Volksmarches are 5, 10, or 15 kilometer registered walks along a predetermined route for which you get credit. In Volksmarching you keep track of how many events you have completed, how far you have walked, and how many states you made Volksmarches in. We decided to try to get as many new states as possible during our summer vacation to visit relatives.

Ohio

After traveling to Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday, we drove on to Berea, Ohio (near Cleveland) on Tuesday to find our first Volksmarch. Our starting point was a Elias Big Boy, which we immediately perceived to be a great place for lunch after the walk. We left the Big Boy around 9:30 and walked two blocks on city streets before entering a hiker/biker trail in a municipal park along Rock Creek. The remainder of the walk was an in-and-out walk entirely along this paved trail in the park except for a small loop around an exercise trail. This trail was a special year-round walk that had been added to the two regular walks mentioned in the Starting Point, our guide for Volksmarches across the U.S.

The views of the river and park along this walk were very nice. Water cascading over a small dam was one pretty spot, and an observation platform for viewing birds in the small lake behind the dam also gave nice views. It was an easy walk to the turn-around point, and if we had more time I would have liked to take the trail further upstream. At the turn-around point we met a woman with three dogs, so I naturally started singing “How much is that doggie in the window?” to the dogs. I thought I did a creditable job, but when I was finished the woman smiled and asked me to sing it again in Chinese as that was the language the dogs understood!!

Walking our normal three kilometers an hour out and back, we returned to the Big Boy about 11:30. I asked for a table for two, two menus, and the Volksmarch box that had all the registration materials. After ordering, we stamped our books while our food was being prepared and then had lunch, which was very good (especially the low-fat turkey pita sandwich). Our waitress looked a bit askance at our filling of the water bottles from our glasses, probably because the ice was really slippery and tended to shoot across the table rather than get squeezed into our water bottles. We continued on to South Bend, Indiana for the night.

Indiana and Michigan

On our drive over to Indiana, Monika found a Volksmarch at Notre Dame University in South Bend which we thought would be interesting. We started off from the Jamison Inn around 9:00, and it was already getting warm. The inn was only about 4 blocks from Notre Dame University grounds, and the remainder of the trail was entirely on the campus. The sun was beating down out of a clear sky and we were walking mostly on pavement, so we started using our water bottles early on this hike. The directions were very confusing, which I expected since the comments of the previous hikers had also mentioned they could not follow the directions. There was a tremendous amount of construction and renovation occurring on campus, but that really did not cause the confusion.

Being forewarned by the comments of the earlier hikers, we didn’t get lost right away on the first leg which was the entrance to the campus, but instead got lost on the second leg of the hike which was the route to St. Mary’s Lake. As you can imagine, St. Mary’s is the biggest lake, so we didn’t have too much trouble locating it after we got off track. The path around the lake was gravel and on the far side of the lake we encountered “wild” life in the form of ducks, geese and swans, all of whom wanted to be fed. Wending our way around the lake, we stopped off in the Grotto, which was lit by hundreds of burning candles even at this time of the morning. It was very peaceful and the people were clearly very devout, so we checked the statue of Tom Dooley and tiptoed on our way. We also circled the second, smaller lake on campus, St Joseph Lake, before meandering back through the main campus to the inn.

We were a little hot at the end of this walk but not really very tired, so we cooled off at an Arby’s for lunch while we planned out next hike, which was in Niles, Michigan. Fortunately, this Arby’s had self-serve drinks so we could fill our water bottles with all the ice we wanted and not bother a waitress. The ice-cold water would later come in very handy.

The directions to the starting point for this Volksmarch were extremely vague, and, as it turned out, quite incorrect. We drove into Niles and up and down the entire length of Third Street without finding our turnoff before we gave up and stopped at a Senior’s Center to ask for directions. The correct way to get to the Madeline Bertrand County Park is to drive North on U.S. 31 and turn left on Ontario Street within a half-mile of the Indiana-Michigan border. Michigan and Indiana must have very different zoning ordinances, because as soon as you cross the border the strip development that characterizes the Indiana side immediately stops. We followed Ontario basically straight into the park, and never did see how you could get there from Third Street.

