Month: June 2017

Southern Tour: It’s Bristol, Baby!

Posted on by Annie

Let’s take a trip to one of the most iconic race tracks in America, the legendary Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee. It was just a quick hop up the road from where I was camping, so I figured let’s go! For the tiny sum of four dollars, I got to see everything. Well, everything a race fan cares about. This is the view from the parking lot where all the VIPs get to park. They get a nice view, don’t they? The thing about Bristol is, everybody gets a nice view once you’re inside. It’s a short track, half mile…

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Sunday Song for a Vagabond Dad

Posted on by Annie

From our very first trip in 1966, my Dad and I didn’t stop seeing places together. So on this Father’s Day, the second one without my traveling buddy, here’s to 50 years of seeing the USA with him. While he was still working and I lived on the East Coast, we traveled from Philly to Maine, seeing the Jersey shore and the stone bridges of coastal Maine. As with most of our trips, he thought about things I wouldn’t have, like how stone bridges are made. Always the engineer, even on vacation. In 1999, he had a major stroke, and…

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Weekly Update: Jun 14, 2017

Posted on by Annie

I feel like every week lately, I start my report by typing something along the lines of “this isn’t the week I had planned.” Here we go again… This is not quite the week I had planned. It wasn’t a total wipeout, like the week before when I dislocated my finger. This week was more like a blowout. A tire blowout. Less than an hour after I finally got back on the road on Saturday. The good news is I was OK, the car was OK, and the trailer too. I had a full-sized spare so the roadside assistance guy…

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Sunday Serenity: Reminding Myself of Good Times

Posted on by Annie

The last several weeks have been a series of accidents, leading to (among other things) a new windshield, a cast, two new phones (yes, two), and lots of cancelled reservations. I had to let go of the idea that I would see the Great Smokies and Shenandoah this year, both places I had been looking forward to very much. Yesterday’s blown tire made me wonder why I’m doing this vagabond thing at all. So today’s Serenity post is really just for me. I spent a long time looking through my photos of the last 13 months, and it made me…

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Stained Glass

Posted on by Annie

When I was little, the church down at the end of our street was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Tall, narrow stained glass windows that seemed absolutely magical when the light poured through them. I haven’t thought about that church in years, until today, when I found an open door in downtown Terre Haute. Strange how a door can open into a building and flash you all the way back to being eight years old. There were old-school wooden pews and slightly padded kneelers that could have come direct from the church of my childhood in Southern California….

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