Crossing the Excited States of America

Crossing the Border

When the word finally came down that the United States had agreed to reopen their border with Canada, Heidi and I sighed a big sigh of relief. We had talked about all the different scenarios and come to the realization that if we didn’t get across the border in early November we were going to need to hurry back across Canada before the snow started to fall in our prairie provinces. Thank goodness that didn’t need to happen, but we had to cross through the province of New Brunswick quickly as they had a circuit breaker lock down due to high COVID numbers in the province. We took the afternoon ferry from Digby, Nova Scotia to Saint John, New Brunswick and stayed at our favourite campsite, Walmart. We had hoped to spend a week in New Brunswick, but the health authority shut down had changed these plans, and although we really enjoyed the extra week in Nova Scotia, we still feel we haven’t done a proper job of experiencing New Brunswick. The border opened November 8, but we decided to give it a day and let the US border guards workout the new procedures with our national vaccine passport etc.

We got up early on the morning of November 9 and headed for the border but decided on the way to take a little detour to the resort area of Saint Andrews by the Sea, which we had heard from Cousin Lorrie was a beautiful place. The weather was terrific, so we took the scenic route down the highway into this little seaside community past the Grand Hotel that sits in the centre of town. Although it would have been nice to spend more time, we were anxious to get to the border, thinking there would be a line up and were anxious to get to the US to continue our adventure. The border crosses a river at Saint Stephens, New Brunswick, and we plugged that into our Google Maps and headed towards U S customs. As we worked our way through the little town of Saint Stephens Heidi look to the left and exclaimed “there’s a bridge it says it goes to the US” and I said “it couldn’t be, Google map says we have to go around the corner “she said it’s right there!”. I turned left crossing a small bridge, and with no cars in line, rolled right up to the only customs station that was open. The border guard simply asked “is this your motorhome” and I replied “yes it is” and I handed him our passports. After reviewing and stamping the passports he handed them back and he said, “where are you going”, and we said “we are going to be spending the next month crossing over the US and into Mexico for the winter”. He said “have a great time” and handed our passports back. We both looked at each other and said “do you want to see our vaccine passports” and he just shook his head and said “nope on your way”. Given the long delay in opening the border, with COVID 19 being the stated reason, we couldn’t have been more surprised!

The East Coast

We knew at some point along the way that Klara was going to need a new set of tires, and while we were wasting time the last week in Nova Scotia, I had done some research and found some replacement tires online in the US that could be delivered to a point along our route. I had the tires shipped to Bangor ME with the hopes that when we crossed over the border, we could have them installed and have someone do a visual inspection of the underside of Klara to ensure that all things related to the suspension and axles were fine. Newfoundland had many many potholes, so we wanted to ensure we wouldn’t experience trouble on the remainder of our trip. Due to a delay in the shipment, we found that we were not able to get an appointment until Nov 10^th and we had crossed over on the night before, so we spent the day wandering the little back roads of northern Maine along the coast and settled in for an afternoon in a little town called Bar Harbor. It was here that we discovered that we truly had missed the season and that the road ahead would likely be less than we expected as we worked our way South through the New England states. Of all the businesses in Bar Harbor there was only about 20% that seemed to be open and ready for business. We didn’t let this get us down as usual we got out on our feet and walked around Bar Harbor and along their seawall taking in the beautiful homes and understanding why people travel far and wide to this little seaside town for their summer vacations. After spending a couple of hours in Bar Harbor we decided to move along up the road and find some place to sleep overnight and get ready to drop Klara off to have her work done the next day. We arose the next morning and drove into Bangor and dropped her off at the mechanics and took a walk around the neighbourhood while they worked on her. After three or four hours we returned to find Klara sounding and running better than she had been in a long time. They had discovered the source of a rattle and clunk that Heidi and I had been hearing for the whole of our Canadian crossing. They also gave us the good news that everything on the underside of Klara looked great and confirmed that she looked good as new now that she had her new tires on. With the work complete we headed South and again chose the quieter roads to follow the coast down through Maine in the direction of Boston.

Over the next couple of days, we did some quick exploring in some of the more interesting seaside cities and towns such as Portland and Portsmouth, and we even made a detour to stop and see the Bush compound at Kennebunkport. Kennebunkport is a very upscale neighbourhood along the coast and the Bush compound is where generations of the George Bush family have spent their summers escaping the heat of Texas. From the harbour road we saw the full length of the compound which included about six or seven buildings and a large family home at the very tip of the little peninsula.

We were definitely starting to see signs of winter in the evenings as we worked our way South. We needed extra layers of bed clothes and we were beginning to use the propane heater in Klara with more regularity. To be more specific when I awoke in the morning I would jump out of bed and put the coffee on and turn on the propane heater while Heidi still is snuggled in her bed waiting for things to warm up. Our routine in the morning was, once coffee was made, we would crawl back into bed and each of us would read the digital version of the Vancouver Sun newspaper on our iPhone’s to keep up with the goings on back home. This routine provided a little bit of normalcy to an ever changing schedule as we traversed North America in our little home on wheels.

