A Week at the Beach

Well, I know its been a long time and I have learned that many places don´t have great FREE internet. Plus traveling so many places leaves you very tired so that you don´t feel like blogging at 11 p.m.

We finished our Bandon trip with our last stop in Irvine visiting Emily and David had a wonderful proposal -- why don´t I remain in the 80 degree weather instead of going back to 115. It sounded very logical. He drove home last Sunday since Tuesday was a work day and he wanted to check on the household. I remained until Wednesday evening when I was going to fly home. Tuesday, I went to the beach and thought to myself ´why go to 115´when I can really sit in the cool and hear waves until Sunday. David had actually told me to think about doing this but I felt ´I should¨ go home. One of my friends told me that I say and do too much of this and she is right. So I decided to stay until this Sunday. YEAH! Newport, Disneyland, Laguna and so much more ...besides enjoying more time with Emily.

Emily and I were going to go to the 4th of July on the beach except everyone in Orange County did too...so we went to Disneyland. We had to refresh ourselves before the hard decision of which rides to fast pass!

From Brookings, Oregon

Well, the drive across Oregon took longer than we thought and it was a rEALLY late night! We stayed two days in Bandon, Oregon and took the lighthouse tour, as well as the Bob land tour. Pics tomorrow!

Oregon coast is so beautiful with lots of rock formations in the ocean. The pines and ferns are plentiful and it is so very cool here -- better than 110 in Tempe! We actually drove around some of the houses around here to dream. Many of the rivers feed out to the ocean with some small sand bars that are then overrun with the runoff so that the salmon jump over and up the river. This is where Bob fishes and lands some great salmon! The season is open from August to February which is something I have got to try.

We also got to take a look at Bob's land and it is wonderful. Beautiful, huge trees, ferns and even some little frogs live on the land. Bob says that there is elk that roam. I bet that there will also be a little place on the land within two years that will house some great Wallace fisherman.

More tomorrow with some pics.

3,078 miles in 6 Days

Whoa! What a ride! This is why you haven't been seeing many posts. This includes 8 states, two National parks, two national monuments, bison, antelope, geysers, prarie dogs, elk, bald eagles and more! The last two nights we have gotton to our final destination at 11:30 p.m., fallen asleep and woken up to do it again.

More blog later....

Colorado, Crazy Horse and Mt. Rushmore -- Oh My!

Sorry we didn't get to letting all of you in on our wonderful Colorado time. We got to Louisville about 6:00 p.m. and went had some dinner. Our visit with Pete and Gayle was short. They too had done some renovations to their house which was gorgeous!

We got up this morning and took off to Mt. Rushmore by way of Wyoming. What a flat land with lots of green grass. One could picture the bison and wild horses living there many decades ago! One can see by the picture how flat it is, and yet how picturesque some of the old farms look.

About 2:30 we got to Crazy Horse -- and what a great memorial it is during its construction.
While we were there it began to rain and hail. We couldn't see all of the exhibits which are from so many tribes -- which is sooooooo worthwhile. We rushed over to Mt. Rushmore in the rain and hail, and were equally impressed. Got my National Park Passport and stamp -- thank you Bonnie! There is so much to do in this small area that we were not able to do. If I had known earlier we would have brought the kids up here after the Arizona Native American tour we did -- I'm sure they would have loved Flintstone Land and the Reptile park along with all of these monuments. I even got to see some bison! We got to Rapid City about 5:00 and are now planning a change in our tour so that we can go see the Devil's Tower before heading to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton's.

Albuquerque -

We traveled from Phoenix to Albuquerque yesterday, by way of Show Low and St. John's. Got to see where David and his team stayed during their last audit, and the schools that they worked with. The countryside from Show Low was a lot of scrub brush, but also had some areas where you would swear you were in the Painted Desert. I can see where the colored sands were found for the local Sand Paintings. Just before Bonnie's house we were lucky to have a little help and missed two accidents. One on the freeway -- a car lost a wheel on the right hand side of the round and traveled across the lanes in front of us hitting the median. They ended up facing the traffic. Thank goodness the other two cars avoided the car too. The other was a bicyclist that almost got hit. But we got here about 6:00 p.m. and had a wonderful roasted chicken meal that was a perfect ending of the day along with the wonderful host and hostess. Bonnie showed us her National Park passport which sounds like something we will need to invest in for our current journey and possible future drives. We also got to see the wonderful butterfly and hummingbird garden they put in (picks will be posted tonight) and the beautiful renovation Yar has just finished in the bathroom. We will be leaving in an hour to drive north to Louisville, Colorado. What a wonderful time!

Beer Pong

I thought I would show the wonderful apparatus that Savannah has constructed as a result of her wonderful educational experience at UofA. I had to try it out and it does start the R&R process going! Right now they are making sure that there was not weather damage --it seems to be withstanding the hot Arizona sun.

Two Days Before

Well the countdown begins, laundry reved up and mapquest from site to site is finishing up. We are really excited about our latest road trip - Showlow, Albuquerque, Denver, Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Boise, Bandon, Redwood Forests, Sacremento, Bakerfield, Irvine and home! A little bigger than our normal Sunday drive. We are hoping that the kids don't have too many beer pong parties while we are gone. It could be a very intense "Cousin" time.

So we will be posting pics and thoughts as we move along. Taking our internet with us and camera! Hope you enjoy.