This will probably be a lengthy report, since it chronicles our adventures up and across the USA.  I'll draft the report as we go along, while the events are fresh at mind.

03-05: Starting out, Chico, California

We left home midday on the 3rd, planning to go half way to Chico the first day, paying special attention to the new luggage carrier atop the car.  After a pleasant enough evening in Frenso (raisin capital of the world), we pressed on to Sacramento, where we stopped for lunch with old friends Judy and Charlie Blatchford.      After lunch, it was on to Chico, to visit cousins Gary and Marilyn and aunt Kay Collier.  At 92, Kay continues to inspire us as to the possibilities for an active and long life.  Her favorite pasttime these days is dancing with young men from Chico State.

06-09: Portland, Oregon

    Surprise! We felt obliged to spend some time in Portland spoiling our granddaughter and glorying in the pride and admiration we continue to feel for Aaron and Ara.  Evie continues to grow into a young woman and sometimes seems to have folded the page on aging.  This seemed particularly evident in her first experiment with makeup--at the Children's Museum.  Perhaps a few pictures will make the case better than words.

After long deliberations, we've decided to keep her.

10-11: Sandpoint, Idaho

    Near the northern tip of Idaho, we spent two delightful days with Charlie and Mickey Glock.  As director of UC Berkeley's Survey Research Center, Charlie was boss for both Sheila and me when we first met and married.  Moreover, Charlie was my teacher and mentor in social research, and there is really no way to fully express the extent to which he changed my life.  The stop in Idaho, however, gave us a chance to get to know them as friends and to see sides of them we had never known before: hiking through Mickey's tree farm and checking out Charlie's ingenious kinetic art inventions.

12-13: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Neither Sheila nor I had been to Yellowstone before (one of us has never been to Yosemite, but I won't say which one of us I am), and we were delighted with the last-minute decision to include it in this trip.  To begin, Charlie suggested a backroad alternative to the freeway, which probably took about the same time and was vastly more scenic. In West Yellowstone, we stayed in a motel across from a nature center,  where we got closeup experiences of wolves and grizzlies.  The next day, Sheila spotted a grizzly in the wild with her binoculars.  (I have a photo but it looks more like a Yeti.)

Yellowstone is also home to many, many bison.  Our first experience was in a picnic ground which we found we had to share with some big bullies.  Notice Scaredy Pants hiding behind a tree after reading that bison sometimes gore tourists, giving no thought whatsoever to the video opportunity I might have had.  ("Look local," I encouraged, since they only seem to attack tourists.) A little further along we found a substantial herd with lots of calves.

Yellowstone is also noted for its geysers (a substantial proportion of all geysers in the world)--most notably Old Faithful.  By the time, we got around to visiting Yellowstone, Old Faithful had gotten older but less faithful: it's cycle now being estimated at around an hour and a half, but don't plan to set your watch by it. The viewing facilities are pretty good, as you can see. I got some good video when O. F. blew but don't have any stills yet, due to my primitive trip equipment.  I'll paste another geyser below to give you some idea.

For anyone who worried through Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfus, Devils Tower is a must see, and it's pretty impressive.  Not surprisingly, this striking monolith is a sacred site for local Indian tribes (many of whom call it Bears Lodge), and they've respectfully asked that people not climb it.   People climb it anyway.   Quel surprise.

Visiting Mount Rushmore was one of the cornerstones of our initial planning of this trip; I said I wanted to see it before the someone added Reagan.  As you can see, it's pretty much what you think it is, though it's smaller than I expected. As we got closer to Rushmore, however, we learned more about Crazy Horse Mountain, just to the south of Rushmore.  This project, which has been going on for 50 years so far, is much larger than Rushmore: taller, I think, than the Washington Monument.  It also has a great Indian museum and information center.

Here's the model, with the real thing in the distance.	Here's how far they've gotten in the first 50 years.

Two other attractions occupied the 15th. First, this block-long store in Wall, SD, began when a young pharmacist tried to think of ways to attract cross-country travellers to stop.  His answer was to post highway signs offering free ice-water.  He reported that he felt pretty stupid staking out the first set of signs; when he got back to the store, he found it packed with travellers getting the free ice-water and buying some other stuff at the same time.  As the store grew (to some 20,000 visitors a day), so did the signs, which appear hundreds of miles from the store, and even in some foreign countries.

Leaving the Badlands, we committed ourselves to reaching upstate New York with dispatch.  These two days, we saw South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.  This is a picture of one of them. In retrospect it's kind of a blur, but one of life's fundamental lessons stand out in my memory: drive around Chicago, don't drive through it.  Chicago wasn't anything like these wide-open spaces.

This is all that's left of the meeting hall generally regarded as the birthplace of modern women's rights.  Here, in 1848, a group of women and men committed themselves to bringing an end to women's second-class citizenship. The water wall reproduces the "Statement of Sentiments" that laid out the program for the Women's Movement that would follow. The collection of statues represent Elizabeth Cady Staton, Susan B. Anthony, and some of the other mothers and fathers of the movement.

The Cheshires graciously hosted us for two nights, let us turn their house into a monster repacking and staging area for "The Babbies Take Manhattan."   They even drove us to the train in Utica.   Amtrak left Utica 2.5 hours later than scheduled.  We felt special, since the clerk said it usually leaves one hour late. Eventually, we were arriving in NYC, Gotham, The Big Apple.

Here's the view from our hotel room, located on 1st Avenue and looking west between 49th and 50th Streets.	The Public Library was having a special exhibit of "cabinets of curiosity"--sort of a cross between Barnun and Ripley.  We were curious, so we went.
The cheap-ticket windows open at 11:00 on Sunday.  We got there around 9:45 and were about 150th in line.	The man in the center of this blurry, nonflash picture from the back of the Iridium Jazz Club is the inventor of the electric guitar and numerous recording techniques.  An excellent jazz guitarist, he enjoyed popular success with his wife, Mary Ford.  "How High the Moon" was a favorite.
The excavation seems complete and reconstruction is beginning, though there is not agreement yet on what should be done with the site at Ground Zero where some 2800 died	Against a banner declaring, "We will never forget," buildings surrounding Ground Zero are covered with shrouds to protect the restoration.

After our week in NYC, we Amtrak'd to Bryn Mawr for a day with Steve and Carol Meister in Bryn Mawr.  We spent the day touring Philadelphia and other communities in the area.  At Haverford College, we found traffic control very precise, if perhaps a tad cautious.

After a reasonably early departure from Hamilton, we had a pleasant drive through the upstate New York countryside.  A paradigm shift occured in Fair Haven, however:  we passed over into Vermont, the Green Mountain State, Paradise. In case this photo seems insignificant, please realize it was one of seven towns I added to my Vermont 251 project.  By the time we arrived in Shelburne, and our friends, Bill Ryerson and Leta Finch, I had brought my total of Vermont towns visited and photographed to 133, I believe.  (Need to recount.)