Happy Hallowe’en!  It’s the end of October already; hard to imagine.  Today is our one year anniversary on the road!  We left home on October 31, 2001.  A whole year out there rolling around.  It has been wonderful, adventurous, full of new sights.  If we had known then what we know now, there are a few things we might have done differently, but we wouldn’t trade our experiences for anything.

We have ….. covered about 21,000 miles in the coach, and another 19,000 on the motorcycles.  We’ve crossed the country three times, visited thirty-one states and three Canadian provinces.  We’ve followed the wildflowers north in the spring and summer, and chased fall color this autumn.  We’ve met many new friends, and continue to delight in hearing from all of you from time to time.

Natural beauty is everywhere we go.  Imagine what it would have been like to be an explorer in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, coming around corners and catching a glimpse of things so new, so different, so entirely foreign to anything seen before.  We, as twenty-first century travelers, have guide books and maps telling us all about what to expect; and we’re still overwhelmed.  We’ve attached a photo of the back of our trailer for you.  As you can see, we utilize this space to take note of some of the places we’ve been and some of our affiliations.  Place stickers are not as readily available as they once were, everyone now is looking for patches or pins; but we pick them up where we find them.

We’ve found our United States to be filled with very different kinds of people, and that delights us.  All we have heard that tells us that Americans are one lump of an homogenized people is simply untrue.  Accents and attitudes are only the most obvious differences.  And we love those differences!  Grits and sweetened ice tea; maple syrup and jam; apples off the tree; pineapples cut in the field across the way; small New England villages where all the streets circle around the town square; this is just a start.  So never fear: we’re still a pretty cool country.

At this point we cannot even begin to single out the most special sight, the most treasured moment.  In December we’ll try and come up with some “year 2002’s bests”; for now, simply know that everywhere we go we find sights that are pleasing to the eye and experiences that delight and enrich us. 

At the moment we’re back in Raleigh, North Carolina, seeing friends and relations and taking care of some business.  As you can see, we’re headed south for the winter, running a race with the migrating birds.  (It’s snowing in Maine, and we’re glad we’re not there.) When we leave North Carolina we’ll head into Georgia and then Florida, where we intend to stay until mid-February.

Happy anniversary to us, and our very best wishes to all of you!

Rick and Kathy

PS.  Somewhere in western North Carolina Bunkey Morgan is running for County Commissioner; how can you vote for a man named Bunkey??????????

    Kind of like wearing your heart on your sleeve

See more photos from 2002-2003

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