REALTOR RV TRIP HEAVEN ON WHEELS

By Sharon Wernlund

For 30 days and nearly 7,000 miles, our 24-foot Winnebago camper was our vacation home on wheels through 22 states from Florida, Texas and North Dakota to New York and North Carolina. Our 6th annual RV trip started Aug. 17 at a fast pace and rarely decelerated. For me, it was the best time to go. Real estate business in the summertime is typically slow. Plus, most public schools are back in session so no worries about campground vacancies.

With my hubby at the wheel and me as navigator, our mission was two-fold: Get together with family and friends; and cross off tourist attractions from our bucket list. Fortified with food, fuel and travel tunes, we crossed one, two and sometimes three states a day. Long days on the road were well rewarded. Before stopping in South Dakota, I had only seen Mount Rushmore in the 1959 Hitchcock thriller, “North by Northwest.” The 60-foot-high granite faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln make a powerful spectacle of democracy and patriotic pride.

Sixteen miles away, the Crazy Horse Memorial is a work in progress also in the Black Hills and will trump the size of Mount Rushmore. When completed, the tribute to the Lakota leader will be the world’s largest sculpture. Mother nature was not to be upstaged. In NY, we gazed in awe at the power and rage of Niagra Falls. Tubing the gentle, spring-fed Comal River in New Braunfels, TX was two miles of pure fun. In NC, we hiked to Linville Falls, one of Blue Ridge Parkway’s most popular waterfalls. In Missouri, we tracked down Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s former hideout in Joplin where in 1933 the gang killed two police officers in a shootout. In Independence, we visited the “Summer White House” home of President Harry S. Truman and ate at his favorite cafe. The Jesse James home and museum in St. Joseph showed us the parlor where the notorious outlaw was gunned down in cold blood in 1882.

We walked the somber Civil War battlefields in Gettysburg, PA and Antietam, MD and imagined the horrific fighting and precious loss of Iife. Harpers Ferry, WV refreshed our school-book lessons about abolitionist John Brown who in 1859 waged a heroic but ill-fated battle against slavery.

Sad vibes from real life events were uplifted with fiction. As a big fan of the TV show, “Dallas,” I toured Southfork Ranch in Parker, TX from the grounds and Ewing Mansion to museum to see the gun that shot J.R. The hometown of Andy Griffith in Airy, NC is a proud tribute to the actor and the make believe TV town of Mayberry from souvenirs and police car rides to the “Loaded Goat’’ restaurant.

But the biggest thrill for me is the unexpected.

On a tour of the Battleship USS Alabama in Mobile, AL, I was thunderstruck to learn Hollywood actor Robert Mitchum once stood on deck to film the 1988 TV miniseries, “War & Remembrance.”

BBQ at an Austin, TX restaurant was even tastier knowing our dining room was the Emporium pool hall in “Dazed and Confused,” a 1993 comedy film with budding stars Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck and Yellowstone’s Cole “Rip Wheeler” Hauser.

And in a roomful of antiques in a Louisiana eatery, I spied a Winchester girth in a modest frame with a legendary past. In 1937, champion racehorse Seabiscuit wore the saddle accessory to beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral by four lengths.

So much more to see in 2023!