A Fitting End

South Burlington, Vermont

No LL

This is where I hop off from Dave's trip. Dave has to continue from here to his new home in Raleigh, North Carolina. Me, I'm reunited with Libby and Tarwathie.

Today, Dave and I did the perfect finale for our trip together. The weather was splendid, so the two of us went for a sail on Tarwathie. We sailed over to New York, circumnavigated Schuyler Island and then returned to Burlington. The weather was perfect, 12 knots at the start up to 19 knots at the end of the trip. We were close hauled all the way. Tarwathie was a happy girl and so wasn't Dave at the helm. We hit a peak speed of 7.2 knots which put a smile on Dave's face.

By the way, Dave now has 7,700 miles on his truck since leaving Fairbanks. The distance from here to there as the crow flies is only 2,700 miles. He did a lot of touring.

Quote Of The Day

Lee Center, NY
NoLL

A couple of weeks ago, Libby made a memorable quote. We were watching a large flock of geese beside the canal. There were about 40 Canada geese and two geese of some other variant. Libby said, "Look - there are two gooses in with the geese."

Speaking of geese, Dave and I heard a really surprising story on the news the other day. The while Northeast USA is blighted by a non-migratory kind of Canada Geese. They just stay around all year and multiply and defecate. They are pests. The news is that New York decided to get rid of 375,000 of the estimated 400,000 geese in the state. Hooray for that!

The bad part is that the state did not just declare them to be pests and to allow citizens to kill them at will and take them home to eat (yummy). Instead, the state will spend money to capture and gas the geese, while still forbidding citizens to kill them. That's so stupid and so symptomatic of runaway government that I find it hard to believe.

Scenic Stop; Where Else?

New York Thruway
42 59.31 N 079 56.06 W

We couldn't drive all the way from the Rockies to Rome, NY without finding an attraction to see. I don't need to tell you where. The picture speaks for itself.

Was it fun? YOU BET.

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A Secret Newfie Appeal

Our blog readers are so wonderful and so knowledgeable that I'm posting this question here. I'll delete this post before Libby gets to see it.

Libby loves newfoundland dogs. She owned them as a child. We decided that we can't own a dog on Tarwathie; it's not fair to the dog. However it breaks my heart to see the love in Libby's face whenever she sees a newfie.

I got the idea that we might be able to borrow or rent one for a few days. Can anyone help me?

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In Ohio

Springfield, Ohio
39 53.80 N 83 43.78 W

We did it! 600+ miles yesterday. We weren't deprived though. I didn't see a single sight all day that inspired me to grab my camera. We decided to bypass the major attraction of the day; the prairie dog town with the five legged steer Cumberland(no kidding). It appears that we'll end up in the vicinity of Akron or Cleveland, OH tonight and that we'll arrive at John's house near Rome, NY tomorrow afternoon. That will mark the official end of our cross country trip. Poor Dave has already driven more than 7000 miles ( 11000 Km ) so far.

We crossed the Mississippi this morning. As a boater, I was quite interested. The river was flooding its banks. The current appeared to be 5-6 knots. That would be very dangerous for a boat like Tarwathie.

Dave and I learned that we share a common fantasy. We would like to visit every one of the 1500+ Waffle House restaurants. Did you know, if you lined up all the bowls of Bert's Chili® Waffle House serves in a year, it would stretch the length of Florida's coastline on both the Atlantic and the Gulf coasts? Aha! There's the answer to the Gulf oil spill crisis ;)

Technology Fail: My all time favorite film is the 1984 classic Brazil. A theme in that movie was advanced, but dysfunctional, technology. Last night Dave and I lived that story. It was supper time and we hankered for some Kansas City beef.

Dave used his Tomtom GPS to get directions to the ne arest BBQ restaurant. It directed us to the DPW garage: FAIL.

I whipped out my Droid with Google Maps. It sent us on a 15 mile wild goose chase that ended in a corn field. It even showed a picture of the empty field when we got close. FAIL. .

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