In the past week, we’ve been from St Petersburg, Florida to Big Stone City, South Dakota, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Logansport, Indiana. Now we’re headed toward Indianapolis. We’re going to take a few days off and drive the motor home back to Texas. When we bought it, we figured we’d park it someplace like Indy or Memphis and use as like a home base of sorts, but we really don’t have a “home base” to speak of anywhere. We’ve been to 36 states now over the course of 3 months. There are several places we’ve returned to, like Decatur, Alabama, St Paul, Minnesota, and Louisville, Kentucky, but not with any regularity, so it wouldn’t be worth keeping the motor home in any of those places. We may go ahead and sell it and add the money to our nest egg for a down payment on a piece of property, when we find it. We made an offer on the place in Junction based on what the realtor thought it was worth, but so far the owner isn’t budging, and we're not inclined to offer much more, so we’ll wait and see. Meanwhile, we’ll keep looking for that place and praying for direction.

Before ending up in Florida, we picked up the new truck in Indianapolis, and then took a load to Newark, Delaware that took us through New York City in the middle of the night. That was a bit scary since we’ve heard a lot of stories about people hitting low clearance bridges in New York, but we stayed on the New Jersey Turnpike most of the way and got through fine. The lights of the New York skyline are impressive at night. We passed pretty close to Manhattan and got a good view of the Empire State Building. You could also see the Statue of Liberty all lit up, but it was farther away. We were up there last December and took the Ferry out to Ellis Island and the Statue, but it all looks so different at night. The next morning, we drove through Providence, Rhode Island, which I’ve always wanted to see. It was pretty in the early morning, and I took some pictures of the sailboats and the downtown area. The trees are getting beyond the multiple fall colors now, and some were solid gold.

After that, we went to Avon, Massachusetts, then Columbia, South Carolina, Hamlet North Carolina, and finally down to St Petersburg. Before going to Florida, we asked about a provision for getting us back out because freight is not all that common headed back north. Panther was able to give us another load headed back out of St Petersburg, but we were dropping the first one on Friday and the second one didn’t pick up until Monday. That was nice because we got to spend the weekend there, get some rest, and see some of the island. “Sunny Florida” was overcast and rainy most of the time while we were there, and it was hot and humid, but the rest was welcome just the same. Compare that hot climate to the next stop, in Big Stone City, South Dakota, where the temp was in the 30’s. Brrrr. I’m not sure which I prefer. We followed the Lewis and Clark Trail for awhile and Jim read a marker at a roadside park near Seargant Bluff, where a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition died and was buried. He was the only casualty during the expedition, and his grave is up on the bluff marked by a monument that looks like a miniature version of the Washington Monument. I say miniature, but it was still about 30 or 40 feet tall. (I’m sure Washington wouldn’t mind). It was the first national landmark in the United States. That kind of discover is a neat part of this job because you just never know what you’re going to stumble across along the way.

You get such a different perspective of the states when going through them like we are right now. You also see trips differently. If we get an offer for a 500-600 mile trip, it feels like a short drive. Before we did this, I thought the 180 mile trip from Alpine to Midland was interminable, but now we dread getting offers for such short runs. The load we just took to South Dakota was over 1300 miles. Now that one was pretty long, and sometimes you think you’ll never get there, but those kind sure do pay well, so you’re glad to grab them when they come along. Before we got the last load delivered to Indiana, they offered us another one from Indianapolis to Miami (1200+ miles), but we turned it down because we haven’t taken any time off in almost six weeks, and it’s time for a real break. The new truck is nice, though, and we’re still getting all the bells and whistles figured out. We’ll park it in Indy for a few days and see how the motor home feels on a long trip again.

It doesn’t look like we’ll be home for Thanksgiving, unless we just get a load going back toward home, but we’re looking forward to taking some time off at Christmas and hope to see everyone then. Take care and please stay in touch. We love and miss you all.