When I retired, the last thing I wanted to do was go to an airport, let alone think about getting on an airplane. And for five years, I was successful.

Instead, I have spent those years wandering the back roads and small towns of America. Many times I have been driving slowly down a two-lane asphalt road on a sunny morning, to a place I have never been, awed by the world around me, and so grateful that I get to do this. On the back roads of America there is a peace I have not found any other place (except maybe this little cottage on the Molokai channel). I have experienced people, places and things most of you will never know.

Along the way, there have been experiences! I hunkered down on the Oregon Coast for a week-long “Pineapple Express”, then ran southbound ahead of a major snow storm; camped for two weeks on the Padre Island National Seashore until waves were breaking under the Airstream; explored most major Civil War Battlefields and was overwhelmed by Andersonville; drove old Route 66 from the lake to the ocean and one afternoon found myself “standin’ on the corner in Winslow Arizona”; followed the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails from Kansas City to their ends; walked on the ocean floor in the Bay of Fundy; sat on the lonely rocks of the Swiss Air 111 Memorial at Peggy’s Cove looking out at the crash site; had the illegal alien experience of wading the Rio Grande from Mexico to Texas without a passport; camped in the Bakken Oilfield; looked eastward from the easternmost point of the US; spent 2 weeks in the most isolated part of the continental US (Presidio Texas); and camped as a guest of several American farmers who literally feed the world. …and then there was this rainbow in Death Valley…

So I should explain why I spend half my time wandering around America.