Now we are back home. I might add that we drove around 35oo miles and did it with a packed car, seven people, and NO Dvd player!! And we survived!!
I should have posted this whole thing differently. I should have done it backwards so that it would post right. Oh well. After we got home, we had to get Daniel ready to off for a week to scout camp at Camp Geronimo. We got him off and he had a great time! He was home for a day or so and then we had to get him ready to leave on a road trip back east with his grandparents. Dennis has a brother who graduated from school in Pennsylvania so his parents were willing to take Daniel. They are seeing alot of church history sites as well and the Sacred Grove. THis is also a trip Dennis and I would love to take, hopefully with in the next few years, but were happy that Daniel will be able to have this testimony building experience! He's still not home and probably won't be until a few days after school has already started.
As for me and the other kids, it's just life as usual, getting ready to head back to school.
I got a new calling, activity days leader, and I'm excited to get going with that!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
We'll make it home...eventually
After a several hours driving around Mesa Verde, we headed back into Arizona and were planning on making it home that night, which we did but not until we stopped at Canyon De Chelly. Neither Dennis nor I had been there either. It was a place kind of like Mesa Verde. I loved the green against the red rocks!
The Cliff Dwellers
AFter a great day driving through Rocky Mountain National Park we drove south of Denver to Littleton where we have some wonderful friends, Mark and Liz Foster who were gracious hosts and let us stay the night. It was nice to visit with them again, since they moved away several years ago.
For awhile now we have talked about visiting Mesa Verde National Park (or Monument). I had vague memories of going there when I was little and I wanted to visit again. It took us most of the day to drive to the southwestern corner of Colorado from the Denver area, and we got there that evening, and yes, we did camp and it was much warmer, although the air mattress still lost air! The next morning we drove around and looked at the cliff dwellings the indians used to actually live in. Amazing! Just a funny note, in the picture above Ethan had just taken something from Allison and she was mad, after I snapped the picture, she hauled off and slugged him, it was actually kind of funny!
Estes Park, Colorado
We spent several hours at Mount Rushmore, then we were off again back down south headed toward Rocky Mountain National Park. We drove down south through Wyoming and over to Cheyenne, through Cheyenne and down the freeway toward Denver. We got to Loveland, Colorado around 9 or 10 that night and ended up staying in another motel, because it was so late and we didn't want to set up camp in the dark. We planned on camping more and were prepared for it, but hey we did have one more night of it.
The next morning we were up and driving into Rocky Mountain National Park with a few side trips along the way.
Before I met Dennis, I worked for a summer at a YMCA conferance center outside of Estes Park. I wanted to go back there and see it again. So we were able to drive there and look around a little. It had been about sixteen years since I was there, but it was a fun little trip down memory lane for me. I made some great friends that summer and had some fun experiences. Some things were the same and some were different, they were doing construction and some of the buildings I remembered had been torn down. It was still in it's beautiful setting though surround by the Rocky Mountains.
We also stopped at a tram station and took a ride up a mountain! As you can tell Cade, wasn't too thrilled with the heights!
Mount Rushmore....sort of
The next morning we got up and drove about two hours to Mount Rushmore! It is in the black hills area of South Dakota just south of Rapid City. I thought the area around it was pretty. It was really neat to see it in person...you know something you see in pictures or the movies. And I'm sure you're wondering where the pictures are? Well, sad story...when we got there I could not find my smaller camera so I grabbed our older bigger one, and got some great pictures I might add. Well I ended up dropping it and busted it pretty bad, but I'm pretty sure we can still get the pictures off of it, so hopefully I'll be able to post them soon!
and then on to.........
Mount Rushmore! We drove across Idaho, and said "HI" to my brother Larry in Idaho Falls. We camped outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It was FREEZING that night and the air mattress wouldn't keep the air in it, so needles to say neither Dennis nor I got much sleep. Although the kids seemed to do ok. The next morning we got up and froze as we took our camp down and headed into Jackson Hole and had a warm breakfast at Mcdonald's (which cost a fortune, because we were in Jackson Hole). We got on the road and drove through Teton National park, which was beautiful of course!
Most of Wyoming was pretty flat and dry looking, we finally got to Newcastle, Wyoming on the Wyoming South Dakota border, and since we had a horrible night the night before we ended up staying in a little motel, so we could have a better night sleep!
Our trip
We went on a pretty long road trip. We've been home for several weeks now, but here it goes! We stayed overnight with my parents in Utah (thanks once again mom and dad!) and headed up to "The Farm" in Idaho. We always have a good time!
