A final recap of our road trip.
We were gone 26 days, drove 7206 miles across 14 states, averaging 56.1 MPH and getting 26.3 MPG (those 80 MPH speed limits in Texas helped the average MPH but sure dragged down the MPG).
In addition to experiencing an albeit hazy, yet still spectacular, total solar eclipse in York, NE, we visited five Presidential Libraries:
William J. Clinton Library and Museum, Little Rock, AR
Gerald R. Ford Library, Lansing, MI, and Museum, Grand Rapids, MI
Herbert Hoover Library and Museum, West Branch, IA
George W. Bush Library and Museum, Dallas, TX
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, TX (previously visited in 2007)
We also visited several other museums and places of interest alone the way, including:
Van Andel Museum, Grand Rapids, MI
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI
Nicholas Conservatory & Gardens, Rockford, IL
Ulysses S. Grant Home and Museum, Galena, IL
“Field of Dreams” Movie Set, Dyersville, IA
Anna Palmer Museum, York, NE
Kansas Aviation Museum, Wichita, KS
While we were in Michigan, as well as along the way, we made it a point to stop and see as many friends and relatives as possible, which, between my wife and I, included maybe 25 cousins, one of which my wife hadn't seen in over 50 years. We also visited my wife's last living aunt and her family (the are no aunts/uncles left on my side of the family) as well as seeing one of my cousin's mother-in-law who's 99 and still going strong, lives by herself and still has a glass of beer once in awhile with her kids and grand-kids (We plan on flying back to Michigan in April for her 100th birthday). Also visited with siblings on both sides as well as their offspring. And our oldest son and our oldest granddaughter met us in Nebraska for the Eclipse. We even had breakfast in Austin with an old classmate and ROTC buddy of mine that we hadn't seen in 10 years.
And being a serious amateur photographer, and wanting to document the eclipse, and as much of the other stuff as possible, we were loaded with camera gear. In addition to I and my wife's iPhones (I only use mine occasionally but for my wife, it's her one and only camera), I also had three Sony digital cameras; two DSLR's and the more compact Sony a6000 mirrorless which is now my primary camera. After culling out the poor images, and the third and fourth shots of something, we ended up with 1,178 images being added to my photo archive. For the record, the last vacation that we took which was documented on 'film' was in 2006.
Oh, and along the way I managed to celebrate my 70th birthday.
All in all, it was a very memorable and all around satisfying vacation.
OCU
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