Indiana

JAIME THE RVer PLAYING AIRLINE PILOT

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the captain speaking from the cockpit

We have started our descent into the Arkansas International Airport (AKA Conway) flying over Kentucky and Tennessee ….. it looks like for the final approach we will fly across a dense bank of fog….. but don’t you worry… captain Jaime and First Officer Claudia will take you safe for a soft landing…..

Thanks for flying Scotty Airlines!!

That being said, yes!! this is the final leg of our fourth adventure in American roads which took us through 13 different states mostly in the northeast and Great Lakes. It doesn’t stop impressing me the fact that this beautiful country is soooo large!!! so many contrasts, so varied geography all sharing one thing in common…. same language! Coming from Europe this is so true; you can drive for a few hours and make the change between Spanish to French, a few more hours from French to Italian or German or Dutch, etc….. incredible. A few more days on the road and Scotty will find itself all washed up and shiny ready to go for a loooong sleep until next year for a fifth trip that will bring it to sunny Florida!! Key West being the southernmost point to visit.

This is the impressive main entrance to the campground for the next few nights…. KOA Indianapolis; they ( Kamping Of America) have been good to us lately.. good prices and discounts represented in free nights!

As we love walking on parks, it was obvious that the waterside promenade in the city, known as the Canal Walk, was on the list of activities, and it was a good one!

The way the walk was designed is pretty neat…. at the beginning there’s a display of large pieces of limestone made rock! There’s a fact here: Indiana has been known to be the best supplier of limestone for many years and actually, due to complete destruction of homes back in the 1890s, that sucumbed to fires, Indiana limestone was the ideal rebuilding solution, flame-resistant and up to the country’s first building codes.

Bedford is known around the globe as the “Limestone Capital of the World.” From the stone that helped build the Empire State Building and the Pentagon to the enduring spirit of its people, Bedford’s legacy runs deep. There are rocks that confirm this fact if you spend a few minutes reading the words carved on these rocks.

Funny enough, we lived for 12 years not in the “limestone city” but in the ” granite city” Aberdeen, Scotland…

Warm weather is long gone for the season … “Ain’t No Sunshine” is among us ☀ Melancholy is among us too…. we all look forward to summer!!

On our travels to the northern states at this time of the year when fresh air and frosty mornings remind us of the previous trips of 2022, 23 and 24 all done in summer or early fall, all we see often is motorhomes traveling in the opposite direction, from north to south! they seem to escape to states like Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and southern California as milder temperatures is all they want…. we call them… SNOW BIRDS!!

Having left Indianapolis, it was time to hit the road and reach the Kentucky border ( Kentucky by the way will be part of next year’s journey). There’s a place we wanted to visit so bad but we always found it impossible to stop by because every time we’ve seen one of them, it was hard to find somewhere to do a u-turn and come back. Not this time!! The place is Buc-ee’s…. this is the best example of american superlatives…. huge service station complemented with a great shop to get a large variety of food for a good lunch. There are so many fueling bays that it becomes a tradition to fill the tank, leave the vehicle there and walk to the shop and come back with a lighter pocket afterwards…. it’s a touristic attraction indeed

Not in a million years we could dream of having a place like this in Europe….

And there it is…. a one million dollar Prevost pulling a trailer with matching colors carrying who knows what sort of expensive big man toys inside….

And there’s Scotty too taking a break way behind three more motorhomes…

Finally, after 5000 miles and 2 1/2 months on the road, we have arrived at our home base in Arkansas, a little later than expected but all good!! This beast is an amazing machine… very little problems, not a single breakdown….

There was only one more thing left to do, which Scotty fully deserved…. a good wash and polish!!

This is the result of 6 hours of ” elbow grease” …. well worth the effort!!

Tree number 41 was planted at the Elkhart campground right by the site we were allocated to spend the night…

At this point the feeling of accomplishment is amazing!! Just a few more states for next year……

And this is how “season 4” of our American adventure comes to an end. In the past 2 months we’ve done Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Indiana.

Next year Scotty will again feel the atmosphere of the Atlantic Ocean for miles and miles….. we will enjoy the long coast of North Carolina including a visit to Kitty Hawk, famous for the first flight of a man made machine…. real flight I mean… made by the Wright brothers. We will also drive around the astonishing Chesapeake Bay. Being a fan of ships, we may want to pay a visit to the largest naval base in the world, located in Norfolk, Virginia. Myrtle Beach will be a must as well as cities like Savannah and Helen in Georgia and finally, Florida with its coasts on the west and east of the state and so many other places inland. It will be the opportunity to visit so many friends there!!! Florida for us is quite special; it was the first state I visited back in 1990; it has been a holiday destination as a family in numerous occasions and it is the state where Scotty may find its next owner!! This will be a very interesting chapter that will find us surrounded by mixed feelings; feelings of happiness but also feelings of sadness as this will be the end of something we began to get used to….. cross the Atlantic for a few months a year and test our spirit of adventure. And what a way to do it!!

This is a wrap now! Keep in touch via the Comments section.

Thanks for reading!! 😘