A Week From Today

Well, the time is getting closer.  Just a week from today, we will be packing Lydia and Jerry’s Flex and leaving East Central Indiana headed to Des Moines, IA and our first night out.  We plan a short stop at South English, Iowa for a brief tour of Joyce’s Mother’s birthplace.  There are still Brower cousins living in the area and the English River Church of the Brethren Cemetery is the final resting place of at least 3 generations of Brower relatives, including those who arrived in Iowa in 1854 from Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

We are in the final stages of packing…… guess which suitcase is which?  Joyce’s?  Bob’s‘

        

                       Which one owns this one?                                                                          And whose would this one be?

Should be no surprise that the one on the right is Bob’s.  He has been packed for 2 weeks!  Joyce is debating about a lot of things…….which black clothes to pack. (ha)  The real dilemmas arise from the huge temperature swings in our 30 day trip.  Yesterday, Bob was talking to a Direct TV technician who was in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and she said it was 100 degrees.  Today, the lows in Crater Lake, Oregon are in the 30s.  What a difference several days will make.  We can’t imagine how many jackets and sweaters to take.

 

CLARIFICATION:  The photo in the last blog posting ( below) might be confusing.  Not all those in the photo are going on this trip!   Just 4 of us:  Lydia and Jerry and Joyce and Bob.  A friend noted that it was not clear that ALL of us were not going in the same car. 

Purdue Gang on the Road Again



Twin Pines Then and Now

 Lydia and Jerry have sold their Angola house, and we are getting ready to take off for  the month of September to tour the Western National Parks--12 of them.  This was at Purdue President't Council in Naples February, 2012 with Bob and Joyce, Jerry and Lydia, Mary and Roger Kemper and a fantastic student, who presented at dinner and just happened to also be a Twin Pines girl.  Lydia, Joyce and Mary were all in Twin Pines Cooperative while at Purdue. Twin Pines will celebrate 60 years this coming October.

Countdown to our Trip

 

We are nearly three weeks out from beginning our next big adventure.  The entire trip will be much easier than last year’s trip to the Mediterranean as we will travel entirely inside the USA, visiting 12 National Parks out west. In a previous blog, I listed our itinerary, day by day.  However, since many are visual learners and like to see a map, a friend sent us this map of the Western National Park system.