The First Week of Our Journey across the U.S.

Published by Terrance Ó Dhomnaill in Blog Article · Friday 16 May 2025 · 15:15
Tags: Crann, na, beatha, journey, U.S., travel, first, week, adventure, exploration, road, trip, experiences, culture

There won't be any audio or video podcasts for The Village Oak Tree while I'm out travelling the country for the next four weeks. Instead, I will offer any visitors a copy of my travel blog published on my Substack page once a week (as I can get to it) here in this blog.

The first leg of our journey started in central Virginia, where we spent last weekend getting everything ready to go for our month long journey to California and back.

As you can see from the picture, I'm ready for pretty much anything. We have lots of food and clothing, and essentials for the dog, plus I'm packing a .22 calibre rifle in case I have to warn off any unwanted guests that may wander into our national park campsites along the way. The answer is no. I will not kill anything with a full coat of fur. I prefer to make a lot of noise to shoo them away. As for any other visitors that may walk on two legs and don’t have a naturally full coat of hair? I reserve judgement.

I made a few phone calls last week calling immigration lawyers around where we live to find out what we might need to bring in order to avoid troubles with ICE along the way.

We were advised to each carry our citizenship cards, and another pertinent document in my wife's case, but to only show that one if asked. So I have my passport card and she has her green card and Chinese passport. Believe me, I'll be closely monitoring all radio traffic on the roads west to learn if there are any checkpoints set up along the way. If I have to, I'm not above getting off the freeways to take back roads to get around any I.D. checkpoints, if possible.

I really hope I don't end up in a confrontation with ICE or local police along the way. I don't care about a traffic ticket, although I haven't been cited for anything since 1979. I'll pay the ticket, if I know I'm guilty. If that's all I have to worry about, I'll take the win.

I don't mind sayin', I'm anxious about this trip because of all of this ICE business. I have a legal concealed carry permit with the state of Virginia that's honoured in most states except a couple along my route and I plan to obey the state laws when I get to those states. Illinois and California are the two most prominent as they don't allow people to carry with another state's permit. Minor detail. I'll just be extra careful and obey state laws.

My wife is excited to go. We've been planning this trip for a couple of years now, ever since I received a large windfall tax reimbursement from Virginia. We set it aside in a savings account with a do not touch admonishment for us both in order to go on this once in a lifetime vacation.

We started making reservations for the national parks last year but who knew then that I would possibly have to deal with federal storm troopers in 2025. With the economy getting ready to crash, going on this loop around the country seems like a good idea right now. I might not be able to manage the logistics of such a trip later this year with the economy crashing.

I spent extra money on things I wouldn't ordinarily do for such a trip in the past. For one thing, I purchased and installed a dash cam. I also added my iPhone voice recording app front and centre on my phone dashboard in case I need to quickly record a conversation on the road. Here is a picture of our home away from home for the next month.

Another piece of advice I learned from reading Quora posts. Record any and all interactions with the storm troopers to be used later in a court of law, providing you get a chance to do that. Trump is working on suspending Habeas Corpus right now which would mean arrests and detentions without warrants or due process. Which they're already doing. Suspending Habeas Corpus just makes it more legal for them.

We also bought a couple of other things, like a small tabletop BBQ grill and a bug zapper. My wife wanted these things so I couldn't say no.

My biggest worry, besides the storm troopers, is that we will forget something. Some simple little thing that we should have remembered but didn't. We kid ourselves all the time about getting old and forgetting things. Like last Saturday when she misplaced our regular dog's leash somewhere and couldn't remember where she set it down. I looked everywhere I could think of and we ended up using another leash for our evening walk.

It turned up after we returned home as she had set it down behind a picture standing on our entryway table. Out of sight, out of mind. This is what happens when you start getting a little older. We misplace things all the time. I have OCD so I am one of those that gets anxious when something isn't put away exactly where it belongs, and we almost never rearrange the house because of my OCD. So losing something drives me a bit crazy.

