Home!!!

We are finally home!! We got here about 10 p.m. and the cats finally got to eat, because the sitter wasn't scheduled for tonight, and I got a second dinner too. Me and the cats played around and rough-housed by way of greeting.

I'm very glad to be home and to go back to our routines, and to snuggle in on Mom and Dad's bed every night ... but you know, I'll miss the open road. If nothing else, on the road I get to sleep a lot -- on Mom's lap, Dad's lap, or the pile of pillows they have for me in the middle of the SUV. At all sorts of time, I get to wake up and smell cows, sheep, corn, soybeans ... and then get back to sleep. Then suddenly we're jumping out at some rest stop and I have to "Go pee, Sundance!"

Today we woke up in Jamestown, NY and got a late start because we had had such a late arrival last night. We took a little walk around Lake Chautauqua (shown), a big, popular lake in the back corner of New York, famous for people like Lucille Ball (who grew up there) and Rebecca Richmond, my Dad's author grandmother, who had a house there for years and is buried there, along with my Dad's stepfather, known to him as "Dad."

Although last night we were worn out with state highways, we ended up doing a stretch of one this morning anyway, because it looked right on the map. It ended up being beautiful rolling New York hills and cattle ranches (shown), not beef but dairy cows, and now that we're here in this part of the country, they're also selling corn and other veggies to us along the side of the road, although we never stopped to buy any because we knew tonight we would be home and have to unpack Who Knows What in the cooler.

After that, it was Interstate Boogie (I slept, varying my position) and, long story short, we are here, all unpacked and all exhausted. Our road trip took about 4500 miles, and we're very pleased with most of them, and won't hesitate to do it again sometime soon.

So I'm finishing my blog for this trip, and thanks for listening. I'll let you know when the next one starts. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts (about anything! but especially dogs) here, or at my Dad's email, lee@leerichmond.com

6 States

We visited six states today. First thing, we got on the road early in Burlington, Iowa, and immediately crossed a bridge over the Mississippi which brought us into Illinois, adding up to two states so far. (OK, I admit, that's cheating ...)

We started off on state highways again. In Peoria, Illinois we got out and walked around for awhile. They're working hard to restore their waterfront, and we all appreciated the steamer which people can ride on. The water is the big Illinois River, which comes down from Lake Michigan. We also walked a little bit through the city, which feels kind of empty, although they seem to be trying hard.

We stayed on state roads through Illinois, and stopped at very nice town park in Remington, Illinois for a lunch made up from our cooler, including Rocky Ford watermelon, which I got to share. I love watermelon!

Then we drove halfway across Indiana, but by then the cornfields, soybean fields, grain elevators and nice little towns where you had to slow down to 35 and then spend 10 minutes passing the traffic that had backed up in front of you ... well, it was all starting to look and feel pretty much the same, so we went for some four-lane roads and then, hooray -- the Interstates!

Now we made time! We finished off Indiana, then Ohio. By then it was dark, but Mom and Dad want to get home by tomorrow evening, so they decided to push on across the tip of Pennsylvania and stop in Jamestown, New York. We ended up driving 13 hours.

We landed in Jamestown about 11:30 p.m. and are just finishing winding down and watching hurricane Earl on the Weather Channel. Then tomorrow it's up early again and heading for home, Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Whatever: as long as I get to ride with my Mom and Dad, it's all cool.

Corn, corn, corn

Today was another day that we spent almost entirely in the car, with me almost entirely sleeping. As I've mentioned in previous posts, this is generally fine with me because I am still resting up from my strenuous week in Madrid with everybody running around and buying things, and my brother Hondo's visit, and I could go on.

This is a picture of me and my Mom right after we drove over the Missouri River bridge on the border of Iowa. Lots of flooding out there and we had to drive dozens of miles out of our way to avoid washed out bridges and roads.

We drove from early Nebraska on through Iowa, ending up right on the eastern border of Iowa on the edge of the Mississippi River, where we are now snoozing out in another nice motel found on the Internet.

Our trip is running a little longer than it might because Mom and Dad are going almost entirely on state routes, avoiding the Interstates. They explain that that way you can see all the towns, and drive right next to beautiful farming fields and talk about what the people might be doing out there, and I can see the point, because Interstates are just about always only about which trucks to pass, and which trucks to avoid.

So when we started out in western Nebraska it was all about trains, because our highway was right next to the main train route, and it was one big (BIG!) train every ten minutes, trains filled with coal going toward the sun that it would take us five minutes to pass, other empty coal trains going away from the sun that we passed in a minute, trains full of grain, trains full of every kind of car. This went on for a couple of hours (as near as I can judge, since I was asleep a lot of the time).

Then it was all about corn. Corn for cattle, corn for ethanol, popcorn corn -- hundreds of miles of corn. (Unlike New England, nobody was selling corn for people by the side of the road.) Mom and I posed for a corn shot, with me looking back at the 500 miles of corn we had already traveled.

Eastern Iowa still had corn, but it was also about hay pastures and grazing cattle and beautiful rolling hills and pretty little farm houses.

Pretty wonderful country we live in, huh?