SeaJack Road Trip Day #5

On day 5 we started in Illinois and backtracked to St. Louis, Missouri so we could investigate the Bellefontaine Cemetery. It was worth back tracking for. We spent about 3 hours at the cemetery and I’ll devote a whole post later to this beautiful place filled with so much history. When we were done at the Cemetery we headed east again to Illinois and then crossed into Kentucky and made it to our Tennessee destination for the night at 5:30. Here are a few shots from the road.

I have so much to share from Bellefontaine.

Our day #5 on the road was Thursday May 1st. We started in Illinois, traveled back to Missouri, back to Illinois, then to Kentucky and finally ended up in Tennessee.

Kentucky

Tennessee

On Thursday evening we had dinner with Andrew’s best man’s mom in Hendersonville, Tennessee. We were given a nice place to lay our heads and headed out on Friday morning for Asheville, North Carolina via a scenic route that took us through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg next to the Great Smoky Mountains.

We are thankful to be so far into our journey safe and sound. Tomorrow we stay put right here in Asheville. I’ll be sharing all about our time soon. We traveled from the central time zone to the eastern time zone today.

Hope May has started out well for all of you!

The 2nd Half of SeaJack #4!

After our fabulous barbecue lunch in Kansas City we headed on east to just beyond St. Louis for the night. We crossed from Missouri into Illinois.

We crossed the Missouri River and in St. Louis we crossed the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi River.

After we settled into our hotel in Illinois just outside of St. Louis for the night this restaurant was recommended to us for dinner. This is a one of a kind restaurant. We found out that this restaurant was featured on Man vs. Food. The portions are huge here so I ordered a small salad still feeling full from our huge lunch. These rolls are served at the table whether you order them or not with a wonderful butter cinnamon honey spread and just plain butter. The rolls were just the perfect temp and softness to please my palate. Delicious!

I’m saving our stop at Calvary Cemetery in E. St. Louis and the Bellefontaine Cemetery for posts after I’m settled into our hotel at our final destination.

Today was day #5 and we are now in Tennessee. I’ll be catching up with my posts soon. We are staying with a friend of Andrew and Katie here. Tomorrow we continue east to Asheville, North Carolina where we will be spending two nights! I’m looking forward to two nights in one picturesque spot! Finally the weather has settled down for us and we have had no challenges on the road.

SeaJack Day #4

Wednesday was the fourth day of our road trip and because of the special event on this day I’m going to have two separate posts breaking the day into two halfs.

The first post for Day #4 can be called, ” I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come.” We started in Nebraska, crossed a bridge into Iowa and then continued on I-29 crossing into Missouri and on to Kansas City.

Our route to I-29 took us through this quaint Main street in Plattsmouth where we continued on crossing the Plattsmouth bridge over the Missouri river and which had a $1.25 toll.

Did you notice we have sunshine and clouds? We had mostly dry weather on this day. There were pockets of rain but they didn’t last long.

After two and a half hours on the road we spotted Kansas City in the distance.

We had a very important lunch date in Kansas City and I’m happy to say we weren’t late. We found our way to Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue where we were meeting up with a long time bloggy friend Pam and her daughter Whitney.

Over my blogging years I’ve always appreciated Pam’s thoughtful words and prayers for me and others. She’s a gem.

Pam’s husband sent Pam to lunch with instructions to pay for our meal. Thank you Pam’s hubby. We really appreciate your generosity. We had no problem with conversation throughout our meal. The food was delicious and filling. Pam gave Katie and me a bag with homemade cookies to take along our journey. Pam! The cookies are delicious and we do want the recipe…as close as you can get it! 🙂

We are so happy it worked out with timing for us to be able to meet up for lunch. This was the end of the first half of day four on the road. I’ll share about the second half of day 4 tomorrow as we continued east through St. Louis into Illinois.

SeaJack Day #3

I might be sounding like a broken record but we woke up to some more severe weather conditions in Rapid City, South Dakota. When the sun broke through we were brave enough to make a run for it. While we waited for the car to warm up and melt off the ice/snow on the windshield the wind was so strong that our car was rocking. I’m so sad I didn’t get a photo of the snow blowing horizontally. Very little snow accumulated on the ground. It accumulated on signs, windows, one side of the tree trunks, etc.

These are the welcome and information signs at a rest area stop in South Dakota.

