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Constitution cover.jpg
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US Stops.GIF
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Beach Bums
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Here's the route: more than 11,000 miles over 60 days (and nights), with only 11 of those nights in motels. We spent the rest with friends and relatives, some of whom Tim hadn't seen in years and some neither of us had ever met before.
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A house three doors from the ocean at Barnegat Light was just the ticket for re-entry. It got us used to sleeping in the same place, being able to open the fridge without asking someone, and cleaning up after ourselves. It was like a halfway house for integrating us back into society. Plus the water was warm and the waves were good.
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The Wright Stuff
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Sitting In, and On, History
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Cooling Off
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Jonny flew his kite near Kitty Hawk, N.C., at the base of the hill Orville and Wilbur used as a runway for their first Flyer -- little more than a motorized kite itself -- back in 1903. That's the national monument to the Wright Brothers on top of the hill.
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Jonny is quite a bit more relaxed at this old Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., than four freshmen from North Carolina A&T were on Feb. 1, 1960, when they slipped onto stools and asked to be served. The were arrested, of course, but their actions started the sit-ins at lunch counters and other nonviolent protests across the South in the 1960s. Amid a national uproar and local violence, Woolworth's desegregated this lunch counter a few months later. It is going to be part of a new civil rights museum.
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Jonny is looking for the perfect stones to make a little dam on Collins Creek, where we stopped to wade and cool off as we drove over the mountains at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina.
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The King and His Subjects
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Sharp Intake
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Rim Shot
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We learned at Graceland that Elvis still looks down on us all, but it was more than symbolic for Nancy and Lizzie at one of Graceland's many gift shops on their last full day of the trip before flying home and rejoining the real world.
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Aunt Amy stuffed Jonny and Lizzie into the air intake of an F-16 when she took us around Sheppard Air Force Base. You should have seen Lizzie trying to climb out. "That would be one of the worst places in the world to be when that jet engine is turned on," Amy said later.
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Here's the rest of the family at a nice viewing spot -- about 3,000 feet above the Colorado River -- on the North Kaibab Trail over the Grand Canyon. This was right before the kids lay down and acted like they were asleep in the hopes that we wouldn't make them hike down any farther; after all, every minute walking down meant two minutes walking up.
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Cedar Breaks
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Hot Dogs
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Please Sur, A Little Less
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Lizzie and Nancy, who are decorating the trip through the Southwest, take their ease in southern Utah on the rim of Cedar Breaks, high above the incredibly spectacular and colorful rock formations in the canyon far below. Cedar Breaks is a national monument, but is not well known, probably because while its geological formations are almost as spectacular, it is smaller than Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and, of course, the Grand Canyon, which are all within easy driving distance.
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In the backyard Jacuzzi in Coronado, one of Mike & Sue's dogs, Wendy, kept dropping the bone in the tub. We were expected to throw it, and we tried to be good guests.
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Lizzie took about 500 photos, firing at will with three cameras - video, digital and SLR --as we made our way down Big Sur and California Highway 1. But here she got caught in someone else's viewfinder, and a gale off the sea, during one of the few moments she didn't have a camera in front of her face. When we get back, come over and see her photos, or email her and ask her to send you some...
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Logging On
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(Dragging)Tails in the City
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Will They Fit in a Volvo?
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Here's Jonny shinnying across a live tree -- a twisty-growing maple, not a redwood -- at Muir Woods in Marin County. Muir Woods was one of Nancy's strong recommendations, and we're glad we did it: majestic, serene, powerful, the place made quite an impression.
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Lizzie and Jonny, jet-lagged in her case and exhausted in both cases, pose on Jones Street above San Francisco Bay after a heavy day of tourism, a big restaurant meal and much climbing of hills. Some of the lights in the background are from Alcatraz.
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These two enormous nuclear-powered engines were built & tested in the 1950s to power giant (208' wingspans) planes to fly 24/7 reconaissance over the U.S. Between the size, cost, and the risk of radiation and the spread of the liquid-mercury cooling system in the event of a crash, President Kennedy pulled the plug on the program in 1961 before the planes were actually built. This is outside the national monument near Atomic City, Idaho, that includes EBR-1, the first reactor to produce electricity. Now the site is where they process nuclear waste...
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A Big HOT! Bath
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Shelling Out for Shells
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Deck Duty
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It took us a while to get in -- Jonny was more impervious than his dad -- but we finally had a good soak, in and out for nearly two hours, at the famous hot baths in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. The temperature of the water in the state park pool where Jonny was standing was 110 degrees F. You'd sit or float or walk in it (gravel bottom) for a few minutes, til you were sweating and dizzy, and then lie on the side for a while til you felt normal, and then go back in. The beer and root beer tasted good that night.
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Jonny couldn't pass up this sign -- besides, we were fresh out of bottle rockets and down to our last couple hundred other explosives -- outside this fireworks trailer near Rock Springs, Wyoming. There are no legal forms to sign in Wyoming, like in other states, promising not to blow up the fireworks in that state. However, the small yellow sign does ask patrons not to blow up fireworks within 150 feet of the trailer.
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Here's your faithful scribe at Uncle Bill and Aunt Shirley's in Red Feather Lakes, on the deck with all the bear-paw scratches on it. They took down the hummingbird feeders that were attracting the bears, but as I was working (75 degrees, low humidity, soft breezes rustling the pines and aspens) the hummingbirds kept coming around looking for the feeders, and a couple of them kept flitting up to those flowers on the table, just a few inches in front of me. Well, we all gotta work sometime, somewhere.
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Gun It, Honey
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Getting A Head
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Carhenge
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Here's Jonny behind the wheel shortly after his first time driving on this trip -- or ever -- when he drove through and around the town of Manville, Wyoming. We saw the lake in the background as we passed Glendo, Wyoming, so we stopped for a swim.
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We got up close and personal enough to count their nose hairs at Mount Rushmore, but Jonny still was skeptical when Tim kept telling him they were John, George, Paul and Ringo.
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We were three weeks late for the Solstice, but that didn't stop auto-maniac Jonny from climbing up on an old Buick and welcoming the new day at Carhenge, just north of Alliance, Nebraska.
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A Shot of B17
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Life on the Mississippi
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Llove those Llamas
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There are lots of cool planes, rockets, missiles and bombs at the Strategic Air Command Museum outside Omaha, but we had no trouble picking one to be in the photo: the B17, the old Flying Fortress, was the unanimous family favorite.
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This is the view from the porch where Larry and Bernie Fruhling watch the Mississippi, and life, roll by in a very relaxed fashion. The island is Sneaker Island, so named after a fisherman a few years back found a sneaker there -- with a foot in it. It was all that was ever found of a woman who had jumped off a bridge in Dubuque.
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Jonny had to stop outside White Pigeon, Mich., to check out the llamas for sale, but our car was already pachydermed to the gills. He settled for some homemade cookies from the farmstand next door.
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Hands Up
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Stocking the Arsenal
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Jonny wheels and lowers the big gun and gets the drop on Cameron on the deck of the USS Cod, a WWII sub moored in Cleveland on the Lake Erie shore next to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.
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Cameron snapped Jonny outside the Wholesale Fireworks warehouse in Hubbard, Ohio, where a security guard asks if you have any matches or lighters before you can get in. When you buy your fireworks, a clerk checks your out of state driver's license, and you have to sign something promising not to blow them up in Ohio or any other state where they are illegal. "Course, they're illegal everywhere," the clerk says. Right.
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