ETA-TBD

2022 Aug 21 – Pueblo, CO to Denver, CO- Kelly

State Count – still 10

The first stop of the day was Colorado Springs and The Garden of the Gods. Wow! Descriptions won’t do it justice, so just take a peak at the pictures below. It’s nestled right into and amidst the community and neighborhoods. If you lived there, you’d see it when were out running errands – “let’s see, gas, groceries, oh and there’s a glimpse of something fabulous!” I had figured that it got its name from a poetic Native American translation, but that’s not the case. Instead, In 1859, two surveyors started out from Denver City to begin a townsite, soon to be called Colorado City. While exploring nearby locations, they came upon a beautiful area of sandstone formations. One of them said this would be a “capital place for a Biergarten”. His companion exclaimed back, “Biergarten! Why it is a fit place for the Gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods.” Later, a railroad baron came to own it, but then donated the entire park to the community, based on four conditions: (1) it had to be free to the public, (2) no buildings could ever be erected in the park, (3) it had to be well-maintained, and (4) ironically, no alcohol could be consumed on parkland. Gods NOT excepted!

Sometimes – especially after you’ve been on the road for a week with your wife and dog – you just need to have a beer and smoke a cigar with your brother, so we pulled into Denver and spent a fun, normal evening with Jim’s youngest brother and his family. Bonus: I learned to can peaches, too!

2022 Aug 20 – Dodge City, KS to Pueblo, CO – Kelly

State Count – 10

I feel like I was too hard on Dodge City yesterday. Not taking anything back, but the people here seem very happy, and there are some cool old buildings and interesting cowboy history (ie. the original Boot Hill Cemetery was here and Wyatt Earp was the deputy town Marshall for a while.) We met a local at the park and while we sipped coffee and let the dogs run, he told us that the town business still revolved around cattle, only it’s meat packing now. He said they pack about 10,000 cattle in a 48 hour period, and that the summer was their busy season because everyone wants to barbecue.

We made a game-day decision and adjusted our course away from Santa Fe and charted a more direct route that will eventually lead us to Arches National Park in Utah. Happily, that landed us in Pueblo, Colorado for the afternoon and evening. The drive across Kansas was mostly flat with some rolling hills. We kept wondering when we’d finally see the mountains! Finally we saw them, and – again, hearkening back to the pioneers – we imagined how excited they must have been. We really enjoyed the Pueblo River Walk on the Arkansas River. Along a pretty nature, and art-strewn walk path it showcased the long history of the area, everyone was nice, and the beer on the outside dog-friendly pub patio was cold. The Arkansas River in Pueblo marked the border between Mexico and the U.S. up to 1848.

Before we left, Jim and I set an aggressive goal for our cross country hotel budget. Because both of us are competitive, and neither of us wanted to be “the quitter” or to be deemed weak or the “bougie one” the topic of upping our hotel game never came up, and we stuck with our (in hindsight) risky, low-rent hotel budget until we got all the way to the Rockies. I’ll admit here that my healthy fear of the MRSA virus (honed over yearly viewings of the mandatory good hygiene videos over 10+ years of high school coaching) caused me to break first. And even then, I brought it up by saying “you realize, that neither of our daughters would step foot in some of these hotels.”

What I liked about our “under $100 including dog fee” hotels: the price of course, the staff and the guests were very friendly overall, the showers had good water pressure, and the bedding was clean. Because we had a dog, we were always on the ground floor, and I liked the easy access of that. One lobby had The Brady Bunch on the big screen, and Jim had a lively discussion with the front desk clerk and cleaning lady about the plot line.

