The Fallons Crisscross America
by Bruce & Diane Fallon

This is a travelogue of a 4-week trip Bruce and Diane Fallon, of Freeland Washington, took in their 1970 Dodge Travco motor home in 1999.

Our dream was to see the fall leaves in New England, “some day,” maybe after we retired and had time to travel.  After losing people close to us in there 50’s, we decided that “some day” was now.  We needed to do the things we wanted to do while we still could.

Bruce and I left Whidbey Island the 25th of September on the 9:30 ferry.  We were so excited to be starting out on our dream trip.

We traveled as far as the Lincoln’s 10,000 silver bar in Haugen Montana. Bruce and I ate dinner there and stayed in the RV area, at no charge. It was a frosty morning when we woke up.

The next day we gassed up in Missoula for $1.39⁹ a gallon. We traveled on to Bozeman and got a few groceries there. We stayed at the KOA at Harden, Montana; it cost us $18.25 for the night. The day had been interesting weather wise. There were snow showers and then it would be sunny and then the clouds would come back in and the snow would start up again.

September 27th found us at Custer’s last stand memorial in Sheridan Wyoming.  It is an awesome sight to see the crosses where people fell and to visit the museum.  We saw antelope, deer, elk, and buffalo today.  We took a wrong turn on the way to Mt. Rushmore and had a real adventure on a narrow curvy road.  There was snow at Mt Rushmore’s KOA.

After visiting Mt. Rushmore we traveled on to Murdo, South Dakota.  We went through the car museum there. It has other thing to look at there too, including an old jail cell.  We spent the night in Chamberlain.

We made it into Minnesota. We had been experiencing the smell of gas in the home especially when we stopped. Bruce determined we had a leaking diaphragm on the accelerator pump.  We stopped at a NAPA parts store and they had the necessary kit so we went to a nearby church parking lot and repaired the carburetor.  It was a beautiful fall day.  We traveled just fine the rest of the day until we had just crossed the Mississippi River into La Cross Wisconsin.  We decided to exit the freeway to get groceries.  We got in a left-hand turn lane and the motor home died on us and we could not get it started again.  Two young guys came and pushed us out of the turn lane and Bruce worked on it and discovered the wear block on the points was worn down to the point where they were not opening, it needed new points.  He fixed it enough to get to the Napa store in town and put the new points in.  We left La Cross and traveled on to the KOA in Oakdale Wisconsin.

There was a beautiful oak tree we parked beside.  We got to talking to the manager and told him we were heading to New England to see the leaves and he told us other people had came back from there and told him that was the prettiest tree they had seen.  He jokingly told us we could look at it and turn around and head home.

On September 30th we went into Baraboo, Wisconsin. We really enjoyed walking around town.  My grandmother was born there and lived there until she was 8, when her family moved to California.  I remember the stories she told me about living there.  We had chocolate malts in the drug store that was built in 1855.  Bruce found the fan system interesting; a belt on pulleys made the fans turn.

We went out to see Devils Lake.  There is an old building built out over the water.  We were told they use to hold dances there.

We got back in to the motor home and headed toward Chicago.  We stayed at the Flying J truck stop in Gary Indiana that night.  We were kind of pushing it to get to a family reunion in Toledo Ohio.

Bruce and I got in to Toledo around 3 PM the next day and stayed at the Big Sandy KOA.  I found all the toll roads across the states interesting.  I had never seen any thing like that before.

We drove from Ohio to Pennsylvania.  Driving around we saw an Amish man in his horse and buggy.  Also a family on their front porch, it is so interesting seeing the way they dress and the simpler way of life they live.  The fall days were sunny and beautiful.

Bruce and I came across the town of Volant and played tourist there.  The Amish sell home made items there.  We bought cookies at the old mill.  I loved that town.  When we left we drove past horse and buggies and we saw children helping in the fields.  It almost felt like we were in another century because of the way they dressed and the tools they used.  It was one of the best days of the whole trip. We stayed at Council Cup campground.

We left and drove through New York.  We got into Bennington, Vermont.  We stopped to take a picture of First Church.

Robert Frost is buried in the graveyard there.  We met Mike, the caretaker, and he gave us a tour of the church.  He was opening the church up for a wedding rehearsal.  He also gave us pamphlets on places to visit in the area.  The Bennington memorial and the Bennington museum which exhibits Grandma Moses paintings.  We asked him where we could stay and he was directing us out of town somewhere.  We told him all we needed was level place as we were all self contained, so he told there was a municipal lot down the hill and turn left at the “fish fry.”  We found it and put a roast in the oven and went walking downtown while our dinner cooked.  I loved this town and want to return so we can really explore the rest of the town.  I want to go back and spend more time in the New England area.