The walk started at the Visitor’s Center, where we found out that the A award was a patch which was one-third of a circle. To get the other two-thirds of the circle we would have to take the other two Volksmarches in the county!! This particular trail covered the park in Michigan and the adjoining park in Indiana which lay along the St. Joseph’s river. The trail was all natural surface wooded trails except for some open areas in the Indiana park. We were really appreciative of the shaded sections as it was getting hot (90s) and we needed every bit of our water. The trail wound in a series of loops through Madeline Bertrand County Park and then made one big loop through the adjacent Indiana park. Directions on the Michigan side were quite clear, but we got lost again while on the Indiana side loop. This was a very pleasant mostly-forest kind of walk that was a very easy “2” walk. We had a leisurely diner at a Shoney’s and then struggled through Chicago evening traffic to get to my sister’s in Burlington, Wisconsin. The reward was the wonderful warm welcome my relatives gave us and being able to see my 94-year-old mother again.

Wisconsin

On the 3rd of July we went shopping for baby gifts and made our plans for the 4th of July. We planned first a Volksmarch in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, followed by a baby shower in Milwaukee to welcome my nephew’s new baby, and finally an evening concert in the park in Burlington followed by fireworks. We talked my sister Lois into taking her first Volksmarch and hoped it would be fun for her.

As we three drove into Cedarburg we noticed chairs lining both sides of the main street and people accumulating on the sidewalks. We signed up at the historic downtown hotel and started our walk around 10:00. We walked up main street through the milling crowd just as the parade was beginning at 10:30. Our walk took us past a park with a band shell quite similar to Burlington’s and around the north end of the downtown where the parade was assembling. Our route looped back through downtown and followed the parade route precisely, so we walked along the sidewalks while the cub scouts and boy scouts marched in the parade beside us. Watching the parade and the people who were watching the parade were equally entertaining while we were taking this walk, and it was far more challenging than your ordinary city walk because we had to dodge the groups of pedestrians lining the sidewalk.

At the end of the parade route, Lois met a couple she knew who were Revolutionary War re-enactors, and we stopped to chat briefly before moving on through the park. The remainder of the route wound through a couple of city parks and then we returned to the main street just as the parade was wrapping up. We bought a book for her and stamped them all before high-tailing it out of town South to my nephew Tony’s house in Milwaukee.

Tony and his wife Connie had just adopted Carlos, who was 6 months old and cute as a button. My other sister from Chicago and her children and grandchildren showed up, so we had quite a baby shower. Carlos was remarkably quiet during the whole thing despite the fact that as a family we tend to chatter almost constantly, making a fair amount of noise. Tony and Connie seemed to be adapting well to suddenly having a child. Tony, a doctor himself, told an amusing anecdote about mistaking Carlo’s lack of appetite and sniffling for having a serious heart condition. He was already preparing to call in a friend of his who specialized in pediatric heart surgery when he finally realized that Carlos just had a cold. It just goes to show that no matter how much training you have, parenting is quite an adventure. We finished off the evening with the band concert in the riverside park in Burlington, followed by the fireworks.

On the 5th of July, we celebrated my mother’s 94th birthday a bit early by taking her, Lois, Merlin, and Barbara on a luncheon cruise on Lake Geneva. Eating a nice meal on a cruise boat while watching interesting scenery go by was fun for all of us, and we had a wonderful conversation during the lulls in the narration. We especially enjoyed the story of the man who became a millionaire by inventing the cardboard lid for milk bottles around the turn of the century. So much money for such a simple idea! And he had ended up having a really nice mansion on Lake Geneva. I love those Horatio Alger stories.

We didn’t have anything planned for the 6th of July, but Lois and Merlin had heard of the a re-enactor’s gathering near Lake Geneva, so we went to see that. These re-enactor’s recreate the frontier expansion period from the Revolutionary War through the War of 1812. Monika enjoyed the lithe young men in their breechclouts, which left very little to the imagination. Conversely, some of the older guys had a beer belly and that showed up too, all of it. That made me appreciate the fact that modern clothes do a pretty good job of camouflaging one’s faults.

That evening Mom and I were serenaded by Lois, Merlin, and Monika playing recorders. In the old days, evenings of family music like this must have been quite common, but I think such evenings are quite rare in modern times, so I appreciated it very much. Anyway, Mom and I applauded wildly at the end of each piece to make up in volume what we lacked in numbers.

