After such an exciting time in Canada and New York, we set out again on the western leg of our trip.  We passed through Pennsylvania and Ohio on our way to Decatur, Indiana where we had an appointment with the company who makes Monaco’s to get the damn beeping fixed once and for all.

In Indiana we entered the little town of Decatur and set up camp in a really dusty side yard of REV, the company which makes about eight brands of motorhomes, including ours.  REV also makes ambulances and fire engines.  The town additionally produces smaller campers, boats, and all sorts of rv paraphanalia.  After five days there and allegedly getting our problems fixed, (beeping, san icon disposal system, step recall, slide malfunction) we moved on but not before we did the most fun thing there–seeing where and how motorhomes are built!  We watched the assembly from hauling the chassis inside, to wiring, plumbing, flooring, interior walls, fixtures, outside walls, interior finishes, roofing, slide installation, paint,  and much more.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but it was pretty amazing!

We were about 150 miles down the road before the beeping started again but we carried on after an emergency reset.  We also had to burn off a heavy particulate load (?) in some guy’s front yard before we could move on without destroying the engine.  This requires revving the engine at high rpm’s for about a half hour.  Needless to say, the old guy who’s yard we stopped near wasn’t happy, but his neighbor, a long-haul trucker was very nice and helpful, as was another rv’er who stopped to see how he could help.

Iowa brought us to Walcott where the world’s largest truck stop resides.  There were 900 truck parking spaces, a huge trucker museum, and a store/shopping center/restaurant/anything you could want store.

The store, including three semi’s on display inside.

Some available services inside the store.

Not my cousin Bob, but a pretty cool encounter with a prayin

 

Onward to Cedar Falls and as he called it, the roadside attraction of visiting my cousin Bob and his wife, Kris.  We had a great evening talking, looking at wonderful pictures of the recent wedding of their daughter, Amy, and enjoying a yummy dinner.

Minnesota brought more traffic accidents.  After four years on the road, this has been the only time we have seen any.  Besides the two pictured above we saw a car-motorcycle crash, a destroyed Honda where the kid driving it were thankfully alive and talking to the police, and a semi truck and trailer broken down on the left lane with a front wheel broken off.  All these caused massive traffic jams and probably the particulate build-up we had.

At last we reached North Dakota where more adventures awaited us!

We went with Doug and Susie to Medora to await the arrival of our good buds from Arizona, Jane and Larry.  Medora is a quirky little town in the North Dakota badlands.  It was founded by the Marquis de Mores as a railhead to send butchered cattle east instead of driving them to market.  The only problem was ice.  About every 200 miles the train would have to stop and take on more ice to keep the meat cooled and oftentimes it wasn’t available right away.  So although the idea was good, the Marquis was ahead of his time.  Spoilage and impractibility ruined his scheme.  Teddy Roosevelt also spent time there after his wife and mother died on the same day.  He came to the badlands to recover his health and regain strength in this often formidable land.  The Teddy Roosevelt nNational Park abuts Medora so we drove through it.  Shoot!  We only saw one bison, no wild horses, but we did see some wild turkeys and hundreds of prairie dogs.

 

After Jane and Larry arrived one of our first events was to play golf at the Bully Pulpit golf course.

The holes were spectacular!

And aside from the 18th green which was straight uphill  the course was more imposing visually than technically.  This from such an average player who was out of practice at the time. I lost my shoes climbing up that stupid hill on the 18th to retrieve my ball!

Next up, a day on the Missouri.

Then a day touring Fort Lincoln, a fort near Mandan where George Custer was stationed and from whence he left to go to the Little Big Horn.  So much history here and so many interesting things about Custer.  Some day I may write a story about those days.  We also took Jane and Larry to the wonderful and ever evolving Heritage Center in Bismarck, where there are now displays of dinosaurs, rocks and minerals, along with displays of native flora and fauna, the history of settlement in ND and a few Native American artifacts.  For the real Native artifacts we journeyed to On-A-Slant Mandan Indian Village to view the earthen mounds where the tribes lived before Lewis and Clark visited, bringing trade goods and smallpox and eventually wiping out the village.

