Every Day is a Gift!
Our wandering has taken us to some memorable geographical points of interest in the United States.
Although these next points aren’t the most extreme in the U.S., they are the farthest directional points we visited.
This post was inspired by the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Variations on a Theme
Snow and ice storms are rare in coastal Georgia. The last time we had snow that stuck was a few days before Christmas in 1989.
The freezing rain and snow that came through on January 3, 2018 caused road and bridge closures. Schools were out and government offices were closed. Coastal Georgia was transformed into a winter wonderland.
My father loved to take pictures with his Minolta 35 mm camera and through the years he accumulated thousands of slides. My younger brother became the curator of his slides and has been converting the good ones to digital format. His Christmas present to us this year was a DVD with many pictures from my childhood. In the photo at the top of this post you can see our Ford station wagon in Yosemite National Park.
In 1959, when I was eight years old, my father’s work required him to go to California for several weeks. Instead of going by himself, my parents decided to take the whole family on a cross country journey to see America.
I spent many hours crammed in the back seat of our station wagon, usually on the hump in the middle between my two brothers. I wonder how many times my mother had to turn around to tell us to be quiet?
I had so much fun looking at the old photos converted from my Dad’s slides. Each one brought back so many memories. As I was going through the photos I found a few that I unknowingly replicated as an adult during our RV travels. On the left is me in 1959 on the Big Tree in Redwood National Park and on the right that’s me in 2007 at the same tree.
Dad took a picture of Yosemite Valley that looks a lot like the one I took almost 50 years later. It looks like we were standing in the exact same spot.
Here’s our two pictures of the Yosemite tunnel at Tunnel View. I love the old cars in Dad’s picture.
Mount Rushmore in 1959 and 2006.
While we were in California we went somewhere almost every weekend. We visited national parks, theme parks, San Francisco, and even went panning for gold. I’ll never forget our trip to Disneyland. Where were the crowds back then?
Dad loved gathering the family together in the basement for slide shows. Thank you to my brother for putting these slides into digital form to be enjoyed over and over again.
Merry Christmas! 
This year was a little different for the Wandering Dawgs. Instead of traveling to far away places, we had many memorable adventures by staying close to home in 2017.
Our RV travel started with a short spring trip to Pine Mountain, Georgia to tour nearby Callaway Gardens and F. D. Roosevelt’s Little White House .
From Pine Mountain we continued on to Alabama to attend an air show at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. All of the performances were exciting but the stars of the show were the United States Air Force Thunderbirds.
Seeing the Thunderbirds was so much fun we made a day trip to the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, South Carolina to see the United States Blue Angels perform.
Our final RV trip of the year was a fall getaway to north Georgia to see Mountains, waterfalls, and Tallulah Gorge .
Visiting New York City with my daughter was one of the highlights of my year.
Just like we’ve been doing every fall since the 1970’s we made several trips to Athens to attend University of Georgia’s home games.
And when we were home we when for boat rides and walked on the beach whenever we could.
My Wandering Around America One State at a Time blog project was really fun to do. As I worked on the post for each state I loved going through old photographs and reading my hand written trip journals. With each state I was flooded with many fond memories of places we had been and the wonderful people we met.
Where do you think we will wander next year? Stay tuned…
Wandering Dawgs 