I asked Mom to consider her 94 years and tell me the single best thing that had happened during those 94 years and the single worse thing. Mom said the best thing had been the increase in tolerance and a reduction in prejudice over the years. As examples she specified reductions in racial prejudice and prejudice against out-of-wedlock children, citing the fact that we don’t use the word “illegitimate” any more to label these children. I found it interesting that her single best thing was not technical at all despite being in this century of rapid technological progress, but rather a social change. Being an optimistic sort, Mom had a lot more difficulty coming up with the single worst thing. After pondering a bit, she finally came up with the demise of the U.S. railroad system as the worst thing, and more generally the lost of effective public transportation.

Illinois

After taking leave of Lois, Merlin, and Mom, Monika and I had a quick drive down to Ruth Winterringer’s retirement home at Peace Memorial Village in Oak Park, Illinois. Mom Ruth was tired, but we still could drop off some flowers to cheer her up and have a nice two-hour chat with her. We caught up on all that was happening with Lee and Jean and told her what was going on with our boys before driving on to our Volksmarch in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

Oak Lawn styles itself the City of Trees, and I wish they had even more than they did. It was afternoon and in the 90s by the time we started this Volksmarch, and we were routed mostly along city streets which made it quite hot whenever we didn’t have shade trees. I used all my water. Being the midwest, the streets are all laid out on a North-South and East-West basis, which made this walk something of a “Gridwalk”. We did get to see a representative sample of the houses and people of Oak Lawn, which is a nice middle-class community, and we were routed through a couple of parks on our way back which added interest to the walk. However, there were no “knock your socks off” mansions or such like, and the “lake” that was mentioned in one area looked more like a large, damned-up drainage culvert. I got some baked banana chips at the candy store that was our checkpoint, and those were a nice addition to our driving snacks. After completing the Volksmarch, we drive on to Union Pier, Michigan, to visit with David and his new son Wade for the evening.

Michigan, redux

Intent on completing the three patches that together make a large circular patch, we drove North from Union Pier to St. Joseph, Michigan on the morning of the 8th. Since it was quite early and the day was overcast, the parking lot at the visitor’s center at the beach was nearly empty. The visitor’s center is identical to the restroom buildings beside it, so we had to walk around a bit to find the entrance and get the Volksmarch box. The trail rating was supposedly a “2”, but there really was only one steep uphill on the first leg from the beach to the main street of St. Joseph, so we felt it was a “1+”. We had occasional rain sprinkles during this walk which didn’t slow us since we were walking on city streets, but did make us put on our rain shells or take them off repeatedly.

The trail route crossed the St. Joseph River into Benton Harbor, Michigan, which is apparently St. Joseph’s poorer cousin. The businesses and houses in Benton Harbor looked poorer on the whole, but on the other hand we found a AAA office right on the route where we could run in and get some maps and camping guides. Returning to St. Joseph, we walked down the main street which nice boutiques and some tourist-oriented business as well as resident-oriented businesses. All of the tourist businesses were tastefully done and not at all like the rampant commercialism of say Ocean City, Maryland. For example, there were no T-shirt shops or Wax Museums, etc.

Although this walk was along city streets, it was not at all boring. Besides the shops in the commercial district, in St. Joseph there was a real variety of nice homes to hold our interest. We were particularly impressed by the number of old Victorian houses that had been restored to original condition and were very pretty. The restoration included original Victorian paint schemes, however, and these tended to be far more bold and colorful than the muted pastels and earth tones we are used to in our subdivisions. You probably either like something like this or hate it, but I liked it.

We walked back down the hill to a free public beach sponsored by the Lions. Besides the families with children on the playgrounds, many residents of St. Joseph were parked at this beach eating their lunches and watching the seascape. We did not immediately see our checkpoint of the old water pumping station, but we did find the front door for the new pumping station. I entered an unlocked door to ask where the old pumping station was located, but I couldn’t raise a soul even after shouting “Hello!” down the corridors. It appeared deserted, which was a little spooky. However, I found an aerial photograph on the wall which clearly showed the old pumphouse set back on the other side of the new one, so I went back outside and collected Monika before moving on to the checkpoint. From the checkpoint back to the start point was a walk along the two beachfront parks in St. Joseph--I enjoyed watching the people playing at the parks as much as the seashore itself.

