Yippee, I’m getting ready to hit the road again…Is Willie Nelson popular in Europe, do you know his song, On The Road Again. It always goes through my head since my Dad always sings it when we’re heading out. I think I left some pictures of him and his motorcycle “Ol Blue” in an earlier essay, but its a catchy tune and its been going through my head with increasing frequency.
This time, I’m not going by motorcycle, I’m taking the Honda Civic and two granddaughters and maybe my daughter, though she seems to be waffling of late. We are heading out in a couple of weeks and will leave California and all its misery and beauty for a few weeks as we head first for The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, then to the Wind River Range. all in Wyoming, then over to South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, with the president’s heads and the Black Hills. We’ll mess around a little bit and then cross S. Dakota and make sure that we stop in at the Corn Palace in Mitchell.
12 and 8 yrs old, the girls should be pretty good for this part of the trip, but then we get the great plains and a long, long day or two of driving. Chicago will be a blast, my other daughter and her boys live in the ‘burbs, now, and we’ll stay there for a while. Maybe we will go into town and go to a ballgame at Wrigley, or go shopping Downtown in that great city. The 12 yr old will love it, she already has plans to be the lead guitarist in a Punk Rock band so the City of Big Shoulders should be pretty fun for her.
Next its on down the road to South Bend Indiana, 4th of July and a barbeque with Willie Nelson, John Mellenkamp and Bob Dylan at the baseball stadium. family friendly and opens up at 5:30 with kids under 14 getting in free. How cool is that? There, I’ll meet up with one of my old buddies that I grew up with, he’s coming up from Marion Ind. A place that is truly suffering from the economic policies of the Reagan years.
After the show we’ll head downstate and hook up with the parents and both sets of the girls great-grandparents on their Mom’s side, maybe even grandma will come up from Tennessee, who knows. We’ll probably stay in the midwest till the 10th or 11th and then head back.
We’ll go across Indiana, Illinois, and stop in at Hannibal where the great Sam Clemens, aka Mark Twain, grew up a few feet from the Mighty Mississippi-and it is a mighty river, indeed. Then across Missouri and into Kansas. UGH, I really don’t like going across Kansas, its okay the first time but….Colorado awaits and we’ll shoot north of Denver and head for Estes Park and then go through Rocky Mountain Natl. Park and that is a sight to see. Down on the other side we’ll head for Steamboat Springs and stay a day or two there, and then its off across the remainder of Colorado, then Utah and Nevada (Ugh, again), and then home sometime around the 15th of July.
If it works as planned I’ll have lots of good pictures and a good story to tell. Should be a lot of fun.
Next year Europe, I’ve already started saving, so plan on having a pilgrim in your midst sometime around September ’10
X-Posted over at the European Tribune.
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on the road again.
I must’ve driven across the country 15 or twenty times; some fast, some slow and tried to find new places every time. The one route I’ve never taken is the northern one though. I’d like to see that.