Mark’s brother Chris (third from the left) has kept in contact with many of their oh, so many cousins.  He set up a meet with John, second from left.  Mark and Doug haven’t seen John for 50 or so years and had a great time reminiscing, telling stories and talking about the old days out at the family farm.

Then on our final night in ND, while out for dinner, who should walk in but another cousin Mark hasn’t seen for decades!  He and Jim had a quick reunion and promised to get together next year.  Family is amazing!!

Now we are in the bus motoring to Montana and Yellowstone. Hope it doesn’t snow!!

What, you ask could be better than finding a whole new family?  Well, not much, but we did manage to fit in some pretty interesting adventures!

First was Niagara Falls. It was pretty amazing–a lot of water.  We could use some in Arizona.

Mark, Jeff, and I decided to jump off a very tall platform and take a zip line to the bottom of the falls.

Here we go!!!

There we go!!  And we all survived.

Took a walking tour with our new-found family through Old Town Kensington Market.  This is the part of town where Annie lived.

Jeff standing in front of Annie’s house, now an office.

Met up with Rebecca, Ted, Edith, and Ian, pals from the India trip, along with Sandy and Annabel.

Ted suggested going to Niagara On the Lake.  What a pretty little town full of beautiful flowers and other tourists.

But, it was Mark’s birthday so we stopped at Orzo and had a great lunch!

When you are in New York you might not naturally think of the Erie Canal. We did and set out to find it.  In Lockport there it was!  Here lives a five tiered set of locks which are like giant stairs to get boats up and down a 60 foot change in elevation.

It’s hard to see, but the five layers are still there.

Sixty foot weir gates holding back the water behind the boat we were on.

The mechanism which operates the weir doors.

Leaving the locks.  This canal is 363 miles long and was started in 1817.  It only took 7 years to complete and was opened in 1825 to help shuttle good and people to the less settled west.  It runs from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Quite a fear of engineering!!

What a time we had this past 10 days!  Family, Falls, Flowers, and the Erie Canal!!  What is next?  Wait and see!

Yes, Jeff did walk around the edge of CNN Tower in Toronto.

 We began our journey driving through Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.  We arrived at Grand Island, New York and settled in just south of the border because there was no room at any campgrounds nearer to Toronto. You may not have heard this story so I will tell it once again. My Dad, Mike Kauffman was born in 1913 in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. He was the third son born to Jacob and Katherine née Tetenbaum. The family emigrated to Canada late in 1913 and eventually moved to Rutland, Vermont where two more sons and a daughter were born. Prior to my dad’s birth, the second son died and there was also a stillborn daughter born in Vermont.  In 1922 Katherine was again pregnant.  Her children ranged in age from 14 to 2.  Jacob was a traveling salesman and took the oldest son with him. Katherine went to Toronto to be with her sisters, Sarah and Annie.  While she was there one of Sarah’s children got married, Sarah died, and Katherine went into premature labor delivering a baby girl who wasn’t expected to live. Katherine got blood poisoning and died two days after giving birth but not before asking her sister, Annie, to take the baby and raise her.  Jacob returned from his sales route and, instead of leaving the children in the care if family, left with them in the middle of the night and went back to the United States. My dad and his brothers and sister were put into foster care because Jacob couldn’t raise all of them and do his job. He and the oldest son left and the last clue we have about them is that the son was in university in Havana and Jacob was also there suffering from”brain fever.”  My dad kept the family together as much as he could.  And they grew up depending on each other.  They never forgot the baby who they thought had died and looked for information on her their whole lives.  They all died never knowing the rest of the story.