The next day we traveled into New Hampshire and on to Maine.  We headed east on Old Orchard road.  I wanted to see the Atlantic Ocean.  Old Orchard Beach is a stretch of beach that is resort.  It has a pier with shops and a theme park there, also lots of shops by it.  It was a cloudy day so the ocean was gray, a big disappointment for me.  I wanted to see the color of the Atlantic.  I hear it is green, I grew up by the blue Pacific Ocean and I wanted to see the difference.  Bruce thought by traveling down the coast I would get to see the ocean again but the roads we traveled did not get close to the ocean.  The fall leaves were just spectacular through out New England.

Another family commitment had us hurrying, we drove through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and we stayed in New Jersey that night.  We saw deer every where in New Jersey.  We traveled through rain all that day.

We gassed up in New Jersey for $1.17⁹ (I wish gas prices were like that today).  The motor home also turned the speedometer over 100,000 miles in New Jersey.  We traveled in to southern Pennsylvania.  We saw a sign for Hershey, PA and we decided to take the chocolate town tour.  That is really some thing to see. You walk up a ramp that looks like a forest that grows cocoa.  The paintings on the wall and the taped music and lighting made it seem real.  They had video pictures that showed what the pods look like when they are ripe.  The next video showed a man with a big knife cutting them and then the gunny sacks being loaded. It told the story of the harvest so to speak.

After that, you walk down some stairs and get into little tram type cars and it takes you on a tour of the step-by-step process it takes to make the chocolate into candy bars.  Once you exit the tram and walked up the stairs, they hand out small Hershey chocolate bars.  Of course I did not pass up the gift shop there.

Bruce and I traveled on to Gettysburg and set up camp at the KOA there.  We toured the battlefields and the monuments.  What an awesome place it seems unreal that so many soldiers died there.  Took in the cemetery and saw the site where President Lincoln gave his famous speech. We toured General Mead’s headquarters in the white cabin.  If you get there, don’t miss the museum.  One exhibit shows two bullets that collided in mid air and merged together.

Another brother to visit in Kentucky so we drove hard to get there.  We got there and Dean took us to see Lincoln’s cabins.  One is on private property.  Hard to believe that whole families could live in those small spaces.

I wanted to make sure we got to spend time at the Pioneer village museum in Minden, Nebraska, so we headed for there and boy what a treat that was.  They have a covered wagon, antique cars, boats, planes and a pioneer town set up with a church and school house.  It is amazing they have about one of every thing from the first microwave oven that sold for $2500, to scenes showing home life every 15 to 20 years from the frontier years to 1970.  They now have a website www.pioneervillage.org this is a must see place but you will need a couple of days to go through it.  We left Minden and headed west. 

We stayed in a cornfield in Nebraska.  More family to visit in Colorado Springs, CO. so we packed up the motor home and got into Robert’s on October 19th.  Kathy works at the Garden of the Gods and we got a pass to see the movie there and got rocks in the gift shop for our grand sons, TJ and Trent.  Brother-in-law Robert drove us through the rock formations.  What a truly unique sight they are.  The balancing rock I found really amazing.  Of course it is great to see Pikes Peak and to think of all the wagon trains that traveled thorough that area.  We headed for home wishing we had more than 4 weeks of vacation time.

On leaving Colorado and somewhere in Utah, the alternator quit alternating.  Bruce had replaced it just prior to leaving on the trip so we just ran off the batteries and recharged in the campground.  We have two large house batteries in addition to the engine battery plus a 6.5 kW generator so we were not worried. Bruce had to be back to work October 25th.  There is so much more to see and do.  We want to take a slower trip the next time we go.  So we can take the time to see more and do more, and get to visit with family members longer, but at least we got to do it once and Bruce and I are glad we did not wait for “some day”.

Before we left, I asked Bruce if we could get along together so closely for 4 weeks.  We did not want the trip to end. 4 weeks is not nearly long enough.

The only problems we had were the accelerator pump diaphragm, points and the alternator quitting.  All minor problems on a trip that covered more than 8000 miles in 4 weeks.  We found the gas prices on our trip varied from $1.65 to $1.15 with the highest prices around our home area. We averaged about 8.5 mpg for fuel.

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