I was excited to arrive in Boston and to catch up with friends who live there. In particular I was excited to see Sue with whom I had worked for well over a decade with my last two companies, and who I had not seen in person for more than three years. Sue lives in a suburb of Boston called Framingham and she was gracious enough to invite us to stay with her while visiting Boston. Sue was surprised (as were each of the people we visited) when we asked if we could use her driveway as our temporary home while in Boston. As we explained to many, Klara is extremely comfortable, and we’ve become so used to sleeping in her that it didn’t make sense to disrupt someone’s home when we have a perfectly good bedroom to use in the rig. Heidi has always had a difficult time sleeping and each new location and bed compounds her problems, therefore the routine of sleeping in Klara gives her some of the best sleeps with the least disruption that I can remember. For this reason, we choose to sleep in Klara, and we are then much easier guests as there is less cleanup behind us.

We also looked forward to reconnecting with our friends John and Michael with whom we had a wonderful time when they visited us in Vancouver. When we parted ways at that time, we had promised that if schedules allowed, we would look them up when we were in Boston. When we finally arrived in Boston, we found out unfortunately that Michael was not in Boston but was still in Southern California on work. John invited us to come down to their new town home in the centre of Boston for a drink and then out to dinner. Sue and John happen to work for the same company and know each other well so we all jumped in Sue’s car and headed down to John’s place, which was just three blocks from the Boston Commons. We arrived and John treated us to a Grand Tour of their new home. John and Michael had decided to move to the East Coast from California and to buy a townhome in Boston and to buy and renovate a home at Cape Cod. Michael’s business in California is interior design and so the work that he done their Boston town home is nothing short of stunning. We had hoped to also see their place at the Cape but it was in the throes of the renovation and so we agreed that the next time we visited the East Coast they would provide us with a tour of the place at the Cape. John and Michael are members of a private club called “The Quinn” close by their new home downtown. The club was formerly known as the Algonquin and had catered to a small and very exclusive membership. The new owners had decided they wanted to broaden the membership and make it more attractive and accessible to a younger group. The renovated club is very modern and offers various options of food, fitness and entertainment and John and Michael were extremely pleased with their decision to join the Quinn. John treated us first to a tour and then to dinner in their café. It was a terrific evening and a wonderful chance to catch up with an old friend. The next night we decided to stay in, cook and visit with sue as it had been so long since we had had a real opportunity for a visit. For more than 10 years I had almost daily contact with Sue before retiring and it was so great just to catch up after three years out of the business. We finished off our stay in Boston by having a visit with a partner from my Gimmal days. Danny and his family lived a few miles away from Sue’s place making it easy to connect. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have chosen a worse night, because not only did we get lost and arrive almost an hour late, but also Danny was suffering from a migraine and his son was suffering from a recent encounter with poison oak. Danny had gone to all the trouble of making us a specialty from his hometown in Bavaria, called spaetzle, which was delicious. We enjoyed a shortened visit with them and promised to get together again when next our paths crossed.

Leaving Boston, we headed South and east as we were interested in visiting Amish country in Pennsylvania. After making a couple of wrong turns we finally got on track and ended up in Blue Balls which is the last town you hit before reaching Intercourse! It was here that we saw the Amish in their home environment, with buggies trotting down the road and children returning from school with traditional hats and clothes but with a little more modern transportation – they were riding scooters. At a grocery store we saw that they provided a covered buggy corral in their parking lot for the Amish horse drawn buggies. We stayed overnight in the parking lot of a Cabela’s sporting goods store and moved on South in the direction of Washington DC, our next destination. During my career at Gimmal I had spent a lot of time in the Washington DC area and there were two old colleagues that still lived there. Brian and Pat arranged for us all to meet for dinner in a small historic town on the outskirts of Washington DC called Culpepper.  This little town had great significance during the civil war but today offered the trappings that tourists look for: great shops, excellent restaurants and easily walkable. We had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant that was renowned for their farm to table menu. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner with Brian and Kathy, Pat and Sue and reminisced about the old days and we filled them in on some of the highlights of our trip so far.  Although our time was very short together, we really enjoyed the dinner and the company and as has happened so many times on this trip, we wished fond farewell and promised to get together somewhere down the road.