Enter detectives Kathie and her brother Jeff!  Starting in 1991 when we lived in England I went on a mission to find traces of my family  I found Katherine and Jacob’s marriage certificate, my dad and his two brother’s birth certificates, the second son’s death certificate, and my great grandfather Tetenbaum’s death certificate.  At this point Jeff took over and in 2003 we found a sister of Katherine whose family still lived in Newcastle.  A genealogist Jeff knew found the family of Sarah who were still in Toronto.  Then last year Jeff and I did a DNA test and Jeff posted what we knew of our family tree on several web sites.  This spring we heard from two more descendants of Katherine’s family, one in England and one in New Jersey who really filled in so many blanks  AND, finally we got a clue as to what happened to the baby Katherine had given to her sister.  Dolly, as she was called, also grew up in Toronto, had a daughter and a son and died in 2013.  Again, we searched and Jeff found the death notice of Dolly’s husband and reached out to the funeral home in hopes we could get in touch with the family.  Long story short, we found a wonderful and new to us first cousin!!!

Me, Jeff and Gail, our cousin!

Jeff and me celebrating! More new family!  Above are me, Gail, second cousin Sandy, her daughter Shayne, Jeff, and another second cousin, Jude. This is our new family.  Katherine had six brothers and sisters and I think four branches of those siblings are gathered here.  I am still so moved by this whole experience and all the strangers who gathered us in and made us a part of their lives that I get all teary.  Mostly I thank Gail who, even though she thought we were pretty weird insisting she was our cousin, went along with the DNA test and accepted us into her life.  Thank you Sandy, Shayne, Pam, and Rhonda, who come from Sarah’s line.  Thank you Jude who comes from Baruch’s line. Thank you Avi, David, and Eileen, from Annie’s branch.  Thank you Rob, Joanne, and Daniel also from Annie’s branch.  Thank you Annabel and Ted.  Thank you Joan and Howard.  Thank you Lew for your help in finding Dolly, and thank you Emma for the comprehensive story of “our” ! family!!

Jeff and I have full hearts and a great sense of accomplishment in our feat.  Thank you all for reading this whole saga!  Next time more about what else we did in O, Canada!

 

Guess I’ve slacked off some.  Sorry!  This will be a catch up post so we can all get ready for a truly amazing story yet to come.

In Tallahassee we visited a car museum which was full of all sorts of  stuff.  I hesitate to call it junk because every one knows one person’s junk is another person’s treasure!

!At a local Publix grocery store I ran across this display.  Everyone knows I grew up in Utah and even there I think these would be called sweet potatoes!!

This is my friend Janet who we met in St. Augustine.  She and I worked in Germany for the Department of Defense in the ’70’s.   After 42 years it was great seeing her again, and guess what?!  Neither of us has changed.

Our 44th anniversary was celebrated at Disney World.  We had a “magical time” and met a great family with twin girls who were happy to come over and help me with the kitties.  Thanks, Hadley and Olivia, and mom and dad!!

Another neighbor who dropped by Fort Wilderness to see us.

Mark looking for home boy Ragnar in Epcot.

We zipped through Georgia South Carolina,

And made it “home” to North Carolina.  Here we enjoyed a really pleasant albeit darn hot and rainy two months with Ariel.  What, you ask, did we do for that long?

Continue reading →

First state past Louisiana,

second state, and finally

Florida!!  We were surprised by the great roads, useful signage, and interesting dead things along the side of the road. Mainly we saw smooshed alligators along with some raccoons, and a fox.  Carl Hiaason wrote a bunch of funny books with a character named Skink who was a former governor but walked off the job into the bush one day.  He ate a lot of road kill.  I’m sure he would have done well along this stretch of interstate!

In Pensacola we discovered the National Naval Aviation Museum.  We spent the entire day there and as you might suspect, Mark was in seventh heaven!

Marine One and Mark emulating Tricky Dick!!

Trying to one-up old high school pal, Mark Dove, Mark tries out the cockpit of a Blue Angel jet.

Blue Angel planes in the atrium of the museum. Incredible!!  And, yes, they are full-sized!

For Stewart Miller. This is the first plane to land in Antarctica. Mark told everyone about your tour there!  This incredible museum has planes from the Wright Brothers to the fastest jets of today.  Many of the refurbished planes are ones of a kind and many of them were resurrected from Lake Michigan where they crashed during training in WWII.  This place was well worth the visit!!