We had to get the gate attendant to open up the office in which the Volksmarch box was kept before we could stamp our cards and collect the next 1/3 of our circular patch. After lunch we drove on to the last Michigan Volksmarch in Love Creek Park. Although the sign indicated the office was open on Tuesdays, the door was locked and no one was present. At first we despaired of completing our circular patch, but then we saw a small notice to Volksmarchers that told us to take the self-guided Volksmarch and mail it in for the last part of the patch. Beneath this notice was a sign warning of many biting insects along the trail, which we laughed off because we hadn’t had any trouble with insects during any of our Volksmarches this year. Boy were we wrong.

The trail was a very nice natural-surface woodsy trail, but a plague of insects reduced our enjoyment of it. We noticed as soon as we headed down for our first loop around a swamp that this area was plagued not only with clouds of mosquitoes but also with a type of biting fly called a “black fly” I believe--of the same genre as a horsefly in overall design and sucking blood, but more of a housefly in size. We should have immediately turned back for insect repellent, but we’re both too stubborn for that. In fact, as long as it was raining and we had our rainshells on, we were protected from them except for our legs and faces. When the sun came out, we had the choice of keeping the rain shells on and sweltering or taking them off and becoming insect-fodder.

We found that walking very rapidly allowed us to outdistance most of the mosquitoes, so took off the rain shells but kept quite a brisk pace around the remaining loops of trails that circled this park. The total route was a 5 km loop that could be repeated for 10 km credit, but we were so bitten up by the end of 5 km that we just called it quits because that was sufficient to get the last third of our patch and we wouldn’t be receiving any distance credit anyway (no stamp on this self-service version).

Beside one marshy pond near the end, we startled a flock of Canadian geese, and one mother and group of goslings could not return to the pond but instead ran ahead of us on the mowed path, honking wildly. After they got a little in front of us, she led them off the path and had them all hide in the tall grass. We were only moments behind them and yet could not see a single one of the youngsters when we came up on where they had hidden. In fact, we only knew we were there when we flushed the mother out of hiding and she went honking away up into the air to distract our attention away from her youngsters. Good mommy. Shortly after this, we found that one of the final loops was impossible because a trail had been closed, and I can’t say we were disappointed. Since our maps were rain-soaked, we picked up two new ones to mail in for our patch after we returned home. Monika says that given a sunny day and a lot of insect repellent, this trail could be a very pleasant wooded walk, and I agree; however, we just didn’t experience it that way.

We ended the day by driving South through the middle of Indiana to Indianapolis. The landscape was gently rolling fields and farms like much of Illinois and Ohio, but I was puzzled by signs at two points along the road that prohibited stopping, standing, parking, or even breaking down! The only thing I can think of is some secret stuff is nearby, but I surely did not see signs of anything driving past. My face was swollen in spots, particularly where the black flies were biting, but that had already gone down by the time we reached Indianapolis and found a hotel for the night.

Indiana redux

In Indianapolis, we chose a Volksmarch that wound around the Eagle Creek park for our morning walk. This was a very nice natural-surface woodsy walk, mostly flat, and with NO BUGS! The trail directions were very explicit and even had “back up” directions for how to get back to the trail if you missed certain critical junctions. Combined with the “hiker-man” signs with arrows at many of the critical junctions, it was hard to get lost. The morning was cool and sunny and the trail was very pleasant. Most often the trail was a “Cadillac” trail which was graded, surfaced and broad enough that we could easily walk side-by-side; occasionally it deteriorated to a “Chevrolet” or “Volkswagen” trail where we had to walk single file or over a rougher surface.

We ran into a herd of very tame deer about 1 mile into our walk. We were surprised because we had not expected deer in a city park, and also surprised at how blasé the deer were to our presence. We wouldn’t have even noticed them if one deer had not jumped, but all the others remained phlegmatically calm, even when we were taking flash pictures. The ones that were laying down and chewing didn’t even get up when we were within five feet. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had let us pet them.

After our encounter with “wild” deer, we had a curious experience with two juvenile Canada geese. We were at the top of a hill alongside a reservoir when I heard two geese wildly honking at us. I thought they were upset at our presence and started to walk faster. But then it turned out that they were behind us and began honking even louder as if to say, “Wait for us!”, so we slowed down and stopped. Sure enough, they caught up with us and then came right up to us with a whimpering sound that quite clearly was a “Feed me?” type of call, perhaps the one they use with their mothers in the wild. I’ve never heard this sound before and I could be mistaken, but I don’t think so. Possibly other folks had been feeding these geese and they had connected all humans with food.

