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Nothing special was on the agenda for our first complete day in Laramie. When Evan got home in the afternoon, we took the dogs for a walk around Huck Finn Pond. The sky out here is absolutely beautiful. I think I could spend a good portion of my time here just looking at the sky and the clouds.
Here’s the newest addition to the Penn-O’Toole household. Molly is 11 weeks old and is probably the cutest basset puppy I’ve seen. She and Seamus seem to really enjoy each other.

On the other hand, there are sometimes when she’s had enough! Take for example the picture below. Seamus and Bubba just wouldn’t leave her alone. She is a little sweety and likes to snuggle.

We got in to St. Joe about 8:30 est and checked in at the Ramada. This is where we’ve stayed numerous times on our travels out west. However, we think we will start looking for another place to stay in the future. During the night, after we had gotten Bubba settled down, Tommy was asleep and I was almost asleep, the alarm went off in the hotel. Not our room–the hotel! It took a while for them to figure out there was no problem and turn the alarm off. It went off 6 more times in about 2 hours time. Needless to say, it took a while for us to get to sleep. When I checked out in the morning and told them we were “not happy”, they weren’t apologetic at all. They did, however, give us a $15 credit–Big Smelly Deal!!

On our trip through Nebraska we decided to get off I80 and travel some 2 lane roads and visit some of the least populated counties in the US. One of which is Arthur County. I had told Tommy that when we got there I wanted to make sure I got a couple pictures of the Arthur name on signs. Terry and Chris–this one’s for you!

Now before anyone out there gets upset and reports us to the ASPCA, we didn’t kill this coyote. Someone had evidently hit it, got out of their car and slung him up over the sign. Guess this should give coyotes a message, huh?

The whole county of Arthur, Nebraska has a total population of 476. The town of Arthur’s population is 134. We had read an article in Sports Illustrated about their 6-man football team. Get this–the high school has 34 students and 19 are on the football team! Arthur also boasts that they have the smallest courthouse in the world. I took some pictures of it, but wasn’t terribly impressed.

We journeyed on to Alliance. Alliance is the home to Carhenge (see below). Isn’t it amazing what people think up to do?

We left early this morning to head to Laramie for the University of Wyoming Homecoming. As you can see, traveling doesn’t seem to bother Bubba at all. He slept most of the time that the truck was moving. Just hope he can sleep tonight in the hotel.
When we got past Boonville, Missouri, we headed north on Hwy. 65 to Chillicothe. We stopped at Peters Market and saw these pumpkins.

Bubba really doesn’t like to have his picture taken, but I was able to catch this yesterday. The concern in his eyes is from me telling him he’s going to go visit Seamus, Molly and the CAT!

Tommy and I went to the Farmers’ Market down by the Chattahoochee River this morning. I was surprised at how many tomatoes they still had.

On our way home from the Farmers’ Market we decided to stop for breakfast. What could be better than hot glazed donuts from Krispy Kreme?

Here are a few pictures from my brand new baby–the Nikon D90! I’m loving it–just wish I could get some gas so I could drive around looking for things to shoot. Bubba doesn’t like having his picture taken. :(

No new pictures today. I really tried to get some this weekend when Gracie and George came to visit. Bubba and George get along pretty well but Gracie is just not used to having a puppy bug her all day long! Anne and Cleg picked them up about 5:00 yesterday and Bubba was pooped!

Bubba went to the vet today and got neutered. Poor baby. We just got him a bit ago and he is lying down on the sofa next to me–asleep. I hope that he’ll be able to sleep well tonight.

Before we left St. Michael’s, I had to get a picture of this for Amanda and Evan. I bet they wish they had one of these.Our next stop was Chincoteague, Virginia. Sue loved the name of this inn, so we decided we should stay here. I loved the way the room was decorated! Once again, we had to go eat–yep I got crab soup again. It was the best of the entire trip. If you’re ever in Chincoteague go to Bill’s–it was delicious!The reason we had decided to go to Chincoteague was so we could see the wild ponies of Assateague. This was supposed to be a sunset cruise. Unfortunately, they’d had a lot of rain and it was still cloudy. No picturesque sunset for us!
And the only wild ponies we saw were in a corral next to the hotel. It was an enjoyable cruise though. We saw from afar two eagles–one bald and one golden. This guy rode up on his Harley as we were waiting to get onto the boat for our cruise. Is he not the funniest thing with his goggles?
We got up Wednesday morning and headed back home. It was a thoroughly enjoyable trip. I especially love driving the non-interstate roads.

Thanks Anne and Sue for going with me!

After eating breakfast and checking out of our hotel, we headed to Babe Ruth’s Birthplace. This should have been a fairly easy thing to do, but we got turned around a bit. Anne’s GPS kept trying to get us to turn the wrong way on a one-way street. And those of you who know me and love me know that I’m not the best map reader. :) But, we found it!

Here is Sue checking out some of the information on Babe Ruth. Kerry and Anne at the front door.
If Julian and Tommy had been with us we would have probably been there most of the day. Since they were not there, we were able to leave and make it to Annapolis for lunch. I had never been to Annapolis and enjoyed it very much. I would like to go back and spend a couple of days. We took a water taxi to lunch at Carrol’s Creek Cafe. Lunch (for Kerry included crab) was really good, but dessert was scrumptious!

The view from our table at lunch.

Looking down toward the bay.We left Annapolis and drove to St. Michael’s where we checked into the Old Brick Inn.

Dinner was at the Town Dock. Yes, I had some more crab!

On our drive from Fredericksburg to Baltimore we took a side road and found a wonderfully picturesque church and cemetery. St. Ignatius Catholic Church

Although you can’t see much of it, that’s the Potomac River beyond the cemetery. A very nice woman who had come to church to attend mass gave us a quick tour in and around the church. One of the neatest things about the inside of the church was each kneeler had a needlepoint cover on it. This was such a beautiful area.

A few miles past the church we found Port Tobacco.

The Port Tobacco Schoolhouse.

When we got to Baltimore, we stayed at the Renaissance Harborpoint Place.

We had a great view of the harbor from our 7th floor room.We took a water taxi to take us to Fells Point for lunch. Lunch was at the Riptide by the Bay. Sue had to wear a bib while eating her crab, scallops, mussels, shrimp, corn, etc.!! Since we had eaten a late and very large lunch, we decided to go to the Irish Pub across the street from our hotel for a snack. We sat out on the deck and enjoyed this view: