For our summer camping trip of 2012 we decided to take a loop of hodge podge visits that would culminate in  our camping for 2 weeks on the the Maryland Shore at Assateague State Park again. What began as a casual pace of stops for the 2 weeks before Assateague eventually became known as our  Music Tour with a stop at Mammoth Caves in KY.  If this sounds like a loosely planned adventure, it was. We decided to just see where the road took us before Assateague.

We headed out of CT with a compass direction of West and see where the road took us.  The first night on the road we found ourselves stopping for the night late in a campground in Hubbard, OH. As Joanne said. very basic/safe, not the cleanest , but met our needs for $27.00. The net morning we decided to head towards Cleveland, OH with the thoughts of finding a campground and visiting the the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the next day.

While Mike was excited to go to this bucket list museum, Joanne was really on the fence. You see Mike is one of those people that needs to read everything in a museum (must be that completion gene he has), and Joanne is more of a breeze through the venue. Most things in life they areon the opposite sides with Joanne being the detailed one and Mike making the more general observations until you get to museums and this is where they switch sides for a short while. Go figure.

We spent 6.5 hours at the Rock & Roll Museum and could have spent more time as well. The entrance fee was $30.00 per person and the parking lot next to the museum was $10.00. We both agreed it was very informative, well done and a must for anyone that has grown up in the Rock & Roll Generation. Between the the early starts of Rock-abilly to the 50’s tunes (made popular again by Happy Day’s when we were growing up and American Graffiti), to the 60’s (English invasion,  Psychedelic Rock, Southern Rock & Classic Hard Rock), the 70’s singer & song writers, Arena Rock, and Disco , and then the advent of the 80’s MTV and Punk Rock, followed by the 90’s Hip-Hop & Rap all genres were well represented.

The top floor always has a profiled band and the band that was being specially profiled when we visited was “The Grateful Dead” so you can imagine how much cultural information Mike had to read on that floor.

We followed up our museum visit with a Street Festival in downtown Cleveland that had some terrific food vendors. After touring the street festival we then  headed back to our campsite uin Medina, OH. About a 30 minute drive.

The next day we continued driving west towards Detroit, MI. We thought it might be fun to visit the Ford F150 factory and the Henry Ford museum. The Ford F 150 factory had been on Mike’s list since he bought his truck in 2010 and after a friend of his had been their a few years back and raved about the tour.

The Henry Ford Rouge Factory Tour and Museum were worth the trip. Even though Mike had to drag Joanne to the F150 factory she said after wards she was very glad we had gone and how impressive the factory and assembly/production facility is. Overwhelming is the only adjective that I can use to describe the organization, manufacturing, technology, and facilities that this American icon created. Henry Ford transformed manufacturing and probably was the single biggest change agent that helped create the Middle Class in America and change the way we do everything because of his automobile.

The Henry Ford Museum can best be described as a museum of Americana Culture. We thought we could get through this place pretty quickly and almost instanly realized we had not alltted enough time for this experience. After a long day of discovery in Dearborn, MI we headed back to the Wayne County Campground our location for 2 nights. This location is nothing fancy and is literally  a site on the County Fair Fields. It was clean, quiet, convenient, and had a small footpath to a Walmart that was in walking distance.  Fortunately we had electric hook-ups as it was nearly 100 degrees and 100% humidity out for both days.We done’t use air conditioners much though we were glad we had it for these couple of days.

The next day we decided go into inner city Detroit and take a tour at the Motown Museum and Home to Hitsville U.S.A. Entry cost was only $10.00. While the museum was small the tour guide was fantastic and it was great to see how Motown began and how they groomed their stars, The pictures displayed throughout the museum and the music that is played in the background really brings back the memories of so many of those classic hits that we all seem to know the words to now matter our age. The classic line of the day, learned from our tour guide, was ” Does anyone know what you call a Temptation that can’t dance? – A Four Top” – That still makes us both laugh. So many times on this tour you got to stand in some location/recording room and there on the wall were pictures of some of Motown’s most famous artists like (The Temptations, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, and Smokey Robison & the Miracles) standing in the same location. This place is a bargain and well worth the price of admission.

