Riders on the Storm

Aug. 27, 2011

It's 1 a.m. and the day has come--our long-awaited 40th Anniversary RV trip. This will be only the second time we've had the luxury of travelling for an entire month, and getting out of town is brutal. It is made even more surreal by the fact that everyone is talking about getting out of town, as Hurricane Irene makes her way up the east coast, blowing everything to smithereens in her path. Or so we have been told--Irene is touted as "the storm of our lifetime". Besides the usual winds and tremendous amounts of rain, heavy flooding is expected pretty much everywhere, and I'm sure the Raritan River will be running high through the park down the street.

Irene on the way
We, however, are buying bottled water not because of expected power outages, but because we are hitting the road. We are not your johnny-come-lately bottled water purchasers, not us! Mo is now about 90% loaded up--not a minute too soon, because it is actually raining already, although the heaviest of the storm is not expected for about 20 hours yet. It will probably be raining when we leave town in the morning, but I'm expecting to outrun it-- western Pennsylvania is looking dry on the weather map, and with luck, we will be into Ohio by tomorrow night.

The itinerary this time: the northwest corner of the United States. We are only missing 11 states (of the Lower 48) on our State Sticker Map--and with luck, we will be collecting Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon on this trip. Our first destination is Spring Green, WI-- the very same place we headed for last summer. We never did tour Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home, on that trip. So we're thinking to stop there and have a tour Monday morning, before continuing toward South Dakota via I-90. We have reservations at Yellowstone National Park next Thursday night. That's right, ya'll, we are CRAZY once we hit the road. But it's a big country.... and we are looking forward to enjoying every minute of the ride.