Excellent Adventure 2024
35 nights ~ 4600 Miles ~ Mammoth Cave & Natural Hot Springs National Parks ~ Family & Friends
I originally planned to visit Nephew Carl and his family in Wisconsin in 2022. My knee surgery threw a monkey wrench into that plan. We will visit them on this trip, drive through America’s Heartland, and visit some “bucket list” National Parks.
Gradually Northwest to the Heartland
We will start our trip by visiting the Horton family cemeteries in the western part of Virginia. My father’s mother came from early English immigrants who saw the American Revolution and the Civil War. Evidence shows that the family name can be traced to a landowner, Horton, in the 12th Century. They lived near Cumberland Gap – home to Daniel Boone and very early childhood memories of reenactments by the fireside.
We will visit childhood friends who settled on a beautiful TVA reservoir outside Knoxville, Tennessee. We stopped there two years ago on Excellent Adventure 2022.
From there, Mammoth Caves National Park (outside Bowling Green, Kentucky) will be our first of two National Park visits.
We then head towards the mighty Mississippi River at St Louis. We’ll stay two nights there before starting the trip north, following the river as best we can, before arriving in La Crosse, Wisconsin. This will take us through Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
The Heartland
We will visit the Tubridy family jewelβTheo!
We also look forward to seeing nephew Carl, Dr. Kari Bringe, and the “Norwegian to the Core” Bringe Family. They are my perfect vision of America’s Heartland as a multi-generational (successful) farm family.
Driving through Minnesota, our next stop will be in North Dakota. We will visit Sister-In-Law Myrha’s brother and sister-in-law in the middle of a wheat field! I met them once many years ago. They are woodworkers, and I would love to see their setup in the Heartland. It also gives me an excuse to drive all the way from the farmland of the Mississippi River valley to the Great Plains before they drop southwards.
The Road to Nowhere
I saw a route on a map that listed 10 great drives. The Drive to Nowhere was one, following a route just west of our chosen route! They say this is the truest path through America’s Heartland.
It will take five days to reach our next National Park stop, Hot Springs National Park, outside Little Rock. Along the way, we will stop in Sioux City, SD; Omaha, NB; Kansas City, KS; Joplin, MO; and Sallisaw, OK.
At the end of this journey, I will complete the milestone of visiting all 50 states at some point in my nearly 70 years on this beautiful planet I have come to love so much. The only state missing was Nebraska! I landed there once to catch another flight, but I don’t count airport only stops!
The Road Home
From there, we wind our way home, stopping in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama before returning to our little beach shack on the ocean.
