The Final Blog

When we wrote the last blog on our trip, we were in Rapid City, S.D. and were getting ready to breakup our group and depart on our varied trips home so each route is different.

We went to Wisconsin one night, to Indiana for a week, to Huntington, W.V., one night, Staunton, V. one night, and then to Williamsburg for a week.We visited
family and caught up with grandsons, nieces and nephews, our siblings.

Then we went to Lexington NC for the final week and started talking ourselves into coming home, but we didn't want to.Even after 102 days, we were not ready to return to the daily routine of our lives.

We feel we have taken a three month college course on the West this summer and we are missing the every day classes on our subject. We haven't seen a mountain
or a wild animal in weeks and we are missing the adventure.

The whole experience has taken on the feeling of a surreal dream. When we look at the photos
it feels as though it happened to some one else. Were we really in the Tetons? Did we really ride on the Durango Train?

Now in late August, we are already mentally planning how and when we can go back out to the West. It was an experience that ended much too soon and needs top be repeated.

I have put together some facts to sum up the trip, because it seemed we needed to see what we had accomplished to give it a finish. So here it is ......
Traveled-102 days, Went- 7289 miles, used 986 gallons of regular gas, cost-$3715.00, stayed at 30 campgrounds, cost-$2500, visited- 25 states, 15 national monuments and parks, rode- two trains and a river boat, and two horseback trips.

Highlights; Andy Williams show in Branson, Cirque du Soliel "O" in Vegas, a Cody rodeo and gunfight, chuck wagon dinner and fabulous Western show, a Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg,
many casinos everywhere, the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City, Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, Sky City, the ancestral home of the Acoma tribe, Grand Canyon, Sedona, Hoover Dam, three Utah national parks...Zion, Bryce,and Arches, Canyon by Night float trip down the Colorado River, white water rafting, pylpgraphs in Moab, Jackson Lake boat trip in the Tetons,
Yellowstone geyser tour and Old Faithful, Buffalo Bill museum of the West and Dam, Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, Custer State Park buffalo herd in S.D., Deadwood and Wall Drugs, and finally the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D. These are just some of the highlights.

So I have unpacked, caught up on the laundry, paid the bills, greeted the neighbors, and settled back rather reluctantly in to our life, but the memories of the West will always be there and we can't wait to experience it again.....soon. This is our final blog.