Leaving Culpeper, we headed east in the direction of North Carolina and the Outer Banks. This unique stretch of land fascinated us as it is a sliver of land that runs for hundreds of kilometres offshore from the mainland of North Carolina. We found a National Park that was still open and booked in for a couple of nights on the shore. As we entered the Outer Banks, we were surprised to see just how narrow this sliver of land was, there couldn’t have been more then 100 to 200 yards of land on either side of the highway that led to crested dunes and then the ocean to the east and a lagoon to the west. We arrived and set up in our camp spot and wandered out to the beach that resembled the large expansive beaches we had seen in New England. The warmer weather we hoped for did not materialize although we were no longer into freezing temperatures at night. The freezing cold temperatures though were replaced by winds off the Atlantic, and overnight the winds were so high that our aerial on the top of our rig was flopping like gulls wings, causing us to think that our air conditioning cover would go flying off at any time. We were surprised to see how busy the campsites were as we were unable to reserve a powered site because all were taken. It then struck us that this was Thanksgiving and many had their pots out ready to deep fry their turkeys right there in the campsite. After spending a couple of nights, and with the winds persisting, we decided to retrace our steps back along the same route, rather than take the chance of cancelled ferries on our southern route.

Our next destination was Charleston SC, and we arrived in good time as our campsite was only an hour north of downtown, allowing us to do a proper job of discovering Charleston in a day. We had read in our iOverlander app that the Visitors Centre welcomed RV’s for free for the day in a secure site, so we parked there and set out on foot. Given that it was the Thanksgiving weekend town was busy, but the temperature was just right, around 20 degrees Celsius and sunny. Charleston is a very historic city and the landmarks we visited all dated back to the real beginning of the colonialization of America. The historic old homes on the southside of Charleston, near the waterfront, were amazing and the stories we read of the homes and the people who lived there gave you a picture of what life was like back in the sixteen hundreds here. Although a day is hardly enough to see a city the size of Charleston, we got the feeling for the city and agreed that we had seen enough, and it was time to move on in the direction of Savannah GA. Like our visit to Charleston, we were limiting ourselves to a day and when we arrived, we decided to do a hop on hop off bus trip to get our bearings. Like Charleston, Savannah has a very historic background. Unfortunately, it was also the location of some of the largest slave markets on the East Coast of the United States. In fact, looking at all the beautiful huge mansions throughout Savannah, it is hard to ignore the slave quarters located in many of the back yards. Savannah is dotted with city squares, that back in the day, served as meeting spots and now serve as memorials to various historic figures in Savannah. This is a beautiful city, there is no doubt, but it was hard to ignore the role that it played in the slave trade in Georgia and beyond.

The South Coast

I glanced down at my speedometer when leaving Savannah, and it struck me that we have now traveled over 10,000 miles (16,000 kms), since leaving home in August. We are now becoming weary of traveling day after day and longing for the warm weather and beaches of Mexico, which still lies 1,500 miles (2,400 kms) away. We cut across Georgia and headed for Panama City Beach FL with the hopes of getting some warm weather. We checked in to a campsite across the street from the beach and got set up for a couple of nights to relax. The weather was in the 20 degrees Celsius range, and we spent one lazy day on the beach and exploring the little town of Panama City Beach.

Our next destination was Laurel MS. We are huge fans of the HGTV television show Hometown, a show featuring a young couple who have made it their life’s work to renovate old historic homes for people looking to move to their little town. Not only are the couple charming but the work they do is fascinating in that they try to use materials harvested in the renovation to keep the character or to make furniture from the recovered lumber. Laurel at one time was the centre of lumber mills and the area is still known for its white pine forests. Like many small towns in America though, as the factories and mills closed, it fell on hard times. It is truly amazing the kind of notoriety that this television couple had brought their hometown, as the tourist business is booming. We stopped in at Ben and Erin’s store, called Laurel Mercantile, and picked up a walking map of the city so that we could see the homes that we had viewed on their show. We spent the better part of a warm day walking the neighbourhoods, trying to pick out the homes that we could recognize from the show, which was really fun. We ate lunch at Erin’s favourite restaurant and grabbed an ice cream cone from Ben’s favourite ice cream shop. We stayed at a campsite on a lake just outside Laurel and we were the almost the only campers, a sign that the season was over.

We arose the next morning and decided we wanted to finally go and see one of the plantations that we had read and heard so much about. The Whitney Plantation and museum offered us a glimpse of what southern plantation life was like for the African American slaves. At its peak, this sugar cane plantation had 100 slaves. We expected to see a very opulent plantation house, given the depictions seen on television and movies, but this plantation house was rather modest. We toured the grounds, which included the different shops and slave quarters, and I was struck by the squalor in which they were forced to lived. There were numerous memorials as part of the presentation, but the one that was most striking was an exhibit in memorial to the leaders of the 1811 German Coast plantation uprising. The uprising began in the area around the Whitney plantation with approximately 100 slaves from the sugar cane plantations marching towards New Orleans and collecting more and more slaves to their cause along the way until they reached almost 500. Given that none of the slaves were armed the white owners were easily able to quell the uprising and shot and killed nearly 50 of the slaves and then later executed another 50. The heads of the slain leaders were put on stakes and lined the road to raise fear in the hearts of the slaves to prevent this from ever happening again. We were very surprised to hear that, even after slavery was abolished in 1865, the descendants of the slaves continued to live on the plantation until 1975. These people, though freed, had no other prospect of work, so the plantation owners created an indentured workers scenario, by providing a plantation store that the workers would be forever in debt to, thereby preventing them from leaving the plantation.It was a very sobering experience touring Whitney plantation and truly understanding the depth of the misery experienced in the time of slavery.

