Home again again.

More reflections coming up. I want to make sure I cover packing and activities and plans for future trips, but let’s return to accommodations for a moment. Last time I listed all the good hotels. Now it’s time for the losers.

Days Inn, which wouldn’t recognize its Veterans’ Discount. UPDATE: Days Inn Headquarters overruled Joanne and promised she would be counseled. They sent us a check. Good job!

Super 8, which wanted us to sign our lives away in case our dogs made noise, but wouldn’t control wild children and nasty parents. UPDATE: The manager there wrote us a letter full of excuses. Not good enough. They still stink.

Ramada Limited, where the physical plant was so decrepit I broke my arm. UPDATE: They refunded our entire stay. Chances are good I won't sue. I'm looking into it, but it may not even be worth the trouble. But I would never stay in one of those again!

Quality and Comfort Inn, where not one pool out of three was both clean and the right temperature. In each of these locations, the staff told one lie or another, and I only mentioned their worst problems here. Their other failings are detailed in earlier blogs, and on hotel review sites. No response from them. Bad hotels. Do not stay there. Last June, coincidentally, I stayed at one of these little complexes near the Philly airport. I don't know the area and needed to get in and out of South Jersey fast. It also stunk. It was a little group of the "Clarion/Sleep/Quality" places and they were just all terrible. Broken things, dirty places, rude, apathetic management. Avoid.

America’s Best Value Inn was in a category of its own. A mom and pop operation, we felt despite the problems, they were really trying to do their best. So we give them a pass. But please, a few hangers and a little cream cheese wouldn’t break the bank. I mean, just collect a few dry cleaning hangers. Or you can get twelve for a dollar at the Dollar Store. Just sayin’.

Also, here’s a word on restaurants. Most of them were good. Really. The food was good, the wait staff was decent. The only restaurant issue we really had was places where there was little or no choice around the hotel, such as Wall and Custer, and the ones that allowed smoking, which we left. The four bad restaurants in a row in Mankato had to be some sort of bizarre coincidence, and we didn’t actually eat in them, anyway. The only bad meals were delivery to our rooms. This is one thing we will try really hard to avoid. The exception to this: Jimmy John’s in the Midwest. Best damned subs ever. And in the Upper Midwest, if there’s game on the menu, and you can eat it, don’t miss it. It will be their specialty and it’s excellent.

Okay, now about attractions. It really depends what you like. We like history and animals and parks. Natural phenomena, primarily. Some of the kooky things in Wisconsin Dells were not the best, but they have their own charm. The best thing we did has to be the helicopter ride in the Black Hills, and all the close-up wildlife in the state and national parks. So do what makes you happy. The Harry Truman home made me happy, too. Many might find it a musty old house, and that’s all it is to them, whereas for me, it's a step back into another time. I love caves and Joyce, eh, not so much. So just do your homework, is my advice.

Packing is an interesting exercise. We had to pack for ourselves and three dogs for seven weeks. Dogs have a lot of gear. I think they had two bags, plus their cages and all the poop bags we collected for the last six months. We had to pack for when we would be doing our own cooking, and for when we might have a microwave and refrigerator, and for when we had none of the above. We had to pack for various anticipated activities, not all of which came to pass, but you never know. As senior citizens, we have a lot of medications, as well as first aid items. And we were going to be in a lot of climates, so that meant everything from bathing suits to lined jackets.

We have a 92 Toyota Previa, and while it has a big interior, it’s not an RV or anything. We fold the back seats up to make room for the cages, and the coolers go behind the front seat on the floor. The bags we will not use every day go further in and down. The ones we will need every night are closer to the doors. We both tried to pack for two or three days at a time so we could leave certain bags in the car. One of us was better at this than the other, who frequently packed extra items in the laundry bag. And then there are souvenirs and other miscellaneous items, like guns and ammo, which have to be locked up. Having made over 20 separate stops, we will make an even greater effort in the future to get all our personal stuff in one bag each, to leave the souvenirs in the van overnight as much as possible and so on. The little cooler is heavy, but it always has to go in, in case there’s no fridge. We managed also to eliminate dragging one cage. The two little dogs can share the plastic cage, and Nick gets a nice pillow in the bathroom when we’re out of the room.

Oh, that’s right! Travel with dogs. I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s a lot cheaper than boarding them, and a lot happier for us to have them along. We don’t doubt for a minute that they would rather have spent the seven weeks at home, but they would rather go with us than board. And they did have some fun, smelling bison poop and the like. Here, look at all the fun they had!











The worst is having to walk them at night in the rain. Joyce can manage them all at once, but I have to take them one at a time so I can see who goes, and what, and where. And then there’s the picking up. It simply has to be done, or pets and their people will become less welcome than they already are. If you are reading this, and you don’t pick up, you aren’t even doing yourselves a favor. If you can change a diaper, you can pick up poop. You don’t even have to touch it if you do it right. In fact, you shouldn’t touch it, but carry hand sanitizer because it will make you feel better. Carry enough of their own food, don’t overdo the treats, make sure they have familiar bedding and toys, and if you rent a cabin, bring old sheets to cover the furniture. Yes, you have to do all these things, or you’re a slob. And enough people ARE slobs, or we wouldn’t keep encountering bad attitudes about dogs.

