From Ohio, we drifted south through Kentucky and places that felt impoverished and truly foreign. People parked their cars by the side of the highway, selling their personal belongings. I�ve heard of yard sales and garage sales and moving sales, but this was the first I�d seen of car sales. We passed through �hill country,� Tennessee and Virginia and North Carolina, where the accents became thick with twang. Stretches of the highway were named after different country music stars; I�d never heard of most of them.

In eastern South Carolina, we stopped to visit my brother, Steve. We drove his Camry (what a treat, after Peepcar�s miserable suspension) to a huge grocery store, but were appalled at the size of the produce section. When we discovered that the few fruits and vegetables they carried were already shrink-wrapped and packaged in plastic, we walked out in disgust.

Steve took us up into the mountains, stopping along the way to show us the bucolic fishing cabin he�d once lived in on Bush pond. It was a far cry from his current apartment living, where annoying neighbors are offset by a nice jacuzzi and swimming pool. We drove up and up, not as high as even the passes in the Rockies or the Sawtooths, but into country where the hillsides were carpeted with leaves in gold and red and green. From Caesar�s Head, where the fall colors merged into the blue ridges, we clambered down into the rock formation known as the Devil�s Kitchen. Then up to Whitewater Falls, where we picnicked and hiked down to the bottom of the falls. The crashing water over the rocks reminded me of a hike we took in Brazil.

Our time with Stevie was too short, and too soon we were headed across Georgia and Alabama. About once an hour, we passed a pair of derelict vehicles that made Peepcar look shiny and new. They had a rope between them and the second one was always spray-painted �IN TOW.�

The heat was stifling. We switched to shorts, our clammy t-shirts sticking to our backs. After a month of reading out loud while I drove, Barry finished reading �Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix� and took over driving. We were almost there.

There were six of us aboard the vessel. A storm blew up, and carried away our mainsail, but we forged on nonetheless. The crew took turns steering, cooking, and finally, sleeping aboard.

This scene was actually a blanket on the floor of the Miller’s house, with Barry’s sister Julie, her husband Cody, and their two little boys, Emanuel and Gabriel. The occasion was our farewell to the Miller family; after almost a week in Columbus, it was time for us to continue on. Someday, we hope Barry’s nephews will visit us aboard our boat, sailing in more exotic places than the living room.

We had other memorable visits in Central Ohio, starting with Linda and Perry’s Wyoming oasis. It was as though they’d picked up a piece of the old West and transported it to West Mansfield. Ruling the living room is a HUGE elk head and shoulders, and there are other heads and pelts, posters and photos and western memorabilia. On the other side of their “pond” (which I call a lake) is a fishin’ cabin where we stayed, surrounded by huge trees and water on three sides.

From there, we went to my brother Hank’s home in the Columbus Colony for the Deaf (he’s actually blind, so go figure). With his cozy apartment as home base, we visited a number of our favorite people — Dave, who introduced me to Barry; Mowgli, who entertained us in his evil lair of computing until 5 am; and Carol and Steve, who performed our wedding ceremony a mere 12 years ago. Despite the fact that Barry and I both came down with the flu, I don’t think we passed it on. Typhoid Meps and Barry foiled again?

We’re currently in Lancaster, Ohio, staying with Terry in his spacious home on Rising Park, surrounded by fall foliage. Yesterday, a doe and two spotted fawns spent most of the afternoon trimming the grass in the background. I can see one of them from where I sit right now.

One or two days is just not enough time for such wonderful friends; what would be nice is if our friends could schedule some vacation time to visit us on the boat and stay a little longer!

It’s been over a week since my last entry, and we have been wonderfully busy. From Nebraska, we headed through Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois, staying mainly on back roads.

Did you know that Nebraska has the largest collection of sand dunes outside the Sahara desert? The climate is currently wet enough that they have grass on them, but if they didn’t, they’d be drifting all over the midwest and causing major havoc. As it was, we drove for hours and hours without seeing a house or a car or even a cow!

Glenn Miller was born in a tiny town called Clarinda, Iowa. We got a picture of his birthplace, since we camped outside of town. In Wyoming, we’d had one state park all to ourselves — no one else in the whole park and it was a bit eerie. In Nebraska and Iowa, though, there were a few other folks in the campground. Still, they’re all in campers, and they simply don’t come out to interact with us weird folks, freezing our butts off in tents.

We were heading east through Iowa when I got confused and made a wrong turn. After a while, I realized we were heading south on US 71 instead of east. I casually asked Barry to get out the map and tell me where this route would take us if we continued on it for a couple of days instead of continuing on to Ohio as planned. There was the sound of flipping pages (our road atlas has a page for each state) and a small “oooooh” from Barry. “Well, from what I can tell, US 71 goes straight to Krotz Springs, Louisiana,” he said, significantly.

In 1993, when we traveled across the country in our car, we had our mail forwarded to us via General Delivery. We would guess about where we’d be in a week and then pick a tiny, tiny town that was guaranteed to have only one post office, so as to avoid confusion. Krotz Springs was one of those towns. It was so small that after we picked up our mail, we asked the postmistress if there was a good restaurant in town. When we arrived at “Suzy’s Diner,” the lady drawled when we walked in, “Y’all the folks that just come from the post office?”

After reminiscing about our Krotz Spring visit and enjoying the Twilight Zone moment, we headed east again. We stopped to visit my two aunts, who live at St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana. “The Woods,” as we call it, is a special place that’s been part of my family history for over 60 years — the motherhouse (home base, essentially) for the Sisters of Providence, the order to which Sister Mary Julia and Sister Mary Pat belong. My mother went to school there briefly, thinking of becoming a nun. Lucky for me (and my siblings!), she didn’t!

From Terre Haute, we jumped on various freeways and hightailed it to Ohio. I never thought I’d be driving ol’ Peepcar back in Central Ohio, where it came from. It does make navigation easier, though — the car just knows where to go.

Did you know the original name of the Grand Tetons was the Three Tetons? Given that “teton” means “breast” in French, the guy who named it had quite a sense of humor.

We thought we’d be let down, leaving Yellowstone and the Tetons and heading across Wyoming. But we saw Hell’s Half Acre (looked bigger than that to me, but the consevative Christians probably didn’t want to make it sound bigger) and in a tiny town in Wyoming, I had a “tiger moment.” I pulled a sudden U-turn so Barry could see the ostriches, and I wouldn’t be wondering if I was hallucinating exotic animals again.

Yesterday, after walking the Oregon trail, we went to Carhenge. Imagine, if you can, 30+ cars buried in the earth, with others atop them, in a circle, painted gunmetal gray. It was eerie.

And when we got in the car to leave, I got a chill down my spine. As I placed the key in the ignition, I noticed that the odometer on Peepcar had turned over 217,000 miles — just when we drove into the parking lot at Carhenge.