That evening we met (The Jablonski’s) some college friends that live in Bloomfield. MI and had a great dinner at their home. One of the the best parts of RVing is to be able to connect or reconnect with past friends in your travels.

We left the following morning early and headed to our next stop Mammoth Caves, KY. We have wanted to visit Mammoth Caves ever since our visit to Carlsbad Caverns, NM back in 2001. They are 2 of the largest cave systems in the country, though very different. Carlsbad is a wet system and Mammoth is a dry cave so we have wanted to see the diversity between them. On the drive thorough Kentucky their were many other stops that we added to our future list.  Places like the Corvette Museum, Maker’s Mark, and the other stops on the bourbon trail. We did take one detour during the day as we decided it would be good to stretch our legs for a few minutes. The stop was to take a a quick tour of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace in Hodgenville, KY.  The park is small, though included just the right amount of walking and information to stretch our legs and learn some details of the early years of our 16th president.

We continued on to our Campsite for the next coupe of days Singing Hills Campground ($56.00 for 2 nights). It is a nice spot, convenient to our destination Mammoth Caves, clean, friendly, full  hook -ups and a pull through site. We had a terrible thunderstorm our first night that saw buckets of water drop from the sky and high winds though we hunkered down and weathered the conditions.

We had spent considerable time researching which cave tour we would take the next day. We decided that the Grand Avenue Tour (4 miles & 4 hours) would be the hike. Just slightly strenuous though nothing a person in good physical fitness would have any difficulty with. ($24.00/ticket).  The tour was fun and different than our experience at Carlsbad Caverns years earlier. Wait till you have that moment when they turn out all lights in the cave to show you what dark really is. (Very cool). After Joanne made sure she got her National Park Passport stamped we left for our our campsite and hopefully a campfire for the evening,

After enjoying our couple of nights close to Mammoth Caves we had decided over dinner, and our traditional map overview, that we were just too close to Nashville not to try to stop for a visit. Now you know why we ended up calling this “Our Music Tour”.

We arrived just in time to set up camp at the Nashville Country RV Resort for the night ($31.96). The campground seemed very well run and was conveniently close to everything on the tourists mind in Nashville. With our commitment to be in Assateague in 2 days we really only had 1 full day to spend in Nashville. In hindsight not nearly enough time. Our whirlwind tour of Nashville included: The hop -on, hop-off bus tour, a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame, an early dinner at one of the downtown Honky-Tonks (Roberts), and then the evening spent at the Grand Ole Opry show. Wow were we ever pushing the tourist envelope that day. The Opry included songs by Charlie Pride, Darius Rucker (Former Hootie frontman and now country singer,  and the comedy/song of Little Jimmy Dickens. It was an incredible evening that we are so glad we were able to get last minute tickets for. We both agreed that Nashville deserves considerably more time and attention and will definitely be on our list for a longer visit. (Update: Our niece Allysa is now a college student and aspiring country singer/song writer attending Belmont University in Nashville. Guess we will get  chance to visit again in the near future hopefully.)

Since we had had expanded our loop of visits in the south much farther than originally considered we ended up much farther away from Assateague and the family union than we had planned for.   We spent the better part of the next couple of days trying to get back to Assateague on the planned arrival date by the rest of the family. Fortunately the driving took us directly through Raleigh, NC and Joanne’s brothers house. We stopped their for a night of rest and laundry before car pooling together on to Assateague.

After this very busy couple of weeks on the road we were so looking forward to just relaxing on the beach at Assateague with family. Of course Assateague did not disappoint and the time spent their over the next 2 weeks was terrific. No question we packed a lot into “The Music Tour Summer” and this Revolutionary Journey…

Assateague Family Reunion Summer 2012