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RV Adventures in America

I am a recently retired nurse, Herb is retired post office and USAF Reserve. We just sold our house and we intend to full-time RV in our 31' Class C RV with our two dogs to see more of this beautiful country
Living in: Rio Rancho, United States
  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day84

    The Grand Ole Opry & Nashville Downtown

    July 13 in the United States

    NEW JERSEY TO TENNESEE

    From Colt’s Neck, NJ to Nashville is not just a long drive—it’s a whole culture away! We left NJ on July 11 and it was a really long day. We elected to take the long way around since getting through Baltimore and Washington DC meant careful re-routing to avoid low bridges and tunnels (you can’t take an RV through tunnels as a rule).

    So we went through Harrisburg, PA to Lynchburg, VA, making for a 400 mi jaunt. That makes for a hard day of driving and even the dogs complain.

    The next stop was Knoxville and Friday we completed the short stretch to Nashville.

    We got to Nashville in the early afternoon Friday and had plenty of time to change our clothes and get over to the Grand Ole Opry venue for the 7 pm show.

    The Grand Ole Opry was a major bucket list item for me and it did not disappoint! I knew, rather vaguely it seems, that it is an actual live radio program, and has been every week since 1925! Most of know that I am a country music fan. It’s the music I grew up listening to and it’s a part of the fabric of my life. I married at 19 to a man who was 8 yrs older than me and who considered the Mantovanni Strings a musical genre (think: elevator music). He frowned on country music (Jesse and Sarah must have got it from him). I always listened, but only when he wasn’t home. When he died, I went back to country music and it’s been mine ever since!

    Saturday night we went to dinner at Valentino’s—a restaurant owned by the uncle of Herb’s great-nephew’s wife, Megan Oliver. Valentino’s is a 3-star fixture in downtown Nashville—very elegant, very good and very expensive.

    Then we went to downtown Nashville. An amazing place! If you’ve never been there, it consists of about 4 blocks of Broadway St between 5th Street and 1st St. There are dozens of bars, no more than about 50 ft wide, with open windows and live bands playing loud country music and huge crowds of 20-somethings working on killing their livers. The streets are gridlocked with pedestrians and the homeless who sit on the curb. It’s a major sensory overload!    Read more

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  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day76

    National September 11 Memorial & Museum

    July 5 in the United States

    This was a very moving experience. For the second time in my lifetime (the first was the Kennedy assassination), an event occurred where I can always remember exactly what I was doing at the moment I heard about it. I was just out of the shower and getting ready for my 7am shift at Kaiser Hospital, Pediatrics in San Diego when they broke into the morning news to say that an airplane had struck one of the World Trade Towers. I watched as the second plane struck the second tower and I immediately woke Herb to tell him we were under attack.

    The first picture shows what to me is the iconic picture. The quote from Virgil's Aeneid strikes me in the gut. The blue squares are each one a different shade of blue that represent how this most horrid of days started out beautifully, with the sky a marvelous shade of blue. There is one square for every victim. Behind the wall is the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of New York where they still labor to extract DNA and identify the few victims that have not yet been identified.

    The panel that shows where the first plane hit the tower--when you look at the girder you can see the curve where the nose of the plane struck it. The last picture is called the "Last Column" It was the last column and it was found whole, still attached to the bedrock under the tower.    Read more

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  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day76

    Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

    July 5 in the United States

    Thursday, we drove to Jersey City to take the Statue Cruise to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. As we approached the Liberty State Park in Jersey City, I glanced over to the right and I saw the head and shoulders and torch of the Statue of Liberty. I mean—it was RIGHT THERE!! The freakin’ Statue of LIBERTY!!! Yeah, I know. Sometimes I go really over-the-top! But, WTH, bite me!!

    The Immigration Museum is incredibly well done. They have taken a difficult subject fraught with multi-faceted conflicts and objectively covered them all. Including the involuntary immigration that that the slave trade accounted for: the 12.5 million Africans that were brought to this country in chains.

    And they covered the Chinese who were recruited to come to this country to build railroads and how they quarantined them so they were virtual prisoners.

    The “Have’s” vs. the “Have Not’s” is a fable as old as time and as I reflect on the discouragement that I feel over the current situation in our country, I guess it’s a conflict that will never be fully resolved.

    Lady Liberty is impressive! Not just because she is such an iconic symbol of what America stands for, but because she is so huge! I wonder what she looked like before the patina turned the copper to green?    Read more

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  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day73

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    July 2 in the United States

    n Tuesday, we saw the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is way too big to see it all at once—it is so impressive, that we needed at least another 4-8 hrs to see it really. It was our first experience riding the subway—we (I) got on the wrong train, but proved to ourselves that we were undoubtedly able to negotiate the system.