What I didn’t like: Those ground floor pet rooms? Well, quite frankly, they’d all been previously inhabited by other people’s pets. Ew! The air sometimes had the moist, fresh scent of wet carpet combined with Febreeze. Furniture wasn’t as new as in – say – your average DMV, and we looked dubiously at the carpet and the couch or cushioned chairs wondering what accidents had occurred there. The locations tended to be set in the industrial sections on the outskirts of the city – leading Jim to say every place we stayed: “I’ll be taking the dog out here.” Again no mention of why. Possibly it had something to do with the two running black vehicles with darkened windows in the back parking lot, or the four giant guys pounding beers with a smoker in the bed of their pickup truck outside of their incredibly messy rooms (they’d been living there awhile), or the pounding base and brief yelling outside one night, or the late night traffic from the KFC drive thru next door. He allowed me to walk Pasha some mornings, and I enjoyed watching Pasha frolic in the vacant, weed-strewn lots.

After I broke, I’m pretty sure I heard Jim release an audible sigh of relief, and from then on we stayed in hotels – still on the first floor – but a step or three above where we’d been staying and without the fear of contracting any virus or being mugged.

2022 Aug 19 – Kansas City, MO to Dodge City, KS – Kelly

State Count – 9

This was one of our longest drives at around 6 hours, but the diversity of the scenery made it fly by… oh wait, it was flat-flat-flat and about 200 miles without a town. Even with the pretty, big sky, we thought it felt endless, and we could only imagine how it must have felt to the early settlers who rolled along in wagon trains at 10 miles per day. Respect! When we hit Dodge City our spirits were high – I love the old west! – and as we crested a rare hill, there was a really cool life-size metal silhouette. sculpture of cowboys on horseback overlooking the town. Yeehaw! But, I’m sad to say, that was the highlight of this little town. Like lots of old west boomtowns, this one’s heyday seems to have passed. The charming old part of town was tired and run down although you could see what it once was. Due to the dog, we skipped the small, well-kept museum that looked like it might have been interesting. The quasi-highlight was an actual, giant steel steam engine that you could climb up in. It was massive, and had travelled over 1 million miles in the late 1800s transporting cattle driven up from Texas (nearly 5 million in a 10 year period!) to the markets back east.

Sculpture heading into Dodge

Lurking in the back of my mind as we made our way across the country was the question of whether we might stumble across a place that we’d like better than Southern California as a retirement destination. Impossible? Probably. After all, it’s home to the country’s best weather, finest beaches, defending Super Bowl champs, and The Real Housewives of Orange County. But that was before we rolled across a Kansas City bridge, passing a sign advertising a bacon festival in October. Yep, you read that right. A town gathering to celebrate BACON!
Who needs beaches and temperate weather when there’s bacon? What better reason to put down roots and raise a family in Kansas City? I immediately began looking into local real estate and getting Kansas City Chiefs season tickets. Then Kelly reminded me that they sell bacon in Southern California. And that we’ve already raised a family. So we headed west to Dodge City the next day.

2022 Aug 18 – Hannibal, MO to Kansas City, MO – Kelly

State Count – 8

Hitting the road early in search of some “better-than-third-rate-hotel-lobby” coffee we found ourselves in Macon, MO. This small town (2-4 blocks in the middle of the plains) is nicknamed “Maple City” because a long time ago there was a guy who owed $150 in taxes but didn’t have the money to pay, so the tax collector made him plant 150 maple trees instead. The coffee shop was charming and recently opened by a young man who renovated it himself and roasted his own beans. His dad owned the kitsch and antique guitar shop across the street and he invited us (and Pasha!) into his store to hear him strum a few chords on a vintage 1929 Martin, then sent us on our way with some of his “home grown” honey. Mom poked her head in from her antique shop next door to say hi, too. It was a very Americana morning!

We really liked Kansas City. You could almost track the evolution of the city from the different buildings that made up the eclectic and pretty skyline. We had a great view of it from the WWI Memorial, had a great beer in the Electric and Light District, and then headed to our hotel in the outskirts of town… but not before having a look at the Arrowhead Stadium where the Kansas City Chiefs play and the Royals’ ballpark. We felt like the Griswold’s pulling into the giant empty parking lot to take a quick picture, only to come across a couple of other cross-country tourists doing the same thing. Sports.

