The End

Thanks for tagging along with us on our road trip journey. I am happy to say that it was everything that we hoped. We had a few unknowns  - this is our first travel trailer and we had never really camped or traveled this way before AND we have lived without a refrigerator for over a month and survived. No food poisoning- smile- just had to toss a few things early on.  The trailer gave us the flexibly we desired when we decided to purchase.  We had to change course due to wild fires and three places we planned to visit being closed due to covid. If hotel rooms had been booked we would have been stuck. 

The 5,000 miles turned out to be 6,500. Our 6 month old shiny new truck has more miles that most vehicles in the first year but this is why we bought it. 

We are ready to be home but looking forward to many more adventures. 

We stopped at our last Route 66 attraction before turning off. 

Lucille’s gas station. Opened in 1929. 

We are staying at our 3rd Harvest Host stop. Mild weather in Oklahoma gave us a good opportunity to visit the Native Spirits Winery in Norman just outside of OU. The self taught winemaker sources juice from Lodi California and does a surprisingly good job with his wine. 

It is peaceful and super quiet on the grass beside this rural winery. We will be home by tomorrow afternoon. 

Route 66 is fun!

We arrived in Palo Duro Canyon to find bad air quality, a total dump for an RV stop and the state is issuing limited access passes to the state park. We stayed one night and left without seeing another hole in the ground. Well this was the view from the campground. The only positive thing that I could post about the Rim Canyon RV Park. Just awful and everyone was bailing out! 

For grins, we stopped at every Route 66 attraction between Amarillo and the state line. Had a fun time playing tourist. Made for a super fun day. 

Cadillac Ranch

VW Slug Ranch- I wonder if one of these was mine! 

1929 Restored Phillips Service Station (sort of restored - they painted some stuff)

Groom- Leaning Water Tower

Groom Giant Cross

Shamrock Conoco Tower Station and U Drop Inn. They had pictures of when Elvis stayed the night. By far the coolest stop! 

Shamrock has Happy ATM’s and a random Tesla charging station 

A hundred miles of wind turbines! The haze and smoke is so thick you can’t see that these are rows and rows deep. 

The cost of one month on the road,Albuquerque and Vivian!

Today is day 31 on the road and I have added gas, campsite fees, food out, extra cell phone data, car washes, attractions and activities plus groceries for the month and our daily average $84. (Excluding wine and I lost track of wine purchases...oops - smile) Compared to traditional driving a car, eating out every meal, and hotel cost this is a great way to travel and see the country. On our first big trip, we visited parts of 15 states. We have traveled 5,800 miles. 

We have had a great experience and visited so many awesome places and we have only 4 days remaining 

 Mark would like to spend more time between travel segments. We did lots of driving and while not hard it gets tiring pulling the travel trailer. Having more down time is on his wish list. I agree, we could use additional veg out time. Mark quickly learned to back in spaces and navigate gas stations. 

We haven’t identified anything that we forgot- but on the next trip I will take my nespresso maker. I used a French press and while good coffee, dealing with coffee grounds is a pain. I will also bring a blender. I have missed Mark’s famous Mark-a-Rita’s. 

Kate has adjusted to the road trip but thinks we might leave her! Every time we get ready to start packing up she anxiously sits by the truck. As soon as we put her in she relaxes and sits patiently for us to finish hooking up. 

We don’t have a generator which is really needed if you want to boondock. Mark says we don’t have one “yet”.(smile)  It would have been cool to boondock on the ridges overlooking Arches National Park or in the Badlands. But would have been way to hot for us and Kate. 

We stayed at our first casino RV park last night in Albuquerque. Super super nice. We will look for more casino RV parks!  The ironic part it was a non smoking casino and we might have gone in but they were not allowing anyone inside from out of state. We did enjoy a cold beer sitting outside and watching this guy fly around. 

I have loved visiting with family and friends along the way and that has made a special trip for me. Last night, we had dinner with Rudy and Vivian Porter. Vivian and I survived our last two years of work in the immunization division together. Vivian was one of two CDC public health advisors assigned to immunizations. It was a horrible place to work.... just miserable for both of us. We were told we couldn’t talk to each other because were were too opinionated about the program. The only place we could talk was in the bathroom! We both expected the awesomeness of work in immunizations when Bob Crider, Jan Pelosi, Cindy Banister, Brenda Howell and I all worked together. So needless to say it was wonderful to visit and share an awesome meal on their back patio!  

Mesa Verde National Park, Cortez and Cousin Eric

Mesa Verde NP is a glimpse into the lives of the Anasazi Indians (now called Ancestral Pueblo people for some reason) from 550 AD to the 1300’s when the people and the culture vanished. These cliff dwellers had challenges planting crops and had to be fit people to climb the cliffs to get to the homes and hunt in the hills and valleys. 

The earliest homes were called pit homes. They were dug into the ground for insulation from the very cold winters. The holes in the sides are air vents. 

The homes were tucked anyplace with a cave or overhang. The round areas are called kivas and are believed to be common gathering rooms for multiple families. They made bricks by carving the relatively soft sandstone and using mud and water for mortar. 

The Sun Temple was believed to be used for religious ceremonies. Walls are 4 feet thick and there is no entrance. It is assumed that they climbed a ladder to climb in and out. The national park service is missing an opportunity. They should build a platform so visitors can look in from above. 

Really cool national park to see but you have to be dedicated to the process of getting to the cliffs. It is a 45 minute drive from the park entrance and the drive goes straight up with very curvy roads. The top is at 8,500 feet! 

One of the things that I have loved about this trip is that I have been able to link up with old friends and new family. Eric Owens is my cousin. We had never met. He is my fathers brothers son. I moved from California several years before Eric was born. His beautiful family live in Cortez Colorado. It was great to spend the evening with Eric and his wife Vee. 

Dead Horse Point State Park and Canyonlands NP

Dead Horse got its name from a terrible practice. Early cowboys would gather wild horses and corral them with natural brush and tree limbs on a sharp point above the Colorado River. They would pick the ones they liked and leave the others to die in the corral. Yikes. No one knows the reason. 
Dead Horse has the iconic view of the Colorado River horseshoe bend.  

Four miles away is Canyonlands National Park. Canyonlands is north of Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon. They all connect. Stunning! My iPhone does not do the view justice. 

Kate was happy she could go with us on this trip!

 Utah has been a great stop. We were headed to Monument Valley but did not realize it was on the Navajo Reservation along with Antelope Canyon which is closed due to high Covid-19 rates on the reservation. So...we will head to Colorado instead and will get home a few days earlier. 

BTW we have already hit 5,000 miles - so I guess this closer to 6,000 mile trip. Google maps isn’t 100% accurate! 

Arches National Park - Moab, Utah

Sandstone, underground salt bed, ice, extreme temperatures and rain all combine to make some spectacular rock formations and arches. We hiked and hiked and we are worn out! 

Arches was pretty crowded but we could always find a parking spot at a trailhead. I can’t imagine it in mid summer! 

Some rock formations had perfect names... three gossips. Can’t you just picture three women gossiping? 

Balanced rock

Landscape arch

And tons more! This is supposedly the most iconic arch in the national park- “delicate arch”. After hiking about 10 miles,  We were soooo not interested in a mile hike uphill and a mile back! So this is from far away! 

 

Double arch

Sand dune arch


Broken arch


Pine tree arch


Cool sculpture at a local park -