Day Twenty-Three (Home at Last)

We made it!!! Home at last. We had such a great time on our vacation and we are blessed that we got to make this trip together. We had many adventures and have tons of memories. We crossed into 21 states (some more than once), spent 23 days in the car, and stayed at 16 different places (Scott would like me to add that he loaded and unload the car a combination of 32 times!). We also created a fairly long list of places we would like to go back to.



Thanks for coming along on our journey with us! It was fun for us to take pictures along the way to share with everyone. I think it helped us to focus on the day instead of looking forward to what was coming up. This is the last post for the vacation, so I thought I would condense our trip by posting all of the state sign pictures we took along the way. These are in order of how we went, and most were taken from the passenger seat of the car going 50-80 miles an hour.

Day Twenty-Two

Oh, we are almost home. We are enjoying each day, but the light is at the end of the tunnel. There is not a lot to see out here, and what there is, we have already seen. We had plans to see a couple things, but we missed the turnoff to the first one and the second one closed on September 30th.

We stopped and looked at some petroglyphs outside of Thompson Utah. They were really interesting. Some were about 4,000 years old! We then continued on through Utah and ended in Elko Nevada. Anyone familiar with Elko will understand why I don't have much more to say. We can't wait to get home tomorrow to Daisy, Mack, and Lea'ula. We are trying to prepared for the excitment of seeing our pets.

4,000 year old petroglyphs.
These are only about 1,500 years old.

This is how exciting our day was; we took pictures of the Morton's Salt Plant along the Great Salt Lake.

Scott is about done with the driving! He has been a trooper and has driven most of the way.

We are staying at the Elko Red Lion/Resturant/Starbucks/Casino. Here Scott is showing that we won a wopping $28.50. Now we might make it to Lakeview! So much for getting home tomorrow! (Dad - I might need you to wire us some money)

Day Twenty-One

Well, this isn't where I thought we would end up tonight. We had plans, we had everything mapped out, we knew what we were going to do. Mother Nature had other plans. The weather the last couple of days suddenly changed to fall/winter conditions. Last night we lived through the craziest wind storm. Notice I say lived, because I definitly did not sleep through it. Apparently it is always this windy so it didn't faze anyone else. After watching the weather this morning, we decided to check out of our room a day early and drive through the Rocky Mountain National Park and then head West. That was only the first change of plans. We packed up and checked out. We arrived at RMNP to find out that we could only go the first 7 miles of the 48 mile trip across the park. The road was closed due to snow at milepost 7. We made the decision to skip the park and head back towards highway 70.



We had met some people on the train yesterday that said we had to go to Leadville to the ghost towns. We decided to do that instead. Well, low and behold that is at 10,000 feet and due to snow, we scratched that idea too. At the end of the day I looked and pictures and realized that it looks like we would have had a depressing day, but really it turned out pretty good. We are spending the night in Grand Junction, Colorado and tomorrow we will see what a new day brings.

This was as far as we made it into RMNP. The weather was 35 degrees and there was a good chance of snow.
Look....it's snow. Just like the weatherman promised. Actually, the roads weren't too bad and we only had to drive in it for a little while. The next stop on our journey was to see the grave of Buffalo Bill Cody.

After coming down in elevation, we saw the signs of fall. Scott took this picture along the Colorado River.

We pulled over in Glenwood Springs, Colorado and hiked to the pioneer cemetary to find the grave of Doc Holiday.

Kid Curry was also buried at the pioneer cemetary.

Just west of Glenwood Springs is the location of the 1994 Storm King Fire. We stopped at a park to see the memorial. It was very moving to see the stones with each persons picture and history on it.

Looking up at Storm King Mountain.

The memorial statue.

More signs of Fall.

Day Twenty

The alarm went off early this morning. We had to get through work freeway traffic to reach our destination. We took a ride on the Cog Wheel Railway to the top of Pike's Peak! It was so much fun! The entire trip took a little over three hours. It was about 75 degrees when we left the bottom and by the time we reached the top, the weather had changed. It was 28 degrees at the top, with wind gusts up to 78 (yes I said 78) miles an hour. This made the windchill 6 degrees. Needless to say, we did not take many pictures at the top. We had to load back on the train 10 minutes early because the wind was blowing the rocks and we couldn't risk the rocks blowing up and breaking the train windows.

We then went to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. This was interesting, but totally commericalized. This was the one time in the entire trip that we regreted spending the money to go in afterwards. The history was really fascinating, but the place is privatly owned and totally commericalized.

We the drove to Estes Park for the next two nights. The cabin that we are staying is so cute! It's hard because we have so much to see in so little time, but we just want to sit in our cabin and enjoy some down time. What to do, what to do.

The train ride up on the Cog Wheel Railway.
The bighorn sheep that we saw on the train ride. I didn't notice that the one is wearing a necklace tag. Kinda takes away from the "wild" animals.

Standing at the top next to the train. Notice that nobody else is outside! They are all in the warm gift shop.

They put this sign at the top so that you can prove you were there.

The Manitou Cliff Dwellings.

Tomorrows destination. Weather says high of 44 degrees.

Day Nineteen

We got to sleep in this morning because we wanted to visit the UFO Museum in Roswell and it didn't open until 9:00. Scott wasn't so sure about this. I think he figured that it was a tourist trap. Low and behold when we got there at 9:02, there was already a line. It was very interesting and there was so much stuff to look at. It's hard to leave this place not believing in some form of aliens.

We then continued north through New Mexico, making one short hop off the interstate to see the "official" grave of Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The rest of the trip was all driving. We rolled into Colorado Springs around 8:00 tonight. Tomorrow is a setting the alarm day, as we have somewhere to be at 9:00!

Scott, before we went into the UFO Museum. (You can see the doubt on his face!)
The offical mascot of the museum. This was hand carved from a guy in Silverton, Oregon.

Scott at the end of the tour. He was more excited at this point.

The grave of Billy the Kid and two of his pals.

I have lost count how many headstones and graves we have taken pictures of. These are in an iron cage because people kept stealing them.

Eastern New Mexico is very very very flat. It was not what we imagined. We thought it would be rocky and the red and orange colors you normally associate with Santa Fe.

As soon as we crossed into Colorado the hill started. The trees are starting to change to their fall colors.