2024 The Year in Review

 2024, a year we will not soon forget. Northeast, Southeast, Midwest to about as far to the Northwest as one can get. 21 States, 4 Canadian Provinces, God only knows how many breweries and distilleries!

We started off the year at our daughters in Pennsylvania where we spent several weeks remodeling their living room. Then we headed south to Savahanna where we visited Forrest and family. 

Barb and Somer in Savannah

From there, it was along the east coast of Florida, a first for us, where we met up with friends Dan and Jeannie in St. Augustine doing some sightseeing and fishing. We continued our way south to the Everglades and Keys where we visited friends Shawn and Kim as well as Dan and Mary. Of course, there was more fishing along the way. 

Dan, Jeannie and Barb walking the beaches of St. Augustine

Barb, Kim, Shawn and me

Barb (Dan in the background) with a shark-eaten Yellowtail

Then it was up the west coast of Florida where we visited my sister Judy, good friends Mike and Liz, Shirley and Al and Dan and Jeannie again. So many good times and memories.

Sister Judy and Mike

Mike and Liz

Shirley and Al

Amidst all this fun, we lost two good friends and a sister in 2024. Greg, Russ and sister Beth will be missed, but never forgotten

These are a couple of well-traveled dogs going from coast to coast and beyond. Zoey got her picture taken on the Florida and Alaska coast, both met lots of friends along the way and Dakota got to go hunting in North Dakota!

Leaving Florida, we headed north stopping in Alabama to meet friends Vicki and Merrell, and Guy and Sue, then it was off to Nashville, another first, and back to Kentucky for more distilleries before heading home to South Dakota. 

Vicki and Merrell

Guy and Sue

2024 also brought our 10-year retire-iversary. In some ways it feels like it has just been a few short years, on others, it seems like it has been decades since we have worked at our career jobs. 

Then it was off to North Dakota for spring planting! After 4 weeks, it was back home before we started our Great Alaskan Adventure! We started the adventure off by heading towards Edmonton to see friends Dave and Leslie. This is also where we got our biggest surprise of the year when Steve and Dianne surprised us!

What can I say about our summer to accurately describe it? Rich and Susan's hospitality, meeting up with Steve and Deb, the fishing! All of those would take too many paragraphs, I will just let the pictures do the talking....

Steve and Deb

After that world wind tour, it was back to the farm for fall harvest and hunting with my son, Forrest, good friend Bob and my long-lost nephew John. 

Then coming home to have Jessica and family fly out and having all of our kids here at the same time was just the icing on the cake for an incredible year!

The best thing out of 2024? Well, the pictures above photographically were my favorites, but the best thing was to get through the entire year without having to see Dino face-to-face! I don't know if I will be as lucky in 2025, but one can hope!

But enough of last year, let's talk about 2025! We rang in the New Year in Louisville Kentucky, the home of oh so many distilleries. 

We spent our first night on the road in Lexington, Nebraska at....wait for it...... a winery!

So far, we have been on the road for four days, three of which were travel days meaning our wheels were rolling over 6 hours each of those. Day one found us landing in Lexington Nebraska at a Harvest Host; Mac's Creek Winery.  It was 5:30 when we arrived, there was one person working and we were the only customers. We each ordered 5 wines to try. Soon a couple more customers arrived, and the place was a little livelier.  All good, but nothing we would buy. Way too sweet and fruity for my liking and Barb, well, she just does not like wine. She did like these a little more than others though as she said it was like drinking grape juice. 

We spent the night in their parking lot, nice and quiet. The next day we drove to Arcadian Moon Winery in Higginsville, Missouri. Also, a Harvest Host, they have a full restaurant and an event center. We ordered a couple of appetizers and watched the Vikings beat the Packers! I tried two wines there, the cabernet and merlot. Both were very good. Barb had a Coor Light which she said tasted like a Coors Light. It is so nice that these businesses allow RV'ers to stay in their parking lots. It is also a good draw for the business as well. While we were the only campers on this night, they said on other nights they have had up to 22 campers! We spent a little over $70 there so it is a nice little boost for the business as well. 

Of course it is "dry camping", meaning there is no power, sewer or water, but being fully self-contained in our camper we do not need them every day. We are also what we call "cold camping", meaning we have no water in our camper at the moment as everything would freeze. We use bottled water for the dogs, brushing our teeth and such. We have enough antifreeze in each of the waste tanks from winterizing to keep anything we pour down the drain from freezing. Wet wipes keep us fresh as daisy's each day. But after a few days, even daisy's start to wilt and it is time to find a campground with electric and showers. 

Day 3 (the last of our long driving days) found us passing through St. Louis. Not the cleanest city in the country. 

We landed for the day in Leavenworth Indiana, a nice but small town on the border of Indiana and Kentucky. It was also my birthday! Barb took me to supper at The Overlook, I think it is the only restaurant in the area, but very good food! On a bluff overlooking the river, the views are incredible.

That is Kentucky on the other side. This Harvest Host was a little different than the others as it had no business associated with it. Just a couple who had 150 acres and allowed RV'ers to stop and spend the night. They must had bought a subdivision before it was developed as there were roads and street signs, but it was well grown over and no houses. Interesting. 

Overnight the wind picked up and it rained hard and then gentle. Nothing like the sound of a gentle rain on the roof of the camper to help you sleep in in the morning. Well, the only reason we sleep in is because we moved two time zones over. If we were at home, we still would have woken up at 4:20am. As it was, we woke up at 6:20am eastern time. 

This day (Tuesday) was to be the start of our Booze Tour! Over the next week we have 11+ distillery tours scheduled as we continue to check off our goal to visit as many as we can. 

First up was Evan Williams in downtown Louisville. 

The tour was good and gave a history lesson on Evan Williams himself as well as the distillery. 

A few hours later we were at Peerless Distilling just down the road. It is hard to compare the two tours as they were both so different. I liked the facility of Peerless best, but maybe the tour at Evan Willams was a little better. 

Either way, I would recommend both. Of course, we have bought way too much alcohol already and we are just two tours in! I think we have 6, no wait, 7 bottles already and so many more tours to go. Louisville is a really cool town. Between the distilleries, baseball memorabilia and horse facilities, there is a lot to see!

We rung in the new year in the Cabela's parking lot in Louisville. I think we made it to 9:00, but were awaken by fireworks at midnight so technically we were awake for new year's! Today, everything is closed for the holiday. We are at a campground getting everything charged up, using their Wi-Fi to post this blog and most important of all....Showers! 

Tomorrow the tours continue, 10+ tours in the next 5 days, I better get a hold of our credit card company and see if I can increase our credit limit!