We saw whitecaps on irrigation ponds as we continued east on I-90.

Today we crossed the state of South Dakota heading East from Rapid City. We smiled as we passed an exit that said this was the home town of John Thune, senator from South Dakota. His brother Bob was our pastor for a few years in Huntington Beach, California. Bob Thune is an exceptional teacher of God’s Word. We also passed the exit for the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. We waved, Willow! Wish we could have gone out of our way the 50 miles to see it.

We headed South at Sioux Falls, S.D. and finally made it into Iowa.

The Missouri River in Iowa.

We traveled in three states again today, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. Tonight we are staying south of Omaha, Nebraska.

It was a very long travel day today and we didn’t get to our hotel until after 6:00 P.M. Since it was Tuesday our regular day at home to go out for Mexican food we found a Mexican restaurant close to the hotel for our later than usual dinner. We are beat and happy to have been carried along by the prayers of our friends and family today. Bless you all. We have a nice place to lay our heads. We are really looking forward to meeting up with Pam a dear bloggy friend and her daughter in Kansas City tomorrow for lunch.

We have learned that we need to be flexible with our plans when we have to deal with changing weather patterns. We had planned to see Mt. Rushmore today before we hit the road to Nebraska but the weather proved to be too severe to enjoy that extra side trip.

Our hearts go out to all those who have suffered in the path of tornadoes and other severe weather this week.

SeaJack Day #2

Today, Monday, is the second day of our road trip from Seattle to Jacksonville, N.C. We woke up to quite a surprise in Bozeman this morning, snow!

We listened to the news and decided to leave a little later than usual hoping the roads would be good for our travels across Montana, Wyoming, ending in Rapid City, North Dakota. The snow ended up being a non issue once we were on the road. The more extreme conditions we dealt with on this day were wind gusts up to 45 mph.

Driving in snow scares me so I had to put my big girl pants on and hit the road asking for prayers for a safe journey for Katie and me. Soon we had views like the following. I drove until we got to Wyoming so the following photos are from Wyoming and South Dakota while I was free to take photos from the car.

We arrived to our hotel at 5:30 and got ready to head out to dinner. I bookmarked the spots for dinner before we left Seattle. The restaurant we went to in Bozeman and in Rapid City were both located on Main Street.

Murphy’s Pub and Grill downtown Rapid City

Both Sunday and Monday we drove through 3 states. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we plan to make it to Omaha, Nebraska. On Sunday we listened to an Agatha Christie ebook, And Then There Were None. When we finished that book we started Brian Jacques’ Redwall and continued listening to it today. We are reaching the conclusion of this unabridged ebook. Listening to books while driving really helps me to enjoy the road more.

What do you like to do on road trips?

I hope none of my bloggy friends have had any damage due to the tornado activity in our country right now.

SeaJack Roadtrip Day #1

I decided to name our road trip from Seattle, Washington to Jacksonville, North Carolina…SeaJack.

We traveled across Washington, Idaho and halfway across Montana on Sunday, the first day of our road trip (677 miles). We are now settled into our hotel enjoying a relaxing evening. Here are some highlights in photos of day one.

My favorite part of today was meeting up with Dan and Jamie in Spokane Valley for brunch.

Such a joy to see their faces and spend a little time together.

Katie took the wheel for a while after we made it into Montana and the next few photos are from the car on Interstate 90 in Montana on our way to Bozeman. Did you know that the speed limit in Montana is mostly 75 miles per hour? Woohoo!

After we arrived in Bozeman shortly after 6 PM we found historic Main street and had a light dinner at the Copper Whiskey. I enjoyed the beet salad and Katie had a pulled pork sandwich.

Tomorrow we head to Rapid City South Dakota watching the weather reports closely.

M is for Mt. Vernon…

“Mount Vernon sits at the center of Skagit County, a true slice of Pacific Northwest heaven located halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. About 25 miles wide and 95 miles long, some of Washington’s most scenic and pristine landscape is found in the Upper Skagit’s North Cascades National Park. From there the land flows like the Skagit River through nutrient-rich farmland to the shores of the Salish Sea.”

In April people from around the world descend on Mount Vernon and the Skagit Valley for it’s annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Here are some photos to show you why. My daughter Katie and I headed north form our house to see the blooms on Monday. We enjoyed a wonderful 70 degree day and got a little sunburned as we tiptoed through the tulips!

