HOME!

It's taken me awhile to get this last post done on our travel blog.  We did go to the museum at Hill Air Force Base in Salt Lake.  It was a really good museum to visit.  So many planes!  I enjoyed the individual stories associated with many of them.  Uncle Doug likes to go spend hours there when visiting Kendra.  Kendra took us to a restaurant called Jeremiah's for supper and we liked it so well that we went back for breakfast!  I had a Utah Scone.  It was so good and so big!  I will attach a photo so that you can get the idea.  If you ever get to Utah I would recommend getting one.  It's a bit like a funnel cake.  Yeah, really good!

We made it to Cheyenne before dark and ate at The Outback there before turning in.  We got back on the road the next morning at a good time.  We took our time getting back and made a stop at Cabela's in Sydney.  Then lunch in Paxton at Ole's Wild Game.  I had never been there.  Paxton, NE is a little town but this restaurant is a big deal.  It features a lot of taxidermy with a Polar Bear,
elephant, Moose, Elk, Giraffe, Zebra, deer, antelope, etc.  Had the first real hamburger for quite a while. Then we stopped in North Platte to see Uncle Royce.  He's getting pretty weak but is as sharp as a tack.  His close friend, Doreta, passed away so we felt we should stop.  He wasn't able to go to the funeral today but we went and his daughters, Karen and Marilyn were there to represent him.

We are thankful to be home and had safe travel.  We figured that we picked up 4 states that we hadn't been to yet and in all have seen 25 of the contiguous 48.  I haven't cooked a meal yet but I think I will need to do that tomorrow.  Grocery shopping is going to be high on the to-do list soon.  Bills are paid and laundry done.  On with the normal life.

Love you all!
                                                     
                                              A wave breaking on the coast off Highway 1.

                                                              Pidgeon Point Lighthouse

                                                   Carol and Norman with Ryan and Emily.

                                 A fall just outside Ogden, UT on a scenic drive with Kendra.

                                                         A Utah Scone with honey butter.

I have a lot of catching up to do.  This trip has been so incredible!  You know we really didn't plan this trip on a day to day schedule.  We just knew that we needed to see Aunt Pat, the Grand Canyon and Norman and Carol along the way with possibly catching Kendra on the way home.  It all came together so well and we have had the most beautiful, mild weather.  We've made all the stops we wanted to and several more that we tucked in here and there.  We are ready for home and sleeping in our own bed but we are still enjoying ourselves.

Monday we left Norman and Carol with their 2 sweet little grandchildren, Ryan and Emily.  Norman and Carol get to watch them 3 to 4 days a week while Natasha teaches at the local grade school and her husband is a police officer.  We took off on I80 and went through just south of where the Oroville Dam is that has some damage and been threatening to flood out areas below it.  Some 180000 people have been evacuated when it developed a hole in it.  I guess this dam is larger than the Hoover Dam.  Anyway, we have seen a lot of flooding of rivers and streams along the way. One part of westbound 80 was stopped for several miles, like 20, for a mudslide that went across both lanes.  The day before eastbound lanes had the same problem.  We took a little loop down to Lake Tahoe so that David could see that area.  They have had several feet of snow there as well but all the roads were clear and dry.  Last night we stayed in the town of Wannamucca, Nevada at a Candlewood Suites and ate at Sid's restaurant for supper and breakfast this morning.

Today we traveled across Nevada into Utah and are staying with Kendra tonight.  She and Dan have a really nice home here in Clinton Utah.  We went out to eat and back for early bedtime.  This girl has to leave by 4:30 a..m. to go to work.  Her pups keep her busy along with work and many friends.  Dan comes home on Saturday for a 2 week visit.  They are looking forward to that.

Tomorrow we want to go to the Aerospace Museum at Hill Air Force Base and will stop in Cheyenne before the last leg of our trip.  To bed I go...the one beside me has a head start.

Yesterday we arrived in Pacifica at Norman's at noon. We were able to get on Highway 1, the coastal highway, at Castroville and travel up to Pacifica.  Highway 1 has had a lot of mudslides along it so we weren't sure if it would be open.  They have had so much rain here in the last couple months.  Maybe you saw on tv about the apartment building that literally fell into the ocean from the mudslides here. We saw where that building once stood today and the house next to it that has been red flagged, meaning it's been condemned and no one can live there.  There is another house that the owners have put up on blocks.  It has a sign reading that if you know of a lot that is for sale they would like to buy it so that they can move their house to it IMMEDIATELY.  The drive up here was so pretty and such a perfect day.  We stopped twice along the way and got pictures.  One of our stops was at Pidgeon Point where they have an old lighthouse displayed.  Our other stop was at a place where there were people in their wet suits digging up stuff out of the sand.  We walked down to them and asked them what they were doing.  A couple of the guys showed us this glass, they called it sea glass.  There used to be a glass factory up the road and they threw out scraps of glass, it floated down out of the hills and went to the ocean.  I guess it's valuable.  One gentlemen gave us a piece.

This morning we walked out on the beach to watch the waves and ocean for a bit before we headed out to the Napa Valley.  We also walked out on the pier and had fun watching the fishermen fishing for crabs.  They were mostly Asian men but there were a few of us round eyes out there as Norman calls us.  Norman bought David a little bait trap that they use to fish for them.  They have a little cage on them that they stuff with chicken and then on the outside of that cage are plastic wires in loop knots that tighten around the crab's legs. The whole activity reminded me of a Husker tail gate party.  They had their little grills out there cooking some kind of meat. We were offered some Phillipino bread.  Such friendly people.

