Home Sweet Home

Well.  What an adventure this has been!  32 days, 5,900 miles and 37 blog posts and we are home! 

Before I write another thing, I want give a huge THANK YOU to all of our friends and family members who opened their homes to us.  Your kindness and generosity are what made this trip so incredibly special.  And possible.  We couldn't have done it without you.  We love you all!

And thank you to all of you who followed along with us!  Your kind comments and email messages are what kept this blog going.  Without you I probably would have given up a loooooong time ago!  And to those who I have not replied to in a timely fashion, hopefully I will get to you now that I'm not panicking about getting the next entry posted!

But, be aware.  We're not done yet.  We still have stories to tell and pictures to show.  Well, not that many pictures.  You will just have to come over if you want to see the many, many, many photos we have.  And...you'll have to ask.  We only subject our friends to forced slide shows of our out-of-the-country trips.   

So, until then, have a little peek at the route we followed

 Maybe next year we will drive to Nova Scotia--it's not as far!

We're On Our Way

Today we have officially been on the road for one month.  Whew!  I think we are ready to head for home and get back to our regular lives.  After all, school starts in just over 2 weeks--we need to get our girl back on some sort of normal schedule!

But first, one last stop.  We couldn't possibly end this trip without a visit to my sister and her family in Austin!  My sister Lisa, husband William and kids Christian, Cameron, Rachel, Collin and baby number FIVE (who will be arriving in September) recently moved into a beautiful brand new home that we were excited to see.  

Olivia and Rachel hanging out at the pool

The kids having a great time

Whee!

We let the kids play and enjoyed the lazy morning.  Until Holly ate a coral snake.  Don't worry, she was fine.   But we had the vet at PetSmart temporarily (and thoroughly) stumped, which was interesting.  FYI:  snake poison is only a problem if it is injected under the skin.  Ingested?  No big deal.  And, we found out much later in the day that the snake was already dead (information that would have been soooooo helpful earlier!). So....bon appetit Holly!  The whole chain of events, while traumatic at the time, now are pretty funny.  My writing skills just can't do the story justice--so ask me about it when you see me sometime.

When my brother-in-law William got home from work, we hopped on their boat and headed out to Lake Austin for a ride around the lake  and some dinner.  Wow, William and the bigger boys (Cameron and Christian) can hitch/unhitch and get that boat in/out of the water in mere moments.  They have it down to a science.  Very impressive!  Unfortunately, tonight Cameron was not able to join us.  He is in the drum line in his high school marching band--and they are ramping up for football season.  Practices are every night until 11:00 pm!

Some views from the boat

Christian at the helm

The restaurant were we had dinner--Hula Hut

After a little bit of a wait, we were seated and ready for dinner.   And fun!

Crazy faces!

Lisa and William

Cousins!

We had a great time and a very good meal.  I really, really enjoyed my enchilada (and margarita).  So glad to be back in Texas!  Yum!

Heading back

Pretty pregnant lady!

Thoroughly enjoying the ride

Our trip home was perfectly timed with the sunset.

Tonight was a great visit with some of our favorite people.  It was a fantastic way to end a fantastic trip.

Next stop?  HOME!

The Truth Is Out There

I think the weirdest thing about Roswell is how completely normal it is.  To most of us, Roswell conjures up visions of UFOs, little green people and government cover ups.  In reality it is about as 'baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet' as a town can get.  We arrived just as the sun was beginning to settle into the early evening sky.  There was a football team practicing at the high school, folks enjoying an after dinner treat at the local DQ and a softball game playing in a field behind our motel.  With the exception of a brochure in our room, there was no trace of the crazy space alien business we've all heard of.  I was a little disappointed...until we saw this:

A UFO McDonald's?

Here, kids can play with all of their favorite McDonald's characters in apparent zero gravity.

There is about a 2 block area tucked away in the very heart of downtown that looks like this:

Olivia and I just had to check out the UFO museum

The museum was very low-budget--it seemed to me like an over sized school science fair project.  It did, however, have a few interesting displays:

A replica of the government command center

An Anthropomorphic Dummy

Alien autopsy!

