We are HOME!  Our route took us a long day to Dallas the first night.   On the way Rhonda found us a fantastic steak place in Decatur, Texas

Sweetie Pie’s (that’s him on the wall…)Anyway, the steak was um, um good! And so was Rhonda’s salad!

The next day was another long day to Mobile, Alabama.  We passed through a horrific lightening storm outside of Baton Rouge, LA but came through fine.  After a good night’s sleep it was up and on our way back HOME to THE Villages.  WE MADE IT!

SOME STATISTICS…

• In 30 days we drove 9,422 MILES – in a MINI Convertible
• We consumed 248 gallons of gas – maybe we’ll look into the new electric MINI before the next trip
• Stayed at 17 different sites – most for one night, twice we stayed for 4 nights 
• Visited 6 National Parks, 1 National Memorial (Mt. Rushmore) and 1 Navajo Nation Tribal Park (Monument Valley)
• 23 States
• 10 loads of laundry
• 6 visits to Walmart and Target to restock on apples, bananas and water
• 5 Car washes
• Zero tickets
• 1 slightly chipped windshield (damn stone!)

We did upload some Photo albums to our various blog posts below with additional photos.  If you care to take a look at some more photos from the various parks we visited, scroll down and take a look.  We hope you enjoyed our travel blog.  We had a great trip but there’s no place like HOME.

Below is an Album of all our photo galleries from the trip…

Mount Rushmore 2018

15 Photos

Yellowstone 2018

58 Photos

Grand Teton 2018

31 Photos

Bryce Canyon 2018

28 Photos

Zion 2018

31 Photos

North Rim Grand Canyon 2018

29 Photos

Monument Valley 2018

37 Photos

Mystery Valley 2018

77 Photos

Apparently the photos didn’t load properly for this post so I’m reposting.  Tim

We arrived in Santa Fe late Saturday afternoon and after unpacking we made our way to the Railyard District where there are shops and an open air concert area with a live band reminiscent of the square at Spanish Springs. In fact, it’s likely that The Villages Design team took a lot of its cues from Santa Fe. The mean age of the population here seemed to be 55+. After a lovely Mexican dinner it was off to bed with plans to explore in the morning.

Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors is the oldest municipal building in the US built in 1610 as the Spanish seat of government in the southwest. Today it serves as a Museum and an outdoor market for the locals to sell their wares. And speaking of selling wares across from the Palace of the Governors is the famous Plaza which was covered with vendors this weekend for an arts and craft fair. Santa Fe is filled with artisans and crafts people and fabulous shops filled with jewelry, clothes and goods of all artisan goods of all kinds. Simply beautiful. Rhonda found her “spirit guide” a wonderful vendor with a story behind every item, and amazingly she found some things to buy.

Next it was off to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum to view the artwork of this American master who spent her later years in northern New Mexico

We continued touring and then found our way to the La Fonda Hotel’s restaurant La Plazuela, along the original Route 66.

We had a delicious lunch, impeccably served with the best fajitas ever for me and a cauliflower steak for Rhonda. And of course, margaritas.

Then it was off for some more touring.

The beautiful Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

We then toured the Loretto Chapel with its famous Miraculous Staircase

The original staircase was constructed by a single carpenter with no railings as depicted below

The Nuns were so terrified of ascending and decending the floating staircase that the railings had to be added later.

We also took a look at what was once considered the oldest house in America, dating to 1640. But further research has shown a home in Massachusetts dating to 1637. Still it’s impressive.

Finally we made another purchase! While touring the arts and craft stalls we came upon a metal worker with beautiful decorative pieces.

Juan and his wife were both artisans and lovely people and we chose a Florida Sun design he will hand craft and ship to us next month. A wonderful reminder of our lovely trip.

Today (Sunday) marks the last official day of of our touring. From here on out will be three long days to Dallas, then Mobile and finally back to The Villages by Wednesday night.

