We once wound up at Key West in Florida.
Bill had just parked the car in front of our B&B, and just began to crack
open his door, when a woman on a bicycle, who was meeting a car, pulled over
too close to Bill's car. She was only inches from the car, and hit the end of
the door hard, falling off her bike. Bill, who Barbara has often said, “is so
nice, that if you don't like Bill, there's something wrong with you,” jumped
out. He apologized over and over, helping her and her bike up. Her bike could
not be ridden, and the woman was livid. Even though Bill was fully stopped in a
parking space, and opened the door only a couple of inches, the woman was by
now feeling it was all Bill's fault, what with all his apologies. After she
made a few choice statements, she began pushing the bike to a repair shop. She
was getting madder and madder. After pushing it a short distance, she turned
and came back. “YOU push this bike to the repair shop, and get it fixed, or I'm
calling the police.” I was beginning to see that Bill was just too nice to handle
this lady, and it was not really my business, but I said, “Call the police.”
She did.
When the police arrived, they soon
realized Bill was totally stopped when it happened, so they left. The lady then
started to again push her bike toward a repair shop. But she didn't like it.
Once we arrived at Mark Twain State Park
out on a peninsula into the Okefenokee Swamp, in Georgia. We were too late to
catch the big boat tour out into the swamp. I had been there several times
before, exploring a good bit of it by canoe. I rented a small boat to take them
out into the swamp. Barbara had been on this boat tour with me before, but
Frances had not, and she was a full blown city girl, so I had reason to give
her my gator lecture. “We will have gators all around us, but it's winter now,
and they are cold, and they will be moving slow. They will not try to come into
this boat. But if one comes close to you, and you jump up to try to move away
from it, you will swamp us, and we will all be right down in there among'st
them.” They did come close, but she
never moved an inch. We saw many gators and other animals. The water is
strangely tea colored, due to the high tannin content of the water.
This water reflects
the trees so well, it's hard to determine the trees from the reflection.
Frances later called this the high point of the trip, though she was scared
witless at the time. A ranger told us they once had a report of a boat turned
over, with people in the water. By the time they arrived at the scene, the
people were still in the water, surrounded by 40 gators. Just looking.
The Texas Hill Country was interesting. We
visited President Jonnson's burial site. A tourist asked, “Is Ladybird Johnson
buried here too?”
“ No, we tried too. But she keeps fighting
us off,” the guide deadpanned.
We recently discovered a narrow strip of
land through Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky that none of us had ever really
explored. Bill is a history buff, so he always figures out lots of fun stops,
the kind Barbara and I sometimes just breeze by, since we usually just prefer
to wing it, and we tend to miss some of these neat places.
Last week we headed out on an 8 day trip.
They have a Toyota Avalon, and Barbara and I soon fell in love with it. It has
the most comfortable back seat we have ever ridden in, as well as just riding
so well in general, along with reasonable gas mileage. We soon wanted one just like it. But we
didn't talk about it when we got home, and were in Barbara's cute little HHR.
Bonnie might get her feelings hurt.
When we looked for a motel that first
night out, Frances went over with Barbara, again, all her strategies for
talking them down a little. But quiet Frances preferred to let bold Barbara get
out and try out her strategies. Barbara is our princess as in “Princess and the
Pea,” and can spot a hard bed at first touch. It sometimes took 4 stops to find
the right one, but we usually did, though that bed the first night was a bit
hard, I'll have to say.
When we unloaded, Frances said we were now
getting into the bedbug capital of the heartland, and she pulled out her
flashlight to examine the mattresses, with nary a bug ever found.
We went to the Indianapolis Speedway, and
rode a lap around, on a bus, then we looked over every car ever to win the Indy
500. In Dayton, Ohio, we visited the National Air Force Museum. That was a
great stop, and took nearly half a day to see it all. It had three huge
buildings, connected with a tunnel. I got separated from them once, thought I
had seen it all, so I went to the front desk to wait for them. Bill came to
find me, after awhile, told me there were two buildings left yet to see. They
were a little put out with me, slowing them down so, but that's just me for ya.
I think we saw every military plane ever flown, atom bombs, hydrogen bombs,
rockets, a command module that went to the moon and back, and a lot more.
We decided on pizza one night. Bill and
Frances ordered a smaller pizza, but after telling them all about winning a
pizza eating contest once with one of my students (A ninth grade girl) by
eating 27 pieces of pizza, I felt obligated to order a large, with thick crust,
with everything on it. Barbara didn't hold up her share of the eating, however,
and there was just no way I could leave pizza there to go to waste, so I did my
best, what with all the bragging I had been doing. But I wound up eating a
little too much, and was sick for a day and a half. The upside was, I didn't
have to do my share of the driving the next day, being so bloated and burning
up with pizza fever like I was.
The fall colors were nearing its peak in
Ohio, and the Amish Country was totally beautiful, but I missed out on some
good eating there, being still off my eating form somewhat. Coming back through
Kentucky, we visited an Artisan College. (Who knew there was such a thing?) But
the students really made some neat things. The Kentucky people mentioned a time
or two that Kentucky was playing Arkansas this week, but they didn't seem real
enthusiastic about it. I found out why, watching the game last night. Arkansas
is not having a good year, but Kentucky's
year is worse. I was so happy to finally see Arkansas winning, I watched
the whole game. Even the long rain and lightening delays.
Note: Arkansas is playing Kentucky tonight
in basketball. They have similar records, but Kentucky has beaten Arkansas the
last eight games in a row. I gotta see that!
Frances had the bills all added up by the
time we got back to their house, and we split the gas and housing expenses, as
always. $58 per couple, per day. How's that for cheap travel? Now, we're all going home to try to find
another little strip of land in the US that we haven't seen yet, so Bill can
start finding all the good stops for the next trip.
Note: I told our grandson a while back that he would be hard pressed to put his finger on a spot in the country map that we had not visited. So, he started naming cities, and he went through more than a dozen cities before he stumped Barbara. I didn't remember going to half those cities, but Barbara has a memory like a razor. She knew them all. I promised to take him on a Pork and Beans trip this summer.
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