The rest of the museum was a huge compilation of newspaper and magazine articles and copies of various altered government documents.  The articles covered just about every UFO related subject including the role of aliens throughout history, accounts of hundreds of UFO sightings and of course alien abductions.  I'm sure it would have been interesting if we had read them all, but we (Olivia) were not up to the task.  They also offered 3 (I think) movies/documentaries that told the story/conspiracy of Roswell.  They were all pretty long, so we did not stick around to watch them.

All in all, it was pretty cool.  Not quite the experience I expected but worth the $5.00 ($2.00 for kids). 

Another Long Day

Today ended up being one of those days where it seemed like we drove and drove and drove and drove.  One thing that made the time in the car somewhat interesting was the weather.  We were surrounded by terrible looking clouds, and it was obviously raining all around us--but we never got wet.  Weird.

Here is a view from 3 windows of the car

We stopped at the tiny town of Chama, NM, which was basically a visitor's center, a gas station (or two) and a tiny grocery store.  We decided to stop, get some tourist info and take a little break at the visitor's center.  I got out of the car and I think I got sucked into a time warp.

This is why

The moment this beauty pulled up the weather became a little eerie (see clouds) and I could hear 50's jukebox music in the air.  I never did figure out where the music was coming from.  It was a little "Twin Peaks" for those of you who are old enough to recognize the reference.  The gentleman driving was wearing a brown jumpsuit and 70's vintage trucker cap.  When he opened the door of the trailer there were hand made curtains the exact color of the truck, along with a matching throw rug (see also the bathmat on the little step stool).  It was adorable!  I overheard him telling someone that the trailer was a '68 and he was the original owner.  I didn't hear what he said about the Suburban, but what I do know is that I LOVE IT! 

Impressive scenery

All of a sudden it looks like Utah!

It's becoming a little desert-like again

Long day

And then....all of a sudden it's Santa Fe!

We have never been to Santa Fe before, so we were excited to see what we would find.

It is a beautiful, beautiful historic city with an artsy vibe.  Unfortunately it was extremely crowded (tons of tourists), we were having difficulties finding parking, and we had no idea how to find someplace to eat that would let us bring Holly.  So, we grabbed some McDonald's and took a quick look around and breezed right through.  Another place we will be coming back to.  Without a dog.  Possibly without a child.  We'll see.


I'm not kidding about the weird weather.  Trucks and motorcycles were pulling off the road ahead of us because of the wind.  It was raining so close to us that it looked like you could almost touch it.  But, we didn't really get wet.  Again.

It was uniquely beautiful

Once we found out Holly isn't allowed in National Parks, Mesa Verde and Carlsbad Caverns both had to be eliminated from the itinerary.  We had to quickly rearrange things to come up with someplace along our route that we would all enjoy--and could accommodate the dog. 


ROSWELL!

Fun And Funky

Hey! Has anybody been to Durango, Colorado?  I have in college mumblemumble years ago, but I do not remember much about it.  It was winter and I do remember it being very, very cold with a lot of snow.  Since Eric has never been there (and I was drawing a huge blank about it) we decided to check it out.  

What a pleasant surprise!

We were first met with some fun and funky stuff on the way into town

I was surprised at how busy the city was.  It took us a while to find a hotel that first of all had a vacancy, and secondly was dog friendly.  Did you know that the Doubletree allows pets?  Me neither.  We scored the very last room, which happened to be one of those hotel rooms that doubles as a meeting area.  So it was huge!!  By the time we unpacked and got settled we were exhausted, so we ordered room service and went to bed. 


The next morning, Eric snapped a few pictures of the city from the hotel room.

 Durango has a quaint historic downtown area with quite a few little shops and cafes. 

We needed to get on the road pretty early, so we didn't have a chance to see much of the town.  This is a place that we will most definitely return to explore.  Next time we plan on taking the steam engine train that runs through town and through 50 miles of the picturesque Colorado countryside.  


Speaking of picturesque countryside

Remember when I was making fun of New Mexico being "enchanting?"  Well, somewhere we crossed the border from Colorful Colorado into New Mexico, Land of Enchantment and I didn't even notice.  I can't remember if these next pictures are in CO or NM. 

It all looks enchanting to me!