I even started a list of things we needed to make sure we’d remember to take them with us. Of course, I was constantly adding things to the list over the last couple of weeks. But I was still anxious that I was going to forget something.

As it turns out, I did forget something. This next segment involves some IT jargon so bear with me. Whenever I travel, I carry a portable router with me for cyber security reasons. It turns out that my RV motorhome also has a router permanently installed on the roof. I figured out last year that it works fairly well but not as good as the portable English router I had purchased for this purpose a couple of years ago.

Stupid me, I forgot to bring my trusty portable router this time and I'm on a thirty day trip around the United States. What I've learned by using the onboard rooftop router, is that it's flaky. It doesn't like to stay connected to any network connections. Whether logging into it with my laptop using a WIFI signal to make the network connection to the campground WIFI or just keeping the connection stable, this has become a minor annoyance at best so far. I miss my trusty English router.

I'm posting this article from a KOA campground in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin tonight. I finally managed to carve out some time to get this article finished for this week's schedule.

I also want to talk about our trip to date. When we were planning this trip, we decided to travel up to Pennsylvania for the first leg of our journey. Last Monday, we drove up to Erie, Pennsylvania for our first layover so my wife could get a glimpse of one of the great lakes. She has never travelled up on interstate 90 to see what the U.S. looks like from the northern regions of the country so it seemed like a good opportunity for her to learn more about the United States, good or bad.

We did manage to get a glimpse of Lake Erie while we were driving across I-90 in Indiana on Tuesday so the crappy campground in Erie became a bad memory soon forgotten. The other goal was to give her a glimpse of Lake Michigan on our way through Chicago but, due to serious traffic issues and a lack of proper planning on my part, we missed out on that. I was fortunate that she was okay with that. I guess once she had seen one great lake, they all looked the same to her. Go figure.

The other thing I’ve noticed on every interstate in every state so far. State police everywhere. It seems that there are way more state police on the highways during this trip than I’ve ever seen before in recent memory and we’ve made quite a few trips around the east coast regions in the last three years. My first thought is this must be a part of Trump's new policies of extreme policing. I also have to think that this is part of the U.S. storm troopers running around snatching people up here in the U.S. with legal visas, green cards and even some naturalised citizens who have criticised Trump, Israel or posted on social media in support of Palestinians. We have all heard stories about how the DOJ is now using local and state police to help ICE snatch immigrants so this maybe all be part of that.

My wife has been in the U.S. legally for fifteen years now. But she still only has a green card. The last thing I need is for some overzealous state wehrmacht officer to pull me over just because he doesn't like something about my RV, despite my diligence in keeping everything shipshape. Things like brake lights, turn signal lights, headlights and so on. I also have disabled veteran license plates on so maybe they’ll leave us alone.

I am hoping that some of the stories I've read in the last few weeks saying that the chances of them pulling me over just to hassle me are slim. In fact, I'm counting on that. I want to have an uneventful trip in this once in a lifetime vacation through all of the western national parks. At least the most famous ones anyway.

We've had enough issues as it is that have caused us small detours and delays in the last couple of days. They started with minor maintenance issues, such as a leaky bathroom vanity faucet and a broken shower head. We stopped at a RV store in Ohio to pick up repair parts and fill up the propane tanks while we were there. I don't want run out of propane while we’re traveling across the South Dakota badlands. It’s actually still chilly at night up here in the northern latitudes.

That stop took a little longer than I expected as the national chain RV store I stopped at didn't have everything I needed. I ended up having to find a Lowes. Once I had all of the parts I needed, the actual repairs took me all of a half an hour to complete. I was smart enough to bring an extensive tool kit as I expected I might have to make some minor repairs along the way. I learned a long time ago to believe in Murphy's Law.

