We're Home!!!

 Hi,

Well, we made it home at around 4:30 yesterday afternoon.  We were gone for exactly two months.

9,686 miles

32 states

16 national parks

This was truly an amazing and wonderful journey.  One of the most surprising things was the ease of our trip. When we started this journey, we knew that we might hit stumbling blocks along the way, that COVID could derail things at any point. We were healthy the whole way (I did get a bee sting in Great Smoky Mountains - at least that's what we think it was, never saw the culprit).  We had no issues with our truck or trailer.  All of our visits to the national parks went according to plan.  We hit very little traffic.  The weather couldn't have been better (well, except for the heat in Utah).  We hit rain on three different days and they were all travel days.  And most important, we had three glorious weeks with the kids/grandkids and are sustained by our memories of our time with them.

We highly recommend taking a cross-country trip.  Neither of us had done it before.  It is so interesting to experience the change in the landscape as we crossed west to east and back, with northern and southern routes.  People were wonderful and friendly wherever we went.  

I learned a lot about map reading on our atlas and how to read the roads.  I didn't know, for example, that the freeway exit numbers coincide with the mile markers on the road and the mile markers can tell you how close you are to the state line east to west or north to south (as long as you stay on the same highway).  Some states have mile markers every mile and some every two-tenths or one-tenth.  These are the kinds of things you start paying attention to when you drive almost 10,000 miles.

Would we do this again?  You bet!  We hope to make a trip across Canada, maybe to Alaska and one into the deep South.  The only time I felt the tug of home was after we left Maine but after a few days was happy to continue on.  

Thank you for joining us on our adventures.  It was great to take you along!

This is the route we took, not exact, of course.

Our Roadrunner friend in Needles.  He just hung around the RV park.

Evidence that Ralph and I have been spending a lot of time together.  We were dressed the same for the trip home.