We have begun our trek back east and made our final park stop in Monument Valley on the Navajo Reservation between upper Arizona and lower Utah near the four corners area. While technically not a National Park, as it is in Navajo Territory, this iconic landscape was made famous by John Ford in Stagecoach, and numerous other westerns. It even features prominently in National Lampoon’s Vacation, Back to the Future II and Forest Gump when he is running across America. There is no place in the world like it. Which bring us a point, in virtually all of our Park visits we have been surrounded by many more international travelers than Americans, especially Germans and French. It is peculiar that these foreigners travel across the world to see a part of the USA that many Americans have never seen, including us until this trip.

Our first day brought our only rain that interrupted one of our scheduled tours but it was interesting to see the waterfalls running off of the mesas in an area that typically sees only 8 inches of rainfall a year.

We visited a Navajo hogan, the traditional homes Navajos lived in before modern times.

There are too many photos to include here, I’ll upload them in an album later. The next day we had booked a tour to “Mystery Valley” which is on the other side of the main mesa that begins Monument Valley. It turned out to be a private tour as we were the only ones booked, which was great.

The tour started out with a bracing trip in the back of an open air touring truck at highway speed which will really wake you up in the morning! It turned into a beautiful sunny morning as we drove deeper into this otherworldly landscape. Everywhere you turned there was more amazing scenery and we wound up taking more photos here than anywhere else on our trip. We’ll be creating another album when we return but below are a few samples.

Our guide, Conasheena, took to us to some fantastic places including ruins of ancient Anasazi people including cliff dwelling and petroglyphs.

We are packing up and heading east to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Gallery from Monument Valley

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ►

Gallery from Mystery Valley

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ... 4 ►

Originally we planned on spending a second day at Zion today but given the crowds and the heat we decided to call an audible last night and change to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Boy was that a good call! Only about 10% of the Grand Canyon visitors go to the North Rim and when we arrived at 7:15 AM we virtually had the canyon to ourselves.

We drove to the furthest point you can reach by car, Cape Royal, where you can hike out onto Angels Window – you can see how it gets it’s name…

We then had a wonderful lunch in the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, built in 1936. The views were spectacular.

Tomorrow on the road to visit our Native American friends in Monument Valley, AZ.

Gallery from North Rim Grand Canyon

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ►

Today we visited Zion National Park, by far the busiest (and hottest) day of our trip. Once again we got an early start and entered the park from the east side.

Entering from the east is unusual and is made possible by the Mt. Zion and Mt. Carmel Highway and tunnel, a mile long 2 lane highway drilled through the rock with no lights but your headlights to guide you through.

When you exit the tunnel you are plunged into the other worldly rock scape that is the east side of Zion with rock in seemingly unending rivers and waves of stone.

The park is a canyon surrounded by escarpments and cliff faces hundreds and even thousands of feet high. It is an amazing site. All transportation inside the park is via motor coach as more than 4 million visitors make the trip each year.

We did several of the easier hikes in the park including the climb up to Weeping Rock…

The views were incredible. We made our way to the end of the park shuttle run and down the Riverside path to the starting point of the famous “Narrows” trail which all takes place walking through the water of the Virgin River through a slot canyon. Hundreds of people were continuing the water hike but we called it quits there.

One could hike for days on the dozens of trails in the park but we opted to head back to the Visitors Center in the 103 degree heat for a late lunch and the trip back to our cabin.

Gallery from Zion National Park

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ►

On Sunday we made our way down from Salt Lake City to the “Grand Circle” area of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona where Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon can be found. On our way to our cabin in centrally located Glendale, UT we stopped at a delightful little cafe in Parowan, UT to check out their buns…

Then it was through the Cedar Breaks National Monument with some amazing scenery and ancient lava flows and on to our little cabin at The Lazy T Ranch.

Then it was off to dinner in Kanab on the Arizona boarder. Shout out to our Sister-in-Law Nedra, we found her restaurant in the area where Gunsmoke and many other westerns were filmed.

