Using a guidebook to small-town celebrations, the Wendlands are making travel plans for 2016.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
January 2016
January 2016
With a new year come new opportunities to explore new places and meet new people. As I write this, our motorhome sits in the driveway of our Michigan home. But I keep glancing out at it, chomping at the bit to hit the road.
Yes, by January, there’s snow on the rooftop solar panels. And, yes, the weather is cold. But for Jennifer and me, the 2016 RV season is about to start, with our annual trek to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and our winter campout at Tahquamenon Falls State Park.
We’ll be up there January 2-14, 2016, joined by more than 50 others from around the United States and Canada who will camp in the snow. Typically, the area has 3 feet of snow on the ground at this time of year. We’ll participate in snowshoeing and winter photography, and sit around raging nighttime bonfires.
This will mark the fourth year in a row Jennifer and I have camped up there in January. That first year, we were all alone. As we started raving about it in this column and on our Roadtreking.com blog, others expressed an interest. This year it will look like a rally. That’s how many are interested in winter camping.
Is it for you? Probably not if you hate the cold and snow.
But if you have a sense of adventure, it is a great experience. Your coach needs to be winterized, of course. And you won’t have running water. So, you bring your own bottled water for drinking and cooking. And to flush your toilet, you pour in RV antifreeze. But other than that, winter camping is just like summer camping. Except you need more clothes when you go outside.
The Tahquamenon Falls excursion kicks off our year of travel. From there, we usually head south down Interstate 75 toward Naples, Florida, for a week or two, and then slowly make our way along the Gulf Coast through February and March.
This year we again plan to head west in late spring and early summer, but we have yet to decide on the “big trip” destination. We want to visit Yellowstone and Glacier national parks again, but the Canadian Rockies are also calling.
One thing we will continue to do in 2016 is to minimize driving on the interstates, and instead concentrate on the “blue highways.” And I vow to vigorously apply my 330 rule: drive no more than 330 miles a day and/or stop by 3:30 in the afternoon.
We are armed with a new book that will help to guide our travels. It’s called Amazing Festivals (Hundreds of Hometown Celebrations) by Donald Vaughan and Eric Peterson.
We picked up this book in October and have made a list of several dozen small-town festivals and special events of interest. The book describes more than 200 festivals in all 50 states. Mr. Vaughan was a guest on my Roadtreking RV Podcast a few weeks ago, and he told me how they selected events that celebrate different cultures, regional foods, music, and special activities that spotlight historical, spectacular, and sometimes just weird and wacky fun.
As we travel, we have set a rule that whenever we see a sign or promotion advertising a festival along our route, we will stop and visit. This has led us to some of the most enjoyable places we’ve ever seen, places that we didn’t even know existed, and places that taught us things about the United States and its people.
This past November, one such place was Dothan, Alabama, where we came upon the National Peanut Festival.
The area around Dothan, in the southeast corner of Alabama, is called the Wiregrass region and constitutes the “Peanut Capital of the World.” Boosters note that about half of all the peanuts produced in the United States are grown within a 100-mile radius of Dothan.
I love peanuts. But I had no idea they had such historical and agricultural significance to the United States. Back at the very first National Peanut Festival in 1938, the guest speaker was Dr. George Washington Carver, one of the most significant botanists the world has ever known.
Carver is one of my heroes. He was born into slavery, overcame great difficulties, and accomplished amazing things. Back in the 1930s, as recounted in the book The Lost Choice: A Legend of Personal Discovery by Andy Andrews, Southern soil was tapped out. Decades of growing cotton had depleted the land into a mess of withering weeds. Carver’s idea was to alternate soil-depleting cotton crops with soil-enriching crops, such as peanuts.
The problem was, there was no commercial use for the peanut, thus no demand and no reason for farmers to plant them.
Carver prayed. And he told his boss, Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute, that God revealed to him more than 300 uses for the peanut. As a result, Carver’s idea changed the face of agriculture in the South. In 1938, four years after he first suggested cotton/peanut crop rotation, Carver became the keynote speaker at the first National Peanut Festival in Dothan, Alabama.
Today the annual event is celebrated with a huge carnival with lots of rides, as befits any fair. But what draws Jennifer and me are the exhibits; the shows; and, of course, the food. We love the animals. And at this festival, we watched local Future Farmers of America (FFA) kids proudly exhibit their cows and lambs. The livestock were all being carefully groomed before walking into the ring. And the proud kids wore their best cowboy hats, boots, and buckles.
Entertainment abounded. Local churches sent gospel choirs. The high school’s band boosters had their own tent. A cowboy show staged by “The Rhinestone Roper” captivated old and young alike.
Peanuts, of course, were everywhere. Huge washtubs full of raw peanuts were available. Just reach in and grab a handful. There were boiled peanuts — a Southern tradition — but also roasted peanuts, chocolate-covered peanuts, hot peanuts, and sugared peanuts.
We would have missed this wonderful festival entirely had we been on the interstate. Across North America, festivals and special events like that happen every week. So, this year we plan to attend a bunch of them.
I’m not great on plotting out our travels long in advance. Things change; we get lured off our route by serendipity; or, we decide to head in a different direction at the last minute. But, armed with the Amazing Festivals book, we will be able to see what events are held in the states we’re traveling through and, if distance and time are in our favor, take them in.
It’s a new year. Let’s get going!
I hope to see you out there in 2016.