about to hit three states, including a major city, and there isn't an ICU bed to be had in any of those states.

Think about that. And then try to reconcile those facts with the goobers who are still - STILL - running around saying the virus is no big deal, we don't need masks, stop being afraid. And refusing to take the vaccine.

This period of time should forever be remembered as the most selfish and self-absorbed time in American history. People will literally believe anything if it reinforces what they want to hear and allows them to do whatever they want to do.

There isn't a state in America with a vaccine rate above 70% that has more than 30% of its icu beds filled with covid patients. Most of them, including two states with major cities and high population concentrations, have fewer than 10% of their beds devoted to covid patients.

But here we are in the South booing the vaccine and taking horse dewormer, screaming at teachers and doctors and nurses and anyone who dares tell you a truth you don't want to hear. As your friends and families - and now, your children, your BABIES - are dying from this plague. A plague for which there's a vaccine.
​
That's never happened in the history of the world that I can find. That a vaccine was developed for a plague but the people refused to take it and kept dying. That's how dumb this is. Congrats to you all.- Josh Moon

July 19, 2021

​We up around 7:00 a.m. and I make coffee while Melanie checks emails and social media. We have breakfast in the van and Melanie, seeing Ann has emerged from her home, goes to check in with her. 

After a while Melanie returns and goes to Ann's cottage and gets a shower. She tells me we're going out around 10:00 a.m. for a tour of Wellfleet and a visit to a house currently rented by her ex-sister-in-law that's within the National Sea Shore nearby.

Our tour and visit last for about 2 hours and once we're back, I get a saw from Ann's garage and prune some branches that overhang and are blocking Ann's driveway. Melanie makes our lunch salad and, as I finish pruning, she's ready for us to eat.

​After lunch, rain begins to fall, I journal and Melanie checks email and works for a bit. Lying down in the back of the van seems like the thing to do. We'll run to a local market when it stops raining.

We drive into Wellfleet and park just across from the Hatch's Fish & Produce Market. It's dripping rain as we make our way past the produce outside and into the fish market that has a variety of seafood. Ann asks for help with mussels (part of our dinner tonight) and some smoked blue fish.

We in and out and back into a harder rain shower. Traveling back to Ann's house where Melanie and Ann prepare dinner. It stops raining, outside table and chairs are wiped down for left-over rain water and we enjoy a great dinner of mussels, fresh corn-on-the-cob and salad.

I'm up after we finish dinner and take dishes inside and proceed with the clean up. Melanie and Ann join me and Melanie assists in putting the finishing touches on cleaning up. We chat for a bit before retiring to the van.

​Streaming and sleep ensue, but we're keeping an eye on Henri, a tropical storm threatening to become a hurricane as it makes its way towards us. First one to hit New England in 30 years they say.

July 20, 2021

I'm up around 6:00 a.m. making coffee. I check the weather and we're still under a hurricane watch. Not good, but we've got time to make a decision on whether we stay or try to move Miranda out of potential harms way.

Melanie begins her work day as we both sip coffee. Melanie goes for a shower in Ann's cottage and I continue to read and eat breakfast. 

Ann comes out of her house and Melanie joins her. I clean up dishes and move outside to take the bikes out of storage and set them up. Batteries are plugged in to top off a full charge of a few days. I remove the rear caution light on my bike and plug it in too.

I also run hoses from Ann's house to Miranda and fill Miranda with fresh water. I leave the hoses connected so we can use that water instead of the water from our 30 gallon fresh water tank. I figure if we lose power and thus have no well water we'll at least have access to fresh water.

I join Ann and Melanie on the deck for more coffee and a brief discussion of the day about to unfold for us. Melanie and Ann will make a plan and I'm going out for a bike ride around Wellfleet.

I finish preparations for my ride and bid all farewell with the ring of my bike bell. I've decided to check out the Cape Cod Rail Trail (CCRT). I'll travel about 1.5 miles from Ann's home to the terminus in Wellfleet and ride from there.

Highway 6 is busy. Almost always busy. It takes me a few minutes to be able to cross it and make my way down the way to the trail. Patience.

The CCRT is an asphalt trail. It's mostly smooth going, but tree roots have begun to buck up the surface which has been gratefully marked with yellow paint so a rider can anticipate them. I ride out 14 miles through mostly tree covered trail. It's a warm day and there are many people out using the trail, waking and riding and skating.

