US Maps
I purchased a cloth map of the United States in January 2024 that I have used to pin stops I made during journeys referenced on this site. A photo of the map is below: As I added pins for each trip I posted about, I took pictures of those additions to the map, beginning with my first entry in 2008: Goin’ West, June 2008 Niagara Falls-Canada-Newfoundland-Labrador, July 2011 Denver (REAP) to Dallas, June 2013 Goin’ West 2014, June 2014 Cincinnati (MLA)-Indiana U, March 2016 Great Smoky NP, A Family Wedding, NC Outer Banks, July 2017 Grand Teton & Yellowstone, Wyoming, October 2020 California (AAASA & Hollywood) and National Parks, November 2022 Dakotas and Minnesota National Parks, June 2023 As I worked on this post, I realized that I had to more completely note the places I visited in Iowa. So, I added rose colored pins for the many interesting…
Catching Up and Looking Ahead
In the months since I last posted, I made my move from Iowa to Maryland, or the DMV (DC/Maryland/Virginia). It was wonderful to spend my first Thanksgiving in years with my family. It was also nearly as wonderful to miss the 20 inches of snow that fell in Iowa and below zero temperatures they experienced in January of 2024. Here, we did get a couple of inches a few nights when the temps dropped to the upper teens. I was fortunate to find a two-bedroom apartment in an independent living senior residence. The rent is outrageous, but folks keep telling me that it’s quite reasonable for the DMV. I try to tell myself that each month as I pay the rent, but it isn’t working. Anyway,… As busy as I’ve been trying to organize things from the move–the office is still a mass of boxes, I have gotten some travel…
Back to Boone, And the Arboretum (Sort of), Too
Sorry, but my transitioning back to the East Coast has caused me to fall behind with my posting here. This is the first of three posts that will have to serve as placeholders until I can find time to catch up. Only this one will be published in the meantime with references to all three trips. First, I revisited Boone’s train station and visited the museum. The pictures are available at: http://singin1.com/piwigo/index.php?/category/2nd-boone-iowa-arboretum-081923. The second trip was for what I currently believe my final full concert performance for the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque, Iowa. The photos are available at: http://singin1.com/piwigo/index.php?/category/St-Francis-Sisters-Concert-Dubuque-IA-092923. And third, what turned into an absolutely horrible trip to Gateway National Park in St. Louis. It’s my hope that by the time I post my experience, I will have more positive thoughts about it. In the meantime, the pictures are available at: http://singin1.com/piwigo/index.php?/category/77. …
A Fair (Almost) Day at the Iowa State Fair
I had agreed to volunteer a couple of hours at the state Democratic Party booth at the Iowa State Fair. I hadn’t attended the fair since my first visit with my host daughter in 2009, so this seemed a great excuse to make a final trip before I head back East. Considering that I was Des Moines on Sunday, August 13, at a site that has drawn more than one million visitors during the 11-day annual event, I was lucky my handicap decal got me so close to one of the gates. Still, it’s a big site with lots of walking, and I decided not to spend the $70 to rent a motorized scooter for the day so my progress was slow. Coincidentally, I was close to the building where the famous butter cow was on display with Iowa sports figures Jack Trice, Kurt Warner and Caitlin Clark. I walked…
Gateway Arch NP-Backtracking
I *knew* I had taken pictures during my 2010 trip to the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri. I found the ones posted here on my Facebook page. I’m still hopeful that I will find the rest on the camera I used or the computer to which I uploaded them. Unfortunately, the only things I can say about the visit are that I had also hoped to go on a riverboat tour on the Mississippi, but the river was flooded. None of the riverboats were offering trips to tourists. Also, there was an air show during my visit. The newstory about the show helped me place the date of my visit as July 4th. I got some photos of the show from inside the Arch–as well as of downtown St. Louis–and some from the ground. I hope that I will get a chance to go again at the…
Coming Together and Another Quickie Iowa Weekend
When I first started sharing stories and pictures about my travels, I had set up the blogs on WordPress, taking advantage of their free service. However, I’ve noticed that the free service has been adding more and more advertising to the pages, whereas this blog–which uses WordPress to create the posts but is hosted on my own space–has no ads at all. Well, as I was importing the older images from Flickr to this site so I can take advantage of the OSMMap on my Travelogue Pictures page, I’ve also discovered that the posts from both old blogs can be imported to this site. I need time to figure out how to accomplish this successfully, but once done, I’ll let you know they are here. The images coming in are from the 2012 trip Momma and I took to the Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend,…
Transitions (An Update)
I was on the road a lot in June, but I expect things to quiet down on that front for a bit. Mainly this is because I now have SIX events scheduled for September (two public concerts, three private performances, and a lecture) that I need to prepare for. Plus, I must get serious about packing up to make my transition back to the East Coast. In the meantime, I am adding older pictures from earlier trips to my Singin’ One’s Travelogue site. It will be a very slow process, though, time permitting. Doing this, though, let’s me see most of the locations where the pictures were taken via the available map at http://singin1.com/piwigo/osmmap.php?zoom=5¢er_lat=41.516154558273016¢er_lng=-97.239422. Unfortunately, though, some pictures were taken by cameras that didn’t provide GPS metadata, so those pictures–such as those taken during my 2011 trip to St. John’s, Newfoundland–will not appear on the map. I’m looking forward to…
A Three-Day Tour… of National Parks
I’ve been back from my three-day tour of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Voyageurs National Park for two days at the point I created this post, and both parks are still on my mind. What an impression each made on me in such a short time! Folks crowd onto Yellowstone, Yosemite and other big parks–and with good reason. But they miss out on the various wonders of the small- to mid-size parks. Below is the map of the entire 2,235 mile trip: More about each park in separate posts, but I wanted to briefly update the complete list of national parks to include the ones I recently visited. I’ve bolded those that I have visited as of today and added links to the blogs where I’ve described the visits. Acadia Arches Badlands Big Bend Biscayne Black Canyon of the Gunnison Bryce Canyon Canyonlands Capitol Reef Carlsbad Caverns Channel Islands Congaree…
The Singin’ Tourist in the SW USA (Afterthoughts)
It’s hard to believe that it has been a month since I finally made this trip that has been on my wish list for a decade. And what a difference a decade makes! I still don’t feel like I’ve fully recovered from the trip. Yet, I’m already contemplating one more venture while I’m still in Iowa. This time, I want to visit Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. I was close to visiting it in the summer of 2018, but from Missoula I had to decide to go 250 miles due north to Glacier or continue on my originally planned route towards Seattle. Time and budget–and just finishing an incredible visit to Yellowstone NP–were the deciding factors. Now, though, I’ve got the option of taking Amtrak there or driving the Silver Bullet. It will be hard to leave the car and the freedom to change plans, but I admit that…
Bidding a Fond Farewell (Pt. 2)
RB and I have visited all 48 of the contiguous United States. I even took her to the Atlantic Ocean’s Newfoundland, the easternmost point of North America. We’ve been to Key West, Florida, seen the Pacific Ocean in Washington State, the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog. My mother even dared to boldly go with me on one of my adventures. I’ve posted most of the stories here, but there are some that I’ve chosen to keep to myself. One particular story would have distressed my family–especially my mother–but I’m going to share it now because after six years, it’s finally funny and a great example of how things happened with RB and me. As posted at the time, I was on Day 15 of a 16-day marathon from Iowa to Fargo (North Dakota) to Seattle (Washington State), down to San Francisco (California) and back to Grinnell. Since I was…