In the afternoon we took off for the wine country.  Although you wouldn't think it, agriculture is huge out here in California.  I really hope we can find some stand that sells oranges tomorrow as I'd like to bring some home. We went on a wine tour at Stags' Leap Winery.  A huge old home sits on the property and it's got so much history.  It was built in 1892 and went through prohibition and the depression...housing a speakeasy and a place to gamble, assessable from a hidden door in the floor.  I loved the history at this winery and it wasn't so commercialized as the Modavy Winery we visited when out here years ago.

Norman and Carol are such a sweet couple. We will miss our farming relationship but we will always be dear friends.  We will travel away from here tomorrow and head for home.  We are hearing the call.  Dad is sick with Influenza A and Mom will likely get it too.  They are on Tamiflu so hope they are feeling better by the time we get there.  They did get their flu shots but that hasn't been working for people very well this year. (Seems that is always the case.)  We will probably stop at Kendra's tomorrow night and stay with her but need to call her tomorrow and see if that is alright.

Happy Birthday Neha!!  One can forget what day it is when traveling and goofing off.

Love you all.

 The Mojave Reserve and the San Joaquin Valley

This was the most diverse day of our travel thus far.  We went from the Mojave Desert region where we saw a lot of barren but mountainous terrain.  We saw miles and miles of Joshua Trees, a kind of yucca that grow big. Cacti, sage brush is all that grew.  Along the highway in this area they dig diversion ditches so that the sand won't bury the highway when it rains and washes down the hills and mountains. When we got over to the other side of the mountains we fell into the San Joaquin where the pastures on the hillsides looked like soft green mounds.  Then we got into the farm ground where we saw orange groves, almond trees, pistachio trees, fields of carrots, onions, broccoli, oats and of course grapevines.  Also lots of dairies in this area.  I saw that we could buy 40 acres in this area for $1,600.000.00.  About $40,000 per acre.  We have had perfect weather but today we traveled in a little rain.

We settled tonight in Paso Robles, meaning Oak Pass.  We went downtown and ate at The Catch Steak and Seafood.  It was a little pricey but yummy.  I had Clam Linguine and David had Shrimp and Scallop Combo.  Pictures to follow if they ever download. We are in the Holiday Inn Express tonight.  Hope to get a good start in the morning and be to Norman's by noon,  It should be an easy day.

Up this morning and ready to go into humanity.  These are photos I couldn't get to load last night.

We took a walk with Aunt Pat to go walk the little dog that lives in the care home where Uncle Stan lived for 10 years.  On the way we spotted this group of mule deer.

                                   
                                     This is Gizmo and Aunt Pat.  Getting snacks afterward.

                      Aunt Pat's beautiful home.  Wish I had taken a picture of her views in back.

                              It's probably been 20 years since they last have seen each other.

                                                   The rock formations around Prescott.

Going into Gunsite Academy.

We are currently going north on Hwy 89 after leaving Prescott.  I decided I could write my blog up in a Word document and then copy and paste it into my blog tonight at the hotel.  There is just not much time when we get to our hotel at night after eating supper. 

We have had a delightful trip.  We’ve seen so much and not really wasted a minute.  I will catch you up on our last couple days.  We were at the Grand Canyon for Wednesday night and Thursday morning.  You could say that isn’t much time spent but it began early. We had booked a sunrise tour at 6:30 a.m. However, when we got up (at 5:00 a.m.) it was so foggy you couldn’t see much.  So they cancelled that tour.  We then substituted with the Hermit’s Rest tour and it was to depart at 9:00 a..m.  We hadn’t eaten yet so we had breakfast and while eating the fog lifted.  Thank heavens.  After going so far we may not have been able to see it.  This had not crossed my mind!  As it ended up the tour we went on was a much longer tour and we had a  good bus driver that gave us a good history class of the Canyon.  We left for Prescott at 12:30 or so and got to Aunt Pat’s at 3. She had coffee waiting and gave us a tour of her home. 

Prescott is a pretty town with a lot of western culture and history.  A resort town for the most part with little shops around the courthouse square that we enjoyed browsing through.  Aunt Pat’s home is absolutely beautiful.  She has a kitchen with a window view that takes your breath away.  She has the mountain at Flagstaff in the middle of her view which has snow on the top.  Very picturesque.  (Big word uh Jocie!) We enjoyed her stew that night and ate lunch at the Palace café today.  The café has a saloon feel with the swinging doors and a massive bar that dates back to the late 1800’s.  I guess that main street had a fire in the early 1900’s and the people in the saloon hauled out the bar, liquor cabinet and piano out to the courthouse lawn and continued to play, ”We’ll have a hot time in the town tonight”, as the fire burned on.  We enjoyed our visit with Pat. She has lost Uncle Stan, her sister and just in January her brother-in-law.  I think we will try to visit again in the future.

We left Aunt Pat’s around 3 and made another stop David learned was close to us in Prescott.  The Gunsite Academy.  You boys are probably familiar, I was not but I can see him loading up the camper and coming down here to one of their classes.  I must admit it would be cool. So we won’t get far down the road today but that’s okay.  We will put in a long drive tomorrow.  We plan to stop at Needles CA for the night.  The area between Bakersfield and Needles looks pretty bare and that would involve a lot of night driving.  We have done no night driving yet.  Just wait…when we head for home it won’t matter.

Love and starting to miss all of you.

These pics were taken yesterday on our  travels.
 Somewhere in Arizona

                       

                                         This one was very near Albuquerque.

                                         May have had a bit of a travel frustration here.

                                        Arizona