It’s best to wear mud boots when you go to the tulip fields!

Beautiful daffodils bloom here, too.

Later this week I’ll be posting more of my photos from our Monday in Mount Vernon!

ABC Wednesday is a weekly meme that originated with Denise Nesbitt and now others keep it rolling along.

I’m also linking up to Outdoor Wednesday hosted by Susan at A Southern Daydreamer.

Country Fun vs. City Fun

Last weekend we traveled five and a half hours to our son’s home in the northeastern corner of Washington state. We were definitely in the country. There are things that you can do in the country that you are not free to do in the city. We have fun doing those things…

We arrived with the sun shining and blue skies.

There aren’t a lot of restaurants to choose from in the country compared to the city but you can still find some real good ones. We had my birthday dinner at The Chalet in Chewelah and we all enjoyed our meals.

Early on Saturday morning the snow started falling. We weren’t expecting that.

Thankfully the snow only lasted till noon and then melted nicely. On Saturday because of the cold and snow Dear and Dan did indoor projects.

In the country you can count on early morning visitors of the 4 legged variety that aren’t dogs or cats.

They make themselves at home.

We love the wide open spaces in the country. While walking out on Dan’s land on Sunday morning it was great to hear all the different birds chirping and the creek running.

Dan is fortunate to have a huge shop where he can work away from the elements. The shop had lots of old tools from the previous owner and Dan displayed some of the older ones on the walls.

You can’t do this in our city but in the country we got a great bonfire going cleaning up lots of debris around the property. While we worked outside our corned beef meal was cooking away in the slow cooker. When the clean-up for the day was done my family did some shooting. It’s nice to shoot out in the open instead of in a enclosed shooting range. In the evenings we enjoyed sitting around eating and enjoying each others company.

Before we headed home on Monday morning we drove north into Colville to the National Forest Service office in town to pick up my Senior America the Beautiful lifetime pass and we got a free Military dependent pass for Katie. We joined the locals in Colville for breakfast at Zip’s.

It was fun sitting and listening to the good ole boys talking about their doings and their take on what happened to that Malaysian plane.

Our 6 hour drive home back to the city was uneventful and that’s the way we like it.

So…are you a country mouse or a city mouse or maybe a little of both?

Travelling Surprises…

On Friday we left the Seattle Area at 11:00 A.M. and headed east on Interstate 90 for Eastern Washington to visit our son Dan for the weekend. The road across Snoqualmie Pass was clear of snow and uneventful. As we approached the Columbia River we took notice of the lower water levels because of a crack and repairs on one of the dams upriver.

When we approached the the Quincy area we saw that the wind was really causing some dust storms and as we got closer to the area we saw this eerie sight.

The Attack of the Tumbleweeds!

The tumbleweeds crossing the interstate went on for miles. We hit so many and we noticed many trapped underneath cars and in the front grills.

It was a lot spookier than it looks in my photos. When we pulled off the interstate in Spokane we stopped so an older man could cross the road. He stopped in front of our car and pulled out the large tumble weed that was lodged in our grill. We laughed and thanked him!

We made it to Dan’s in record time and unpacked the car and then headed for dinner.

The roads from Dan’s place to the grocery store on Saturday were quiet and beautiful. I saw a rafter of wild turkeys.

It’s great to travel roads in the great open spaces.

On the way home today the only excitement we had was a snow/rain mix on the pass.

I’ll post more photos of our time at Dan’s place in the next few days now that we are back home again. Hope all is good in your corner of the world.

Snoqualmie Falls

Scroll Down to the Post Below This One for Kathleen’s St. Patrick’s Day Crawl!

Tuesday was such a beautiful day that Katie and I decided to take the drive to Snoqualmie Falls. Although it was dry with clear blue skies and a few fluffy clouds we still got rained on by the falls themselves. The river was running so full and strong that the spray off the falls fell like rain anywhere close.

On Tuesday evening Katie and I went out together to celebrate her and Andrew’s anniversary. Dear is in Florida until tonight so it was just the girls. We chose a waterfront restaurant because the weather was so great. I’ll share the photos from our dinner on another day.

Today was another glorious day and I even had to turn my air conditioning on in the car. I am looking forward to Dear coming home tonight. How’s the weather where you are? I hope it hasn’t turned nasty for you again…

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: Travel