Tomorrow we are off to Tallahassee and then DISNEY WORLD!!!

On a drizzly day we set out from Houston to New Orleans.  The ride was pretty easy without traffic until we got nearer to our destination.  This is Lake Ponchitrain which I thought was the ocean at first it is so big.

Lovely and iconic New Orleans architecture.  We did Hop On Hop Off to get a feel for the city.  Basically it is divided into thirds:  The Garden District of stately old houses, The Vieux Carre or the old part of the city which is sub-divided into French and Spanish areas, and then the areas around the Old Market and Jackson Square which are basically in the Old Quarter.

This is one of the many old, above ground cemeteries found all over the city.  Very interesting. Seemed to me like a lot of famous people either came from or are buried here (New Orleans).

Continuing with our military theme, we visited the National World War II Museum. This very interesting museum chronicals the war as seen from the eyes of the soldiers.  At the outset we were given dog tags belonging to a soldier and we followed his story through the war.  ‘My’ soldier was John Morgan who was rejected when he tried to sign up because he had broken his neck so he went to Canada and joined the RCAF.  He went to England and fought courageously and was finally accepted into the USAF.  He earned a Congressional Medal of Honor and was then shot down and captured.  He made it out alive and was a great example of the bravery and single mindedness seen in so many of that generation’s soldiers.

And, finally there was the food!  Beignets at Cafe du Monde,

Chicken gumbo and crab deviled eggs at Mannings (yes, the father of Eli and Peyton),

And finally a taste of jambalaya, gumbo, and etouffe at Huck Finn’s.  I’ve gained 5 lbs so far.

 

 

Orion will be the next mission to be launched maybe as soon as 2018.  This is the crew module which is hardly bigger than our car and will accommodate the crew during a six month flight into deep space.  The mission is to wrangle an asteroid and haul it back to put into orbit maybe around the moon and excavate. Okay, I’ve seen those movies and nothing good EVER comes of that.

As you can see, much of Pueblo El Mirage is occupied for the summer and we are also dealing with

because most of us are lost in our eternal “old person fog” so Mark and I took off a few days late.  The bus took to beeping again on tthe day we were all loaded up and ready to leave and it took the wonderful guys at RV Master Tech a morning to get it running again with the additive Mark calls diabolical grease ( really dielectric grease).

Our first enchanting stop was New Mexico where we spent a boogie night in Lordsburg.

The next day we saw this really huge roadrunner at the gas station just before we

And entered

Texas, if you couldn’t guess.

sorry, Miles and Karen, Texas isn’t in our top 50 States.  It took us 2 hours to go 18 miles in Houston.

But I did see something I’ve been looking for my whole life…

The SECOND Baptist church!  I’ve seen the first one hundreds of times, so I was really glad to find this one!

So, to recap:  Four days on the road through West Texas being entertained by county names because the towns are so few and far between, horrendous traffic from San Antonio on, and finally getting to Houston in rush hour traffic on a Friday night.

Getting there was not fun!  Things must get better!

PS. When I get back in the Fall, if the signs are still up I’m getting out my magic marker.

 

 

I love it when my pictures load totally out of order, so we will talk about these as they come!  We took a flight from Khajuaho to Varanasi to visit the holiest city of the Hindu religion.  Here people come to bathe in the Ganges or Ganga-Ji, and be cremated  to bring an end to the cycles of reincarnation.  The incomprehensible sign above is at AFT (thanks to the Canadians for this acronym) which was built in the 1930’s and has a carved marble, to-scale replica of India.

 

 

Here is the beautiful relief carving of India.

An eagle perched on a microwave tower outside our hotel window.

The ultimate Share the Road experience!

 

Sunset on the Ganga-Ji.  Our offerings to the spirits of our loved ones who have departed.

 

Ritual cremations.  Bodies are carried on plinths to the river and dunked in.  They are treated with herbs which nullify any smell.  The family bargains with the king of the fire for the cost of the cremation. The body is placed and fire wood stacked around it.  The fire is brought from the temple where the bright light eminates.  The fire burns for 24 hours and at the end the chief mourner brings a container of water from the river to pour over the smoldering ashes.  He takes some of the ashes and puts them in the River.

 

We light our offerings and set them adrift in Mother Ganges.

Every night tens of thousands of people come to say goodnight to the river.  There is chanting, singing, dancing, and burning of symbolic torches.  Then, every morning the ritual is repeated to say good morning to Mother Ganges.

Once in their life time every Hindu wants to bathe in the Ganges.  Their immune systems are among the best in the world because this doesn’t kill them.

Sunrise over the Ganga-Ji.  We also visited the red Monkey Temple and the complex where a mere 2500 years ago Buddha delivered his first sermon after attaining enlightenment.  This is another pilgrimage spot for Buddhists and Hindus.  It was a beautifully quiet oasis in the hubbub of Sarnath.

our epic journey in India is now over.  We stopped for two days in Beijing to see the Forbidden City and climb the Great Wall.

Here we are at the Ba Da Ling section of the Great Wall.

This sucker is steep!  Mark and I made it to the fourth tower, Kallie made it the whole way!

One of the throne rooms in the Forbidden City.

Our trip is now over and we are home with wonderful memories and many new friends from this great adventure!!

 

We woke up today looking forward to our only rail journey in India.  After watching the fab “Darjeeling Limited” we all had high hopes.  Owen Wilson wasn’t on our train but Indian humanity was.

 

Meals were served but after walking through the prep area as we boarded we declined.  The rail system was built by the British during their occupation and is a very ingrained part of life here.  We rode for about two and a half hours to reach our first destination of Jhansi.

 

Our first stop was at yet another fort which is being fixed up in hopes of luring tourists into this small but pretty town.  Here is a pic of the plumbing in the “washroom.”  Recycling at its worst!

 

This fort is famous for its murals which have survived the centuries.  It was built by the local king for a one night visit from our old friend, Shah Jahan, given to him, and abandoned.

 

The ceilings are really quite marvelous and still vibrant. These frescos are tipped with gold and depict hunting scenes.

 

The inside of the fort is pretty interesting and at the time it was built was all inlaid with turquoise and lapis.  We were allowed to climb the ramparts, but as I have said for decades, “Why is it always uphill?”

Another hunting scene.

Towers.

 Guarding the palace door

At our lunch stop we were entertained by this truthful sign!

 

And finally, after a daunting 4 hour bus trip we finally arrived at Khajuraho, a name we could never remember so called it Kilamanjaro.  Before I tell you about the temples a word about touching and relationships in India.  Before the Muhguls invaded this temple complex was built over the years by the kings in the area.  In those days in the 10th and 11th centuries, women were revered and cherished by the populace. They were well educated and held in high esteem by men.  The religion practiced at that time was Hinduism and it was also pretty accepting of everyone.  Then the Muhguls swept in bringing with them Islam and, boy!  Did things change.  Women were shut away and kept uneducated, there was little contact between the genders except under strict circumstances, and pretty much little love lost between men and women.  So the society became more closed and strict and in my opinion, backward.  But before that time it rocked and rolled!

 

These temples sort of reflect those in Angkor Wat.  They are in the Hindu style and the carvings on the outside, which were done in the huge, solid blocks of granite, have withstood the ravages of time and so provide a window into those long ago times.

 

 Shiva, Vishnu, and Rama were the main gods.  They represented creation, destruction, and preservation.

 

The complex has 25 temples each built by succeeding kings.

We walked around about 5 of them.All were beautiful and celebrated life.

 

So here, it you go close, you can see the types of scenes depicted all over the outside of all the temples.  Erotica was the word of that day and celebrated in it’s fullness.  This is the place the Kama Sutra was invented and my back still hurts from looking at the positions shown on the exterior of these temples.  Very interesting day!