For dinner – what else? – BARBEQUE (and a lot of it)! And it definitely lived up to the hype.

Nobody could drive through Indianapolis without stopping to see the Motor Speedway, the iconic Brickyard, home of the Indy 500, the most well-attended single-day sporting event in the world with more than 300,000 spectators. As I stood in the interior parking lot, content with taking a few pictures that failed to capture Indy’s massive scale and great traditions, Kelly disappeared for a minute and returned to announce that we were taking a private tour that included a ride around the entire 2.5-mile track. Yeah, baby! We held on for dear life as our tour guide Mike (who has attended 56 Indy 500 races and has a story for every one of ‘em) revved the engine of our extended golf cart and raced into the first turn at nearly 22 miles per hour, only about 220 MPH slower than the cars on race day! I was just like A.J. Foyt and Al Unser, except those guys probably never took those 9-degree banked turns holding onto the leash of a two-year-old English Lab. (In fact, Mike told us Pasha was, to his knowledge, the first dog to take the tour.) I prayed as we went into the third turn that we’d blow out a tire so that we could see the pit crew in action, but the golf cart held up well.

Canine VIP treatment

2022 Aug 17 – Dayton, OH to Indianapolis, IN to Hannibal, MO- Kelly

State Count – 6

We saw the pretty, brick, stadium where the Colts play, but the highlight of the day was our stop at the Indy 500 Speedway. On a whim, we signed up for a private tour so we could get out on the track. Pasha was the first dog to take the tour that our tour guide knew of (and he should know, he’s been to 56 Indy 500s!) It was really one of the best tours we’ve ever been on. Kissed the bricks, got into the Penske suite, and were surprisingly enthralled with all of the history of the Brickyards. An American treasure! Suddenly we can’t wait for the May and the next running of the Indy 500!

A huge contrast to the raceway, our next stop was Hannibal MO, where Mark Twain spent part of his childhood and developed his love for the Mississippi River and where he set some of his most famous stories. We walked by Sammy Clemen’s childhood home and saw the window he’d climb out of at night to meet up with his friends to get up to mischief. One of those buddy’s was named Tom Blankenship and was the inspiration for the character Huckleberry Finn. A small, sweet town.

2022 Aug 16 – Washington, PA to Columbus, OH, to Dayton, OH. – Kelly

State Count – 5

THE Ohio State football stadium was SO big (see picture of Jim and Pasha standing at the door of one entrance.) We grabbed some actual Buckeyes from the memorial grove just outside the stadium where it’s a tradition for folks to take them for good luck. Went to a brewery in an “emerging neighborhood” of Columbus, and then ate dinner at a pub in Dayton. Sensing a theme? Well, most pubs and breweries welcome dogs. Cheers to Pasha!

We stumbled upon and were enchanted by a street in the Oregon District in Dayton. Originally, residents of Dayton considered this neighborhood so far from downtown that those who decided to move there “might as well have moved to Oregon.” In the 1800s it became one of the city’s wealthiest and most desirable neighborhoods. The residential block we walked down had a series of old, grand, gorgeous, brick mansions – each one different from the other.

2022 Aug 25 – Kelly

At the time of this (almost) initial posting, we are 10 days into this cross country trip and already 9 days behind on this journal. Typical! It’s been a learning experience – traveling with the dog – and, quite frankly, we were pretty tired from prepping for the move! Because we are doing this on the fly, each evening is spent deciding where to go the next day and figuring out where we’ll stay. Following will be a retrospective look back at our cross-country-trip-with-dog to bring you up to speed in general on our meandering thus far. From there, we might chime in separately on various observations, or locations.

2022 Aug 15 – Herndon, VA to Washington, PA – Kelly

States In Total: 4

Two fun things from the few hours spent overnight here: (1) our hotel was right next to their minor league baseball team’s ball park. Unfortunately they were out of town but we loved the team name: The Wild Things! (2) A local kid playing in the Pony League World Series and the town was all a-buzz about it! Check out Jim’s related post titled “Play Ball”.