The Catskills are a small mountain range northwest of New York City. In the mid-1900s, it was an especially popular resort destination for middle- and working-class Jewish families from NYC, so much so that it was referred to as the…
Amish in Intercourse, PA
I’ve always been captivated by the Amish lifestyle. I like the old fashioned simplicity of it. Working the land with teams of horses. Traveling in buggies. Houses lit at night with oil lamps and candles. Cooking home-grown food. Hanging laundry…
Hershey, Pennsylvania
Hershey’s a lot more than chocolate. It’s a thriving town in rural Pennsylvania with a European styled performing arts center, museums, a giant rec center, stadium, and arena, an amusement park with 13 roller coasters, a zoo, a professional hockey…
Ohio Lesbian Festival
Women’s music festivals have always been an iconic part of the lesbian feminist movement. In the early 70s, they popped up as women-only events at campuses around the country. In August of 1976, 19-year-old Lisa Vogel started the annual Michigan…
Springfield Revisited
This is our second stay in Springfield, Missouri, ushering my dad through some health issues and getting Bessie repaired. The RV repairs have been minor (replacing a window that won’t lock, a new sparker for the stove burners, new hinges…
Wilson’s Creek Civil War Battlefield
I’ve never been a Civil War buff. I learned the history of the war when we lived in Tallahassee, where the pros and cons of slavery were presented in equal columns. (I kid you not; I copied the blackboard verbatim,…
Trip to Bentonville
When we came back to Springfield for Dad’s surgery, we went straight to Reliable RV for some needed repairs. We had stayed on their lot while they did repairs on Bessie last time we were in Springfield (conveniently located just…
A Life Extension
Early this summer, my dad was diagnosed with a severely malfunctioning heart valve, and valve replacement surgery was recommended. Open heart surgery at Dad’s age (87) is considered very risky. But there’s a new kind of valve replacement surgery that…
St. Louis, Missouri
My mother grew up in St. Louis and moved back there with my younger brother and sister after my parents divorced. For years they lived in a duplex rental in Webster Groves that we all squeezed into at holidays. Later,…
Pennsylvania Dutch Country
From Newport, we were looking at four days of driving to get back to Springfield for Dad’s surgery. For that first night, I had reservations at a Thousand Trails park in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. That would get us more than…
Newport, Rhode Island
Kate loves home tours, big or tiny, historic or new. When friends told us about the Newport mansion tours, where you can visit up to ten palatial homes from the turn of the 20th century, Kate put it on the…
Vermont
It was hard for us to leave our “best-site-ever” on Lewey Lake in the Adirondacks, but we could only get the space for that one night, so we reluctantly packed up and headed down the road. We stopped at the…