Tour of America - Day One

Ready to hit the road:

Papa Bear, Bro Bear, T-Bear, Banana Bear, BooBoo, and Mama Bear.

Thanks to an unusual stroke of brilliance on my part, we were actually able to get a picture of all of us (instead of the usual sans Mama Bear) before taking off. Tripod! Now, why didn’t I think of that sooner?

Our goal was to pull out of the drive by 9:00 am. We made it just at 10:00 am….not too bad. Papa Bear has made up The Rush Appreciation Game to play with the kids throughout the trip. Each day he’ll read the lyrics to a Rush song to the kids, and we’ll play it in the car. This morning’s selection was “Countdown”, played, of course, as we pulled out. The day’s playlist also included half a dozen songs about Georgia, and Doctor Dimento’s greatest hits. BroBear and Banana both wrote their first postcards before we even left Georgia.

Lunch at a lake-side Rest Area in TN.

We were amazed by the rock formations, and the man-made canyons going through TN.


Downtown Nashville.

The Titan's stadium in Nashville.

Kentucky. There was a lot of corn and it was very green. We started getting cloud cover and occasional sprinkles of rain. Very warm and very humid. The intermitten rain continued into Illinois and throughout our camp set up.

Our first camp ground...a KOA.


Science on the road…what happens when you put dry ice in water?

After a successful and fairly stress-free “basic” camp set up (keeping the camper hitched to the car, no outdoor kitchen or awning), I managed to put together a dinner of roast chicken and baked potatoes. You’re impressed, aren’t you? Well, don’t be too impressed. The chicken was from Costco and the potatoes I had baked at home; just wrapped everything in foil and popped them in the electric roaster. It took longer than I predicted, but was worth the wait.

The campground did have free WiFi (yay), but not enough bandwidth to consistently download photos to the blog; I’ll be playing catch up on those occasions when we have a more reliable connection. After a visit to the playground and dinner, the kids settled in pretty quickly and were asleep before long.