The Roaming Allwines

So, the last time there has been a post here was WAY back in 2010 when we returned from our epic 3-week bender of a road trip with our (at the time), 4 year old daughter.  Well a lot has certainly changed since then!  The 4 year old is now 11! And... we have daughter #2 which is already 5! Reviewing what we have entered here so long ago, makes one reflect on how much life can really change in a decade.  Family, work, interests and more.  You can't look at today and think your life will be same down the road.  Enjoy today and embrace the idea of constant change!  I would have never thought I would be the proud father of 2 amazing girls!! As a little bit of a rewind, here is a video what we did a short time ago where we visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at the Dulles airport as a family of 4!  Enjoy!

I wanted to take a minute and post a few comments about today's society and the general lack of knowledge and poor attitude towards people who enjoy vehicle based exploration. I write this entry because I just read this post today from Vermont Overland which used to be an official guide service for us Jeepers and Overlanders who wanted to explore Vermont through a guide service: http://www.vermontoverland.com/guide-service-discontinued/ It is disappointing to see that people immediately move to quickly end something they don't understand.  I may be a bit brash in saying that it is just pure ignorance.  We are loosing America's history a little bit at a time.  Services like that of Vermont Overland gave everyone the opportunity to safely explore the back country of Vermont while learning about trail etiquette and local information.  Proceedings like this simply help expedite the loss of "ancient" road of years gone by. It is not that you can go there on y...

So now that we are home and things are starting to settle down, it is time for another update. The reason you haven’t heard anything from us was either lack of wifi access or the fact that Double Tree Inn in charges $9.99/day for wifi! Shoulda’ stayed at a Hampton, it’s free!! Anyway, I digress. I’ll pick up where we left off in Myrtle Beach. After we said our goodbye’s to my cousin and her family we headed south on Rt. 17 towards Charleston, SC. It was a nice drive as the road was not very busy on a Monday morning. We stopped a Cooter’s gas station along the way to fill up just because I thought it was funny. Once we got into Charleston, we immediate changed direction to due west to find the closest Best Buy. The night before, we decided that it would be a prudent investment for my driving sanity to purchase a head rest mounted DVD player for Lexi. So we picked that up with a few Disney DVDs and headed on our way after Eileen made sandwiches for us. Well, let’s just say that th...

So our first week of our epic adventure has passed.  The last two days have been filled with great adventure and a "few" miles of driving.  On our last evening of camping in OBX, we filled our bellies with generous amounts of seafood at Captain George's buffet in Kill Devil Hills.  After we got board of stuffing our faces, we began our last drive down route 12 back to Rodanthe and KOA.  As we were getting closer to Oregon Inlet, the sky spelled certain doom for us tent campers.  We pulled off before we reached the bridge to take some pictures of the storm and to catch some shots of the lightning. We ventured  forward over the bridge and were greeted with torrential down pours and driving winds.  The waves and the blowing rain looked like a scene out of " The Perfect Storm".   Driving the bridge that evening was a two handed drive.  The wind was so strong that I was fighting just to keep it in the lane!  After the bridge, we pulled of...

Greetings friends! Today is Friday and our last day in the Outer Banks.  The past two days have been filled with very hot, very humid weather!  Wednesday afternoon we were able to make it up to Duck and Corolla to check things out.  It is a beautiful area.  Very different from Rodanthe.  Here it is just dunes and water.  Up at the north end of OBX, there are more trees and different architecture. We kept venturing north on following Rt. 12, where, unexpectedly, the road ended.  I didn't realize that rt. 12 actually continues north but on the beach!  So we aired down to 18 psi and started out onto the sand.  Lexi enjoyed the bumping and bobbing that the Jeep did as we followed existing tire paths and make our own.  We went up the beach about 7-8 miles.  To our surprise, there are homes up that far on the beach.  Being the inquisitive type that I am, I wondered how stuff was delivered and the infrastructure was serviced.  ...

It has been an enjoyable past 4 days since we have last posted anything. Sunday we spent the day at the beach in Cape May and then another evening at Sunset Beach looking for Cape May diamonds and watching the sun set.  While we were watching the sun set on a beautiful evening, One of the guys doing some surf fishing reeled in a sand shark.  That was pretty cool to see.  It was abo1ut 13 inches long.  Of course being the good sportsman, they released it back into the water to live another day. The next morning, we broke camp at 6:30am so we could get to the 8:30am Cape May - Lewes Ferry.  Being the first time on a ferry for any of us, it was an exciting adventure.  We had a great parking spot for the Jeep on the Ferry (2 cars back from the front).  We enjoyed a soft pretzel and some water while we started our journey across the Deleware Bay.  It was a fairly rough ride as there 2-3 foot swells.  The ferry pitched back and forth for a while ...