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  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day68

    Times Square, New York City

    June 27 in the United States

    We had taken the train to The City Monday on a whim to see how it works out. We got there at 2 pm and barely had time for lunch before we had to return to be back before 5:30 to feed and comfort the boys. But we figured out the drill. So today we went to The City on the 8:40 train that gets to Penn Station at 10:00.

    Our plan was to have breakfast and to walk to Times Square. The first place we saw was Al's Deli, which turned out to be the quintessential NY deli. Everybody’s yelling orders and the cooks are racing back and forth at a hectic pace. My avocado toast was amazing and Herb loved his scrambled with hash browns—and the whole bill was less than $15!

    After we ate, we continued walking up 7th Ave to Times Square. It’s like the first time you see Las Vegas—the neon lights alone generate their own excitement! As I try to fight my phone, trying to get it to open my camera app, we see there’s a T-Mobile store and Voila! Herb has a new S9 and I have his S8!

    After Times Square, we continued up to Central Park and took a few pics. It’s a green oasis that changes the whole atmosphere of New York. What was frenetic becomes suddenly bucolic. It’s the damnedest thing I have ever seen.
    We came back down 6th the Avenue of the Americas, stopped off to see Rockefeller Plaza (I am a total Today Show junkie!), then took Uber down to Penn Station to get the 3:45 to Red Bank.

    When you live in a “fly over state” and you read voraciously and watch a lot of TV, all of the sites in midtown Manhattan are very well known, so actually seeing the sights is amazing! Not very sophisticated, of course, but it’s such a wonder to see them is more than just a fulfillment of a bucket list! I call this "A Hick Goes to the Big City!"    Read more

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  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day59

    Portland, Maine

    June 18 in the United States

    We spent a week at the KOA in Saco and had a wonderfully mellow time. Maine is green and the weather was very temperate, in the seventies most days. We took a short narrated tour of Portland on an old firetruck and learned all sorts of things that I did not know, like that Portland is the most populous city in Maine, but only has 68,000 people. It’s an old town, but has burned to the ground three times. Looking at the town, I see tons of red brick buildings and tons and tons of windows. I have never seen a place with so many windows.

    Tuesday we took a schooner tall ship tour of Casco Bay. Sailing is one of those mindful things that are so zen. The wind in your face and the smell of the open sea makes all of your ordinary worries of the day seem very small by comparison. Later we drove to Portland Head Light to take some pictures. It’s a beautiful site.

    Wednesday, we drove to Boston. No one will be surprised to hear traffic is horrendous and parking fees outrageous. We walked a part of the Freedom Trail. We saw the Old State House, Faneuil Hall, Paul Revere’s House and the Old North Church. Boston is such a vibrant, modern city, yet around every corner there’s a memorial to the American Revolution. I started a conversation with a woman behind me looking at The Old North Church and asked if they still make school children memorize the Longfellow poem, The Ride of Paul Revere, and she said, with heated exasperation in a thick Australian accent, that she had to memorize the "bloody poem" in Oz! This a great hip hop version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dKJ75F3tj8

    Thursday we took the ferry over to Peaks Island. The ferry is the only way to get there. It’s a small island with some remarkable houses and even more remarkable scenery.

    Friday was a low key day as we preparing for the trek to New Jersey.    Read more

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  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day56

    The Farmer's Museum, Cooperstown, NY

    June 15 in the United States

    Since we had the extra day, we decided to check out The Farmer's Museum. It's a converted farm and is set up as a "living" museum. Craftsmen dress in 1820s costume and demonstrate crafts such as spinning and apothecary and there's even a blacksmith shop where they make nails and such. They grow crops and have some farm animals. They bring school kids through there by the bus load so they can see where and how our food and textiles come from. It's a great museum!

    The Cardiff Giant is on exhibit here. I recently read an article about the great hoaxes of the 19th century, and the Cardiff Giant was one of those. Fascinating to see! I me it looks like a crude sculpture and I cannot imagine anyone would think it was real! <https://www.history.com/news/the-cardiff-giant-fools-the-nation-145-years-ago>    Read more

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  • Herb & Martha Discover America
    Day55

    Baseball Hall of Fame

    June 14 in the United States

    This is one of the really good ones! The marvelously quaint little town that seems to have been frozen in time about the same week that Abner Doubleday invented (or not) baseball. That they manage to create the whole atmosphere without it looking like cheap dressing makes it even more admirable. The buildings really are that old and they are in use as store fronts and offices.

    The Hall of Fame is really quite beautiful and well-arranged. The first floor is dedicated to the Hall of Famers. I like the bas-relief plaques. The second and third floors are a series of exhibits about baseball and the men who played the game. All of it well done. As long-suffering San Diego Padre fans, much of it is bittersweet. I think the museum would be quite interesting to someone who is not a baseball fan, but it's heaven to the baseball lover!Read more

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