After leaving Birmingham, Alabama it was time to head to a destination we have wanted to visit for many years, New Orleans. The GPS was set for south. We had 550kms to go to our destination and apart from a couple of rest breaks, we followed Interstate 11 in an almost straight line all the way. Arriving in New Orleans about 4pm there was only one option - straight in to the pool we could see from our verandah. As our hotel was right on the edge of the French Qu...

The reason for our visit to the area around Cherokee was to drive some of the picturesque roads we had ridden in 2009. The Blue Ridge Parkway, The Tail of the Dragon and Smoky Mountains National Park are all within spitting distance of Cherokee. All of these roads are made for motorcycling but alas, we would be doing them in the little red car! First up was The Tail of the Dragon. This road starts at Deal's Gap in North Carolina. The section known as the dragon ...

After a final photo with Howard we headed south. The next part of our trip would have us retracing some of the territory we covered on our bike in 2009. We decided to stay on the major roads to start with as we have a lot of miles to cover if we hope to do all the things we would like to do. We avoided the large cities of Trenton, Philadelphia and Washington and had a reasonably good run with light traffic. We stopped a couple of times for a breaks at thoroug...

We arrived at Howard's just after lunch so had plenty of time to reminisce before we went to check out the local watering hole. Many stories were exchanged about how wonderful we all were (I mean are!). We recalled students we had all taught in Warren and wondered what had happened to some of the young teachers we had met. By the end of the afternoon it was as if we had seen each other for the last time only a week ago, I guess this is usually the way with real f...

After leaving Cape Cod, we kept to the coast avoiding the traffic of Boston. We headed back towards Newport and followed Route 138 from Rhode Island to Connecticut and ended up at a little waterfront town called Mystic River. Greg thought it may have been the setting for yet another movie, "Mystic River", but after checking with the lady in the Army Navy Surplus Store we discovered that town was in Boston. We watched as the drawbridge over the Mystic River opened...