Just after my odometer turns 15 miles, I turn around and head back. I make it back to the terminus at around 1:30 p.m. and decide to get something to eat. PB Boulangerie is close by the terminus of the trail and I ride over, park my bike, and go inside to order lunch. 

Because of COVID-19 and it's variant, all food is for take-out or outside consumption. I order a Salmon BLT, get a drink and a cookie and sit outside under an umbrella and enjoy. Recommended.

Returning to the van, I catch up with Melanie and Ann, then rest in the van for a bit before going into the cottage for a shower in preparation for our planned dinner outing to Winslow's Tavern in Wellfleet.

We get to the Tavern a little past their opening at 5:30 p.m. The place on the patio out front we'd hope to get before the dinner crowd arrived is not available. The place is hoping.

We quickly decide an inside table is better than a 45 minute wait for outside and Melanie, Ann and I move inside to wait on The Very Reverend Tracey and Emily. Tracey is a former Dean of the Cathedral in Cleveland, Emily Ingalls is her wife. Melanie had reminded me of a 60 Minutes segment of a few years back featuring Tracey and her battle with a form of dementia.

From her website:

The Very Rev. Tracey Lind and her spouse Emily Ingalls are traveling across North America sharing the insights they’ve gained from a life complicated by dementia. A retired Episcopal minister and city planner, Tracey was diagnosed with the early stages of Frontotemporal Degeneration in 2016. Emily, who spent more than 20 years in commercial real estate and project management, now considers herself Chief Logistics Officer, responsible for managing a life and home turned upside down by this disease.

Tracey and Emily arrive, we're introduced and the evening and food are very, very nice. Tracey and Emily are interested in making Miranda's acquaintance so as we part ways for the evening, we make a plan for them to come by Ann's house for tour. 

Since we're under a Hurricane Watch on the Cape, we volunteer to assist Tracey and Emily going around to some of the older parishioners homes to help them prepare.

We drive and meet Tracey and Emily at Wellfleet harbor for a walk around and potential ice cream stop. Many of the boats have already been pulled out of the water, but it's very calm this evening and we can't stand in one place long as the mosquitos are out in force. Tracey and I walk and talk photography. None of use apparently need, nor want ice cream.

Once we're back at Ann's, we part ways, a bit of streaming and sleep follow.

July 21, 2021

I'm composing this day on Monday, the 23rd. Much has happened since Saturday and I'm not sure when I woke up or got up, but I do know with certainty and so do you, if you've read my postings for the past few weeks, coffee was consumed. 

We have breakfast and Melanie begins her work day eventually joining Ann on her deck. 

I know I must get out either on my bike or by car to buy coffee beans as we've consumed the last of that purchased in Freeport, Maine. 

Tracey and Emily show up early afternoon and I give them the tour of Miranda as promised. Afterwards it's time for a swim and all the women folk go to Duck Pond leaving me to run my coffee errand. I'm also charged with procuring dinner for Ann, Melanie and me.

​I use Ann's car to travel over to  PB Boulangerie and grab dinner and dessert for us. The entree is frozen so I leave it to in Ann's house to thaw. Moroccan Lamb Bolognese. Yum. 

I find a local coffee roasters. They're open until 4:00 p.m. on Saturday and they're located just off the Cape Cod Rail Trail about 6 miles and change from Ann's house.

I get to the roasters at just past 3:00 and find that I should have pre-ordered any coffee I wanted. Drat. Okay, now things are getting critical since many places in Wellfleet close around 4:00 p.m.

Riding at a faster pace, I make it to the CCRT terminus and park my bike in front of Blue Willow Fine Foods and Bakery. As I get off, a woman inside turns the "Open" sign around to read "Closed." Oh, no.

A man inside seeing my reaction opens the door of the Blue Willow and asks if I'd like to come in. I do and quickly find coffee. He graciously grinds it for me and I'm gone, thanking him profusely for allowing me in at the last minute.

I get home and shower. By this time Melanie and Ann are on the deck having an adult beverage. I put water on the boil for pasta that will be served with the Bolognese. I join them for drinks.

Dinner is, indeed, quite good and we talk a while before those blood-thirsty creatures begin to annoy us. Ann volunteers to clean up dishes. Melanie and I begin preparations for Henri's potential impact on us. At the moment, it appears we won't have much about which to worry, but we move the deck table and chairs away from the large windows, put away the umbrella, and close all the windows in Ann's cottage. 

We say good night and all of us hope the storm won't be a factor for tomorrow's church services at St. James The Fisherman Episcopal Summer Chapel. 

​Melanie and I stream a bit and sleep.