Prelude

Hello friends.

Its Saturday, July 8. Emily and I are now into the twentieth day of a grand tour of western regions of America. We left Stanton on July 19.

Over the last few years we have been cruising about in our stout sea boat, Flicka, a 1979 thirty-two-foot Allied Seawind II ketch. We have had have marvelous adventures traveling down the intra-coastal waterway (ICW) and cruising the Chesapeake Bay and coastal waters from Virginia to Florida. For now, Flicka is taking a well-deserved break and is living on the hard.

This summer, we are doing a four month, land based adventure, heading west with no particular destination in mind other than to see our son, Henry in Bellingham, WA and our daughter, Sarah in Hamilton, MT.

We bought a thirteen-foot travel trailer for the trip. By trade name it is a ‘Little Guy’, made by NuCamp Industries in Ohio. We call it Flicka II. It weighs only 970 pounds empty, basically a bedroom on wheels. No air conditioning, no TV, no frills. It does have a galley with a DC powered cooler, a two-burner propane stove and a five-gallon water tank and sink. We can easily pull it with our Dodge Grand Caravan. There is no set up, we can pretty much pull into any Walmart parking lot for the night, always a personal bucket list item for me. Absent that luxury, we are headed for public lands; US Forest Service forest and grasslands, BLM lands (Bureau of Land Management), national parks and monuments, county and city parks, wildlife refuges and the little towns in-between. There are plenty of out of the way places to camp. You have to seek it out. Check out freecampsites.net for a look.

So, we are going to roam our way across this great land. America has fabulous cities, great architectural and natural wonders, and many interesting cultural and historic places, all worthy of a visit. But it’s also filled with everyday working people living out their lives in small towns.  Many have not traveled far from where they were born. Many have ‘come home’ after long absences.  Some have come to small towns seeking a less complicated way. Like the lady from Seattle who had moved to Roundup, Wyoming, population 2000, to simplify her life. Now she is that town’s chairwoman for organizing Fourth of July festivities and other annual events which, surprisingly enough, in this very small town, are many. Life is certainly ironic sometimes.

These places may not be as glamorous and exciting as the big cities and may not be your usual and customary travel destinations but they sure have their history. Its these places and folks that I’m most interested in, people with stories just like you and me. People like to tell you their stories. Just ask them.

Like the man I spoke with on our first night out. We had pulled into the US Corps of Engineers Belleville Dam and Lock on the Ohio River north of Point Pleasant, WV, not far from Gallipolis, OH, for the night. You will hear about Gallipolis later.

The Ohio River has a number of dams and associated locks that facilitate commercial maritime traffic on the river. We were the only people at Belleville beside an older gentleman sitting in his car watching barges come and go. In passing I asked him what he knew of the dam and lock system. He spoke about that a little and then said that he had noticed that we were from Virginia. He shared with me that he too was from Virginia, specifically from Lee County, down in the southwest part of the state. Then he paused for a moment, looked out toward the river then back at me and said that he had grown up in Lee County until his teen years and had never known his father. He said he had always regretted that. Then he wished us safe travels and walked away.

So, on this trip I’m going to do a lot of asking and listening.  I will blog to report on places we go, the people we meet and the stories they tell. And tell some of my own as well.

All of us lead interesting lives and have our own stories. I don’t presume to think that what we’re doing is any more interesting than what anyone else is doing. So, I’ll point you to my blog and you can visit it as you wish. The address is http://flickavoyages.blogspot.com/. I’ll make periodic entries in a rough chronologic order. I’m already behind. We left on June 19 so I’ll bundle a few days together for each entry.

On the blog site, you can enter your email address to get alerts to postings. If you do read my stories I hope you enjoy them. Don’t hesitate to tell your own. Comment as you wish.

Happy trails.

Steve