In any event, we patiently explained to the geese that we had no food (except Gummi Bears which we did not think would be good for them), and showed them our open hands to emphasize the point. Having a pantomime conversation with Canadian geese certainly felt strange to me. At this point I fully expected them to get in a huff about the lack of a handout and march back the way they had come, much like the tame ducks on our Notre Dame walk had done, but they didn’t. In fact, the inserted themselves in between us on the path, and when Monika led off to resume our hike they fell into line between her and me just like a goose family. I was astonished that they were doing this, more or less treating us as if we were their parents, especially Monika. I fell in behind the geese and we walked/waddled along the path for another eighth of a mile or so in this fashion. Surprisingly, they waddled quite fast and could easily keep up with us. I was worried that we might have to adopt them as we have wild cats and birds, but we found a nice grazing area for them at the next cove and quietly left them munching hungrily on the grass and weeds there.

Our return route was through a wildlife sanctuary, where we did indeed see several species of birds. The only one I could positively identify were goldfinches, which are a quite remarkable yellow. I also saw many other swallows and aquatic birds that I could not identify. Along the way I picked a couple of black raspberries which were ripe, but Monika scolded me for taking food from the birds and I felt (a little) guilty. Good raspberries, though, and I figure I feed the birds in our area from my raspberry and blackberry patch, so it all evens out.

Our final surprise on this march was of human origin. At the checkpoint on the South end of the park I saw beautiful paintings of park scenes painted on the 2x10s used to cover the camp signs!! I asked who painted them and found out it was the guard at the gate that was our starting point. We talked with her at the end of our walk, but she said she was just an amateur and hadn’t done any others that we could buy. Those were the prettiest 2x10s I have ever seen in my life.

Kentucky

Passing through Louisville, Kentucky, we drove on toward Fort Knox to the Otter Creek park. This trail was described as a natural surface, wooded trail with a difficulty rating of “3”, and we found out that unlike the inflated difficulty ratings of the trails in Michigan and Indiana, this one really deserved the “3”. The trail was a large loop of mostly forest trails on the highlands to the South of the Ohio River, and was almost constant ups and downs. The trails were true paths through the woods which gave us welcome shade on this hot, sunny afternoon, but we had to walk mostly in a single file.

The one really hot part of the trail was a part along a pipeline right-of-way which was a broad cleared path. Monika and I both started to overheat, so we used all our water and took rests at any shady spots along the side we could find. Fortunately, the pipeline section ended at the Nature Center, which was still open and air-conditioned. Better yet, we could refill our water bottles from a water cooler to get nice cold water for the remainder of the walk. The Nature Center had a lot of interesting information including paw prints of typical animals found in the park.

The best views of the Ohio River came as we returned to the start/finish. The other river overlooks on this walk had trees which had grown up to obscure the view. At the start/finish was the lodge registration building and a restaurant, and the trees had been cleared so as to afford clear vistas up and down the river. We would have eaten at the restaurant, but they didn’t allow walkers to use their restrooms, so we reciprocated by driving to have dinner on the way to Mammoth Cave.

We arrived at Mammoth Cave rather late, about 7 p.m., but were hoping to find an empty site as it was a weekday. The gate was deserted when we arrived, but there was no “Camp Full” sign and we went in to look around. We found what appeared to be a completely deserted site, self-registered at the gatehouse, and set up our tent and went to bed. About two hours later a Recreational Vehicle rolled in and the guy insisted that he had registered for the site earlier in the day. Since he had not left any sign of habitation at the campsite, which is the traditional rule, we also felt we had some rights to the site. We compromised by sharing the site for that night so we could all get a night’s sleep and then we moved to a truly empty site the next morning.

The next day we took two 2-hour cave tours, “Frozen Niagara” and “Historical Tour”, and a one-hour cruise on the Green River which also runs through the park. The cave walks are very slow-paced and on well-graded trails, but there are numerous stairs. Both tours were quite interesting but different. The “Frozen Niagara” tour emphasized the stone formations in the cave, which really occur in only one small area of this cave. These stone formations were intriguing and fanciful as well as being quite pretty. The “Historical Tour” included the remains of a saltpeter mining operation that helped the U.S. make gunpowder during the War of 1812, and an attempt at using the cave as a tuberculosis sanitarium. While the saltpeter mining was a success, the cool moist air was not appropriate for TB sanitarium patients, all of whom died.