After leaving the Whitney plantation we drove West and stayed overnight in Baton Rouge LA at a campsite that was connected to an equestrian stable. We had grown weary of the road, so rather than get out and explore Baton Rouge, we just settled into our chairs, read our books, made dinner and climbed into bed to get ready for our last push to Texas. The road between Baton Rouge and Houston is not very scenic. As a matter of fact, the thing that you see the most along this route are oil refineries.  So, we set the cruise control and made our way through to the great state of Texas.

Houston is a special place for me. This was the location of the last company I worked for before retirement and therefore I have many friends in the state. The first night we stayed with our friends Mike and Cynthia, which was exciting for us as they had just moved into their newly renovated home on a famous golf course in North Houston. We had been following the progress of the renovation on Facebook for quite some time but were really excited to have an opportunity to see it in person. Cynthia has done a terrific job of the design and renovation and the home is a true mid-century masterpiece.. The home is built on the golf course and both Mike and Cynthia’s offices overlook the 9^th green. We had intended to park in the driveway, but it had not yet been completed, so we snuggled in and spent one night in their cul-de-sac before moving on. This was likely the first and last time that someone will camp in this beautiful neighbourhood.

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The next night we had dinner with Chris and Lona, friends who we shared a motorcycle trip with a few years ago when they came for a visit to Canada. It was Chris’s bike that inspired me to buy the BMW that we took to Europe, so special thanks to the two of them for the inspiration.” When in Rome…” they say, so we had a terrific Texan barbecue dinner that left us with more leftovers than we probably ate at the table, enough to last us through to the Mexican border!

After spending the night at the local Walmart, we met up with another friend, John, and his wife Mary-Beth for brunch. John and I worked together for years and have had a friendly rivalry dating back to 2011 when his Boston Bruins and my Vancouver Canucks met in the Stanley Cup final. Still a sore spot for me his Boston Bruins prevailed in Game seven, leaving my Canucks winless in 3 Stanley Cup finals. John and Mary Beth are on to the next phase of their life as new grandparents, which keeps them busy travelling between Houston and North Carolina, to keep up with the new one. John was especially enthusiastic to meet and become part of our blog, as he had been following our adventures since we left, so here you go John a special call out to you, my friend!

After a wonderful brunch we jumped back on the road again in the direction of Austin Texas. Austin is one of my favourite cities in the southern US, both for its natural beauty as well as its music scene. Heidi found us a terrific campsite called Pecan Grove smack dab in the middle of Austin. The first night we met up with two old colleagues, Neil and his wife Cheri and another dear friend Susan. It has been more than three years since I retired, therefore I had not seen any of my old colleagues for many years. It was really cool to see how we picked up right where we left off, demonstrating to me that the time I spent at Gimmal was very special, as were the people with whom I was lucky enough to work.

Susan was kind enough to give us a guided walking tour of Austin the next day, following the river through the downtown core and out along busy Congress St where we stopped for a Tex-Mex lunch, a few margaritas and to listen to some live music. And no visit to Austin would be complete without a visit to a cowboy boot store. Heidi and I marvelled at the variety of boots available and discovered that you can pay as much as $12,000 for a pair of cowboy boots in this store. And stepping out of the store we saw something only found in Texas, a motorcycle decorated with a set of Texas Longhorns.

ROGA to the Rescue

Klara had begun making funny noises in the front end, so we called on the friends from the Rialta Owners Group of America (ROGA) for some suggestions. It turned out one of the more knowledgeable and experienced members lived just outside Austin and volunteered to help us out. Eric has two Rialta’s and has taken many trips, the longest of which was to Alaska. He believed my problem was a water pump, so he ordered the necessary parts and I picked them up on the way up to his place. He confirmed the problem and replaced the defective part as well as tightened up some loose pieces related to my generator to boot. All this kindness with very short notice was amazing. He recommended I replace the front shocks before crossing over to Mexico, so I scheduled the work the next day with a mechanic who was on route and recommended by another ROGA member. The folks in this group have been lifesavers and I am in their debt.

Our trip across America was far quicker that planned. A combination of the late crossing, resulting in many places being closed for the season, and the road weariness combined to hasten our pace in this portion. The highlight for us was the chance to visit with all our friends along the way. As you may know, our motto is “You can never have too many friends”.