West Quest Part Deux - Day 77

Cincinnati, Ohio to Home in Harriman, Tennessee

Back to Day 76

Tuesday, 25 October 2022

This morning, we departed the FMCA Campground in Cincinnati and headed south for home.

The recent cold snap has resulted in the most spectacular Fall colors I can recall in a long time, making the drive through Ohio, Kentucky and then Tennessee a delightful experience.

Regular readers will recall we started this journey back on June 5th so that soon-to-be-next-door neighbors could rent our house until their house is completed. That trip — Summer ‘22 Cross Country — was to be about 80 days and take us all they way out to the West Coast and back. At the start of that journey time, Ollie’s “traveled to” map looked like this:

On Day 45 of that trip, we returned home to be with another neighbor, Wayne Rose, following the sudden loss of his wife Judy. While this was a sad and tragic delay to our Summer ‘22 Cross Country, the three weeks we stayed with Wayne at his house worked out as the folks renting our house are experiencing inevitable construction delays.

After soliciting reader suggestions for the name of the upcoming second attempt at heading all the way to the West Coast, we settled on West Quest Part Deux and headed out again on 11 August.

At the start of West Quest Part Deux, Ollie’s “traveled to” map looked like this:

And now that we successfully completed West Quest Part Deux, it now looks like this:

As we crested the hill and saw our neighborhood today, here’s how things looked:

Wayne’s house, where we will park Ollie for a few days, is at the back far left on the lake. Our house is the third one from the left on the lake. The white house being built by the folks renting our house is to the right of our house. Two other new houses are in the foreground.

So we are sort of “home.” We are going to kill some time for a few weeks by going to a local campground. But the bottom line is that Day 77 marks the official end of West Quest Part Deux.

Stats: 9,871.1 miles, 869.5 gallons of gas burned, 242:32:44 engine hours and 11.3 mpg average.

In the coming days, I hope to find the time write a wrap-up post with thoughts on what we saw and people we met in this magnificent country. And for dedicated readers, here’s a tease of what we have planned for 2023.

Winter/Spring ‘23 Cross Country from late January to early April is shaping up to look something like this:

And our Summer ‘23 Cross Country (West Quest Part Trois?) is roughly planned to look like this:

Yes, that is at least two trips across country in 2023 and maybe a third in the Fall/Winter that would look a lot like the Winter/Spring trip.

Thank you for following Oliver’s Travels. I would appreciate feedback and comments on what you enjoy most. There will be occasional posts here until our next big trip. In the meantime, Grace and Peace. ~Scott