In fact, the cave air is wonderfully cool, averaging about 52 degrees winter or summer and moist although not muggy. Walking was very pleasant and we didn’t perspire at all, but just being on your feet walking for 4 hours is a little tiring so we were glad to just sit and watch the scenery go by on our late afternoon cruise. We cooked our only camp-cooked dinner that evening and retired early.

For our final day at Mammoth Cave, we packed up our tent early and then took the 4-hour “Grand Avenue Tour”. I asked our guide Kevin about the back-country trails and possible canoeing opportunities on the Green River, and he had a lot of useful information. He told us that in the winter they only ran the tours on weekends, and on some tours he had a few as two persons. During the summer, he also led the “Cave Discovery” tour which is a 6-hour real caving experience which goes off the beaten path and involves crawling in the mud and wriggling through very tight areas. Monika expressed a preference for graded, lighted trails, but I thought the discovery tour might be fun. We in fact saw some of the discovery tour folks crawling out from under a rock along our tour route.

Kevin adopted us as his honorary Aunt and Uncle, and so we stayed up in front with him during the tour. He told us about many things in the cave as we walked along, including the fact that small pits on the coating of the cave wall were an indication that blasting had been used to shape or clear parts of the tunnel. He explained the 5 levels of Mammoth Cave that had been cut by the Echo River over time, and we wound up and down among levels 2 to 5 an awful lot during this walk. I just wish they could extent this walk by 2.2 miles and then give Volksmarch credit for it. We left immediately after the tour and drove to Huntington, West Virginia to stay overnight. Kentucky had beautiful rolling countryside with the farms gradually changing over to forests as we drove East on I-64. I was amused that all the road signs in Kentucky only gave the mileage to Ashland, Kentucky, which is an insignificant little town lying 10 miles off the interstate on the Kentucky-West Virginia border, rather than the mileage to Huntington which is just across the border or any of the other much larger cities in West Virginia.

West By God Virginia

Since we left Huntington early, we figured we had time for a Volksmarch in West Virginia without arriving at home too late. We really do prefer breaking up long drives with the Volksmarches. We picked the Coonskin Park in the state capital of Charleston, West Virginia, which is just a five minute drive off of the interstate. This trail consisted of a main section from the golf club house and swimming pool building to a tennis center, and then two out-and-back branches. The first out-and-back was on a road that led up a rather steep hill and then along a ridge to a circular drive on top of a hill crest. If you take this walk, don’t be discouraged by the steepness of that first section--it is something like a 10% grade but only for the first tenth of a mile or so. We had to stop and catch our breath on that section, but afterwards the ascent was much more gradual up to the ridge, and essentially it was flat thereafter.

This park was nicely kept and forested, so we enjoyed the scenery as we wound around past playgrounds and picnic areas. We disturbed flocks of birds, so I guess we were the first walkers of the day. Since we were taking the walk in the forenoon, it was cool for all of it except the very last section around 12:00 when we were returning to the club house on the road in the strong sunlight with no shade. We agreed that taking the same walk in the afternoon would have made “Heartbreak Hill” a more grueling experience and the whole walk considerably less pleasant.

The second out-and-back branch was a “Rails to Trails” hiking path that was converted from an old railroad right-of-way. I had heard about this program and was curious to see this one. As I expected, the grading on this trail was excellent and the surface a fine gravel laid over the railroad bed. It was nicely wide enough for us to walk side-by-side and had trees overhanging on both sides, which gave us welcome shade. This section was relatively short, and when the trail ended at a city street we retraced our steps to the club house.

Our final drive to the D.C. area took five hours, but the scenery in the Shenandoah Valley is equal to anything we saw in other states along our route. After buying some milk, bread, and other groceries, we arrived home about 7 and were thankful to see that not only was the house still standing, but our neighbors had even mowed our grass! Fortunately, we had the next day to “rest” before returning to work; Monika did laundry while I changed oil and transmission fluid and air filter on the Buick, which is just turning over 100,000 miles. Then we started writing this story so that you, Gentle Reader, could experience some of the things we did on this vacation.