Platt and Nancy Johnson's Road Trips: Part 1 - From Florida to Jackson Hole Wyoming

Prologue

When one grows up in the old US of A it is almost a rite of passage to do a road trip as soon as you have your own car, that and a reasonable stash of driving experience and dough. Well somewhere in between college and this summer life intervened. By that I mean a retail store and two sons. I lay most of the blame at the feet of the store because once we started running it we were pretty committed to summers chained at the oars. Of course we could have dragged the boys with us earlier but we didn’t so that was that.

When we sold our business (Island Sports) in 2007 after 37 years of operation we thought ‘finally we are free and can roam the world.’ Here we are circa 1986 or so courtesy of David Brownell

Life then intervened. The day we sold the business Nancy’s father passed away after a long struggle with cancer. He was 87, was a sea captain and a decorated WWII veteran. That was February 8th and naturally was traumatic to everyone. No one was in the mood for a trip.Exactly eleven months later my mother passed away. A year after that Nancy’s mother also passed away, the last of our parents and we were now both officially orphans. Life was indeed kicking us around. There was no “hooray we sold our business” there was only the realization, drummed into us, that life is short and moving faster and faster by us. It was time to stop putting our road trip on hold and it was time to start on the road.

April 30 – May

We owned a 2000 GMC extended Safari van that had 35,000 miles on it. It would be our choice of vehicle for the trip but there were concerns as to how reliable a ten year vehicle would be. We didn’t want to take any chances so we thought that if we could we would sell in and replace it with a newer model. It was still up in the air exactly which vehicle we would eventually take and we decided to make that decision in Rhode Island, not Florida.

Our 2000 GMC Savana on it's way north for the last time

We left Florida on the last day of April and spent the night in Vero Beach with our friend Lucy Whittemore. From there we drove to Charleston SC for a long visit with Andy Segal and Karen Weber. Charleston is a wonderful town and we enjoyed many fine meals there. Restaurants’ that we tried were Samoz, Monza, Home Team, and Cypress. We barely scratched the surface according to Andy. A highlight was kiting at a spot called the Bath on Sullivan’s Island where Andy is restoring a fine old house. They have some vicious watch dogs too.

The first leg ran up the east coast staying close to the ocean

After SC we headed North along the coast, a theme that will recur this summer, and stopped in Hatteras NC for some epic days of kiting and windsurfing. It blew 30-40 knots one day and literally blew us off of the water.

Here is a quick log of the sailing

On 5/7/2010 Friday We kited at Hatteras on a 14m and then a 12m kite - It got windy. Dinner at Mack Daddys - Checked into the Outer Banks Motel room 3A - nice room for 69/night
5/8/2010 Saturday - Sailed at Hatteras on a 4.2 and then a 3.7 off of Canadien Hole from 10am - 5pm - I used the Fanatic 88 liter FreeWave. The 81 was WAY to bouncy in the chop.

5/9/2010 Sunday Left Hatteras at 11am after kiting south of Canadian Hole - Nancy lost her board but I found it while kiting on my 12m and 141cm X-Ride North board. Had a Mothers Day Brunch at the Dubes restaurant in Nags Head- Arrived NJ at 10pm stayed at a Holiday Inn Express

5/10/2010 Monday - We drove into NYC to visit the family homestead which is now rented out for three years. It was in fine shape with just a few repairs needed. We finally arrived in RI at 3pm to turn on water, had a fine dinner at Café Zeldas with a Stelzer 2005 Claret.

The next two months we worked on our house, visited Martha’s Vineyard to work on our families rental house and generally tried to get back into the swing of things. An obvious highlight was the annual IYAC raft up with assorted fans.

July 5th Raft Up

July 14th, 2010

We head west and on our way with a new 2009 Ford E-350 van.

Will, Chris and Platt just before Nancy and I left on our 15,000 mile journey.

The first day our real trip began, not a good start hard rain through CT. We went an unusual way rt 84 across the Hudson River, into Pennsylvania, and through Ohio. We passed right through Middletown, CT - ironic seeing as we left from Middletown, RI. Our first night was spent camping along the Delaware Water Gap.

By the next day we had made quite a bit of progress and made it to Huntington Indiana, the headquarters of SportsMobile where we had an appointment to get a pop-top installed. We arrived in time to see a typical midwestern storm system hit us.

What a great system this gave us a "penthouse" to sleep in, with big screened windows. We had a fun time checking out Huntington interesting town. Entire downtown buildings for sale for just $39,000 with Ferrari's parked nearby.

Huntington Tractor

The Rusty Dog - good eats


Quality Construction - town hall

With pop top installed we crossed the Mississippi River on the 16th and thought, gee only 1/3 of the way there.

Mississippi River

On the17th the windmills appeared out of the morning mist as we started crossing the great plains.

Iowa Morning

It was a long day that was broken up by a visit to Lincoln Nebraska's Farmers Market.This is one of several towns that I could see myself living in. They had converted the lovely old train station to an event hall. The food and the people were wonderful indeed.

Lincoln Nebraska Farmers Market

We put the hammer down as our friend Mike McLaughlin wanted to see us get to Jackson WY by Sunday AM so we could go to a concert with him in Idaho at the Grand Targhee ski area. Why not we said.