And In the End........

At Rehoboth Beach, May, 2012

Hello, all; 

We didn't think it would take this long to do the last post, but once we stopped traveling, Alan started school, and Ruth got really busy, and we couldn't get back to the blog until now. The six months we traveled were fantastic; no matter what else happens in our lives we will always have those six months. We set a lot of goals and reached most of them; we knocked numerous items off of our bucket lists; and we forged an even stronger bond. 

A few statistics: 

During the period from June 30th until December 31 we took 11 separate trips and also traveled up to Charlevoix 8 times. We spent 96 of the 185 days in this period on the road or in Charlevoix. We slept in 20 different hotels and one cruise ship. We saw six presidential museums and one plane crash site. We drove over 5500 miles, not including another 4,000 miles of driving to and from Charlevoix. We flew another 14,580 air miles and spent well over 45 hours in planes. 

We heard countless live music  performances, saw 4 Broadway shows and a number of road productions, and visited the Grand Ole Opry twice, both times in historic Ryman Auditorium. We sat (on the floor) in Preservation Hall so close to the musicians that we thought the slide trombone might hit us and heard music that will stay with us the rest of our days. We wandered on Beale Street in Memphis, Broadway in Nashville (and Manhattan), 6th Street in Austin, and Frenchman's Street in New Orleans (we also wandered down Bourbon Street but the music [and crowds] on Frenchman's were just so much better). We attended the 50th Anniversary of the Philadelphia Folk Festival and the 10th Anniversary of the Austin City Limits Festival. We ate unforgettable Tex-Mex in Tucson and Austin and Whitefish fresh from Lake Superior in Munising. We had a surprisingly good Italian meal in Clear Lake, Iowa and a most memorable Italian meal in Vancouver.  We can tell you where to get vegetarian jambalaya in the French Quarter, and where to get great modern American cuisine in Nashville. We can also tell you that the restaurant in the Clinton museum is a great place for heart healthy meals, and that the notion of a heart healthy meal in New Orleans is a contradiction in terms.

We climbed on glaciers in Alaska; we hiked high in Saguaro National Park and low into the Grand Canyon. We sea kayaked in Seward and biked through Valley Forge. We followed a "treasure map", more or less, to find Buddy Holly's crash site, and most of the rest of the time our GPS lady became a close friend. We took planes, trains, automobiles, boats, helicopters, busses, bikes, and trolleys.  We danced, and sang, and laughed, and read great books and more touring information than we may ever read again. 

We also met a lot of people all over this country, and had a lot of great discussions.  We won't forget the young waiter in New Orleans who lost everything in Katrina and yet was brimming with thankfulness and optimism, nor the proud parents of a young singer we saw at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville who chatted amiably with us while we waited in line together to get in to see their daughter. There was the waiter in the finest hotel in the Grand Canyon who has spent his life working at lodges in many of the nation's finest national parks, and the owner of the B&B in Tucson who created a new life for herself after moving from the East. 

We also did a lot of things during the periods we stayed home.  We went antiquing in Clarkston, took a tour of the Rouge Assembly Plant, and spent time in the many fine museums and parks in Metro Detroit. We rode bikes a lot and spent time with our dear friends. During these same six months, we sent our youngest son off to the dorms in Ann Arbor, and spent time with our oldest son, freshly back from a year in Anchorage, before sending him off to a new life in Washington, D.C.  We watched our daughter graduate college, spend three months in D.C. interning for a congressman, and get accepted to law school. We welcomed new members into our family as Steven and Tammy became engaged. 

Our Excellent Adventure turned out to be, indeed, excellent. So much so that we will continue taking our trips, both goofy and great, as long as we can. Since Alan's semester ended 3 weeks ago, we have already been to Savannah, Charleston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and, of course, Charlevoix. We have started to make our plans for our next great adventures this summer, and really, for our own satisfaction, we will continue to blog about them as we feel the spirit move us. We are blessed to live in this great country with so much to offer, to see, and to do. We are blessed with the health to continue to do it all.  Most of all, we are blessed with each other. In the end it makes no difference whether we are on the far ends of the earth or on a couch watching stupid TV, for as long as we are together it will continue to be an excellent adventure. 

Thanks to all of you for reading our blog; we wish all of you a lifetime of happiness, health and peace. Shalom Aleichem.