We immediately caught up on some laundry and got prepared for our the next day in Bryce Canyon.

The views in Bryce Canyon are stunning. We’ll post an album when we return to civilization but below are just a few.

Our first glimpse of Bryce Canyon

Bristlecone Pines like this are the oldest living things on earth.

We hiked to this point from the area at the top center of this photo.

We hiked a bit below the rim on this Queens Garden Trail

All that hiking worked up an appetite for dinner and ho-made pie! ????

Gallery from Bryce Canyon

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ►

We said goodbye to our Flagg Ranch encampment and headed south to the ski resort town for the beautiful people, Jackson, WY (you may know it as Jackson Hole) where we had a wonderful breakfast at a charming bakery recommended by our Snake River raft guide.

Then it was on to Salt Lake City by way of Idaho so we could cross off another state from our list.

We made a very brief visit to the Mormon Temple (turns out Rhonda is more nervous about Mormons than Grizzly Bears!)

Then it was off to our hotel for a good nights rest WITH WIFI. If you haven’t yet read the earlier posts from Grand Teton and Yellowstone, continue scrolling below.

Today we we off to the Grand Tetons and a morning rafting trip down the wild and scenic Snake River. Our morning started at the beautiful Jackson Lake Lodge where we caught site of a Moose grazing in the distance…

Next it was rafting down the river with the majestic Tetons as our backdrop to a rendezvous point where a barbecue lunch was waiting for us.

Then we drove on taking in the spectacular views of Jackson Hole from Signal Mountain.

And the Tetons from Jackson Lake.

Rhonda loved the majesty of these mountains and the gorgeous views throughout the park. Beautiful vistas wherever you looked and a great park to visit.

Gallery from Grand Teton

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ►

There were so many beautiful and amazing sites at Yellowstone that it is impossible to take them all in in two days but we managed a pretty good dent in it. We’re only including a few highlights below but we will upload a gallery of photos when we return home for those who want to see more. So this is a long/large post!

We actually arrived in Yellowstone Tuesday Night the 24th after a long trek up South Dakota and across Montana to Billings, Montana. This route was about an hour out of our way but took us into Montana to get a taste of Big Sky Country and when were we going to get another chance at that? We determined there were a lot of cattle in Montana!

We dropped down from Billings to Cody, Wyoming to go through the East entrance into Yellowstone. A spectacular introduction to Yellowstone through the mountain passes from Cody.

On our way through Yellowstone to our lodgings at Flagg Ranch near the South Gate we made a quick stop at West Thumb on Yellowstone Lake to see the hot springs and vents there.

Then on to Flagg Ranch a couple of miles south of Yellowstone where we moved into our cabin and Home for the next four nights, our longest stay anywhere on our trip.

Day 15 was our first full day in Yellowstone and, like everyone else, we started off with a trip to Old Faithful and then a breakfast at the historic Old Faithful Inn … not that historic, it was built in 1954, the year we were born!

From there we headed out to see Firehole Falls, one of the many scenic rivers running through the park…

and the thermal features at the Artists Paint Pots.

Next was the truly breathtaking “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone” where we hiked down a twisting trail to the Lower Falls and were rewarded with the permanent rainbow found there.

Then back to Flagg Ranch and some well deserved sleep.

We were up early on Day 16 for a nice breakfast at the Lodge …

…and to try to beat the crowds to the Grand Prismatic Spring

Then it was on to the Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of the park to find some bison (buffalo) and boy did we! One was strolling down the highway at about 9,000 feet of elevation. They were wonderful to watch…

…and the mountain views descending into the valley were phenomenal.

At the end of the day we were struck with the fact that you could make a National Park out of any one of the features in Yellowstone and there were dozens packed into this magical place. Something everyone should see and we are thankful for the opportunity.

Gallery from Yellowstone

[Show slideshow]

1 2 3 ►

We’ve arrive safely at Yellowstone with limited or no Wi-Fi connectivity so we are off the grid until Saturday