"If anything is going to go wrong, it will happen at the worst possible time"

Chicago was a nightmare to drive through on Wednesday. I commented to my wife that it seemed like nothing had changed since I’d been there thirty and forty years ago. I used to drive long haul freight trucks all over north America in the 1990's while I was an Army reservist and I was also stationed at the U.S. Navy Great Lakes Training Centre from 1986 to 1990 while I was still on active duty. For those who don't know, this base is on Lake Michigan in Waukegan, IL, about an hour or so north of Chicago.

Once we got out of Chicago, we made it north to Wisconsin Dells still travelling on I-90. Along the way, my wife made the request (I say this lightly but it was more of a demand) to have me find an urgent care facility on our journey north. She had a minor pain and wanted it gone. Okay then.

I was fortunate that we saw a sign right next to I-90 north for an Urgent Care facility in Janesville, WI. Problem solved. It cost me a couple of hours in time but it made my wife happy. They were even nice enough to try and bill our health insurance provider for us. I would gladly do it again without question. Let's hope we don't have any more medical issues requiring professional treatment. I brought an extensive first aid kit with us so I can manage most small things if needed. I have had a lot of basic first aid training from my military days so I'm confident that I can handle the little things that might come along.

We stayed an extra day here in Wisconsin Dells because I'd been here a few times back on the 1980's and I thought it would be a nice break to see the river and some of the touristy things this place is famous for. We were disappointed to say the least. We did take an expensive boat tour of the Upper Dells which was nice but at the end of the trip, I was slightly offended when the boat crew guide shamelessly came on the radio to solicit tips for the boat crew implying that they were all underpaid. He's a retired international opera singer, so he says. Maybe retired opera singers don't have any retirement pensions other than Social Security. As for the other crew members, I have to wonder if they’re truly underpaid or was this another form of grift? It left a bad taste with me. Needless to say, we didn't tip them.

Here is one photo I took during the river tour that gives everyone an idea of the best thing this town has to offer as far as things that aren’t deliberately trying to separate you from your hard earned money.

This tourist town that I remembered being so vibrant all those years ago now has a seedy quality to it. It looks run down and a former shell of itself. We won't be back. I expect that Wisconsin Dells will end up as just another economically failed tourist town in the not too distant future and it’ll be another victim of the failing U.S. empire. With the way Trump is gutting the country, this town’s demise here in Wisconsin may come very soon. Without tourists, this place will die quickly, like so many other places across the country.

Tomorrow, we continue our westward journey out to Yellowstone National Park and the other national parks in the neighbouring states out west. We should be in South Dakota by tomorrow night, if the Gods are with us.

I would have had some more pictures showing the run down town but I was stupid once again and I forgot to check the battery for my digital camera. A rookie mistake, forgive me Bruce Coulter. This is a small shout out to one of my favourite amateur photographers I'm friends with through my Medium.com account. I charged the battery today after we returned to the campground so what pictures we do have from our boat trip were taken with iPhones. Tomorrow will be better.

I'll be back next week with more observations of the United States from the ground level. I've observed quite a few things already about average Americans during my travels so far and I plan to share some of them with readers next week. Due to the uncertainty of the internet service in a lot of these RV campgrounds, I can't say exactly what day I'll be able to post something next week but I will try my best to post something mid-week.

Until then, be safe everyone and try to stay under the radar of the new storm troopers everywhere, unless you are one of those who is just fine with deporting all of the undocumented folks trying to escape the tyranny and corruption of the governments where they fled from. If you're okay with watching people being snatched off the streets, in courtrooms, from schools, from workplaces, from churches and everywhere else without due process. Just because they might have protested the war in Gaza, supported the Palestinians or called Donald Trump a mafia don or a grifter, as I have numerous times. Maybe you’re a lawyer who defended an immigrant in court. Maybe you're a journalist who interviewed someone affiliated with one of the designated terrorist groups, or any number of other things Trump and the Zionists don't like.

Be careful America, our insulated world has now come back around to bite us in the ass when the idiots reelected Trump, the wannabe mafia capo and his congressional crew. No judgement but you reap what you sow. Until next week, Sláinte

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