Finally, the future. We already booked the next trip, but it’s not blogable. We often rent a house on St George Island up in the Panhandle, and we’re going there for ten days in December, coming home for the holidays. All we will do there is vegetate. It’s very quiet. Very few other people will be there. There will be long walks on the beach, kayaking, lunch at the Blue Parrot, jigsaw puzzles, old movies and napping.

As to next summer, we will either go to the Galapagos or take another road trip. We’re leaning toward the desert Southwest; out on I-10, back on I-20, no more than six weeks, with a stop in Kanab, Utah, at Dogtown. When we decide we’ll post it here.
Thanks for joining us on our trip. Now it’s your turn!

Old Fort Des Moines

This museum and park was our primary reason for this stop. Joyce is a big WW II buff and I recently got this idea of writing a book about a woman joining the WACs to find her MIA brother, That's because my uncle was the MIA and my mother had wanted to be a WAC to end the war faster so he could get home. But her mother cried and said she couldn't stand to lose two children, so my mother didn't go. I started doing some research to see how it might have turned out had she gone anyway. My uncle died in the Death March on Bataan; she couldn't have done anything about it. But it still has the makings of an interesting story. So when Joyce said she wanted to go to Mt Rushmore, I routed us through Des Moines, as good a way to get there as any other. As luck would have it, we visited on the 35th anniversary of Joyce's commission as an Air Force officer. Isn't that peachy? She thinks so.


Here is the fort and museum: http://www.fortdesmoines.org/

It wasn't what I expected, which was some dusty bunch of wooden buildings. It's very green, as a lot of Iowa is right now, and the buildings are brick with big porches; very inviting. One building is the museum, and they have some memorials in the park as well. A lot of the old buildings are still standing, some used by the Reserves, the local zoo, and so on. Joyce was most impressed with the women's restroom, which is all marble and brass and oak. I bought a whole lot of their books and got a lot of ideas for mine. If you are ever in the neighborhood, drop in and have a look. It's a very well-kept secret. It is also, by the way, the first post on which black Army officers were trained and commissioned, to fight in WW I. So apparently Iowa is a safe place for social experiments, as we have just seen with their recognition of gay marriage.





We drove north to Clear Lake this morning to meet a friend I have known for some time through my royals group, but never met in person. Many people in my group have an Iowa connection, and again, it's right on the way to Mt Rushmore. Like everything else in Iowa, like the whole state, Clear Lake is a well-kept secret. It's a real gem of a little town with wonderful turn of the last century architecture, and we had a lifelong resident as a guide. What fun! Anyway, don't underestimate Iowa as a place to live or a place to visit. We have seldom seen such beautful countryside full of budding trees and bursting with flowers all around beautiful farms with varied architecture. The soil is so dark and rich-looking, it just makes you want to eat corn, or something green and healthy. Just one warning: I'm told winter sucks, so definitely come some other time. Unless you're a Buddy Holly fan; then you have to come in February.

Truman Territory

Did I say we love Missouri? Well, not Branson, but everything else so far this trip. I remember some of it from when I used to visit relatives around Hannibal when I was a kid, but Joyce hadn't seen anything except St. Louis. (Ick) Except for those pesky tornados, the climate is mild almost all year, and they can and do grow anything. Right now as spring has just arrived, it's pretty spectacular. The countryside is filled with all these trees and bushes budding in a thousand shades of green on rolling hills and along scores of creeks and rivers.

Which is why Harry Truman was so proud of Missouri, and never wanted to live anywhere but Independence. You can't really understand all that unless you come here. Of course, Harry died in 1972 and a lot about Independence has changed since then. However, luckily, for the 1976 Bicentennial, the townspeople got the idea that preserving it would be a good thing, so they managed to snatch a lot of it away from progress and it looks very like it once did.



The city has of course sprawled out to the south, so it's like two separate places. Downtown and the Truman library and home are one part and then there's where modern life goes on.

The day we were there, the preserved downtown was pretty dead, except for knots of homeless people standing around the many churches. There's a tour just of the religious locations, and we skipped that. Apparently not a lot of interest in Truman at the moment, which is too bad. Lack of teaching history has cost people the pleasure of learning about Harry and the bitch he was married to. Anyway, we took the walking tour, went through their house, and did the library and museum, and came away liking him better and hating her worse. Bess was a mean-spirited old woman when she was twelve years old. If ever anyone needed Prozac, she did. She made him miserable for the 16 years he served as Senator, Vice President and President. She basically abandoned him. Fortunately Margaret loved Washington, and spent a lot of time with him. They were very close.

You should really see the house. You just park on the street and go in, eight at a time. They got back to it in 1953 and changed nothing since, and the Parks Service has kept it the same.





The library has a wonderful setting and is just beautiful. No one around but us to enjoy it.





Anyway, the whole place is as unpretentious as he was. Just not the sort of place you would associate with a leader of a major world power. To Harry, which is how everyone refers to him, it was just another job to be done to the best of his ability. That's why we're wild about him.