Tena and I just completed a road trip of immense proportions. Mainly due to some thinking that we could just drive out to the coast and see everything between here and there. 4100 miles later a lot of that thinking has been disabused. We only, and I use only in the “funny ha-ha” sense, traveled through parts of seven states in our travels and saw a lot of the things that we had on our list but travel we did. We rode through rain, fog, wind, sunshine day and night. Nice roads, crappy roads, one lane, two lanes, three lanes, four mainly. A plethora of roads that covered all the bases of travel here.
We traveled those 4100 miles in states that cover 853,042 square miles ( out of a US total of 3.7 million) which included five of the top seven largest. When I thought I saw and did a lot of things all I have to do is look at those numbers and realize there aren’t enough life times to see it all. We had a lot of discussion about Native Americans and how they lived there and the bet answer was mostly alone. I remember a quote from a western I had read years back that opined “you can hide a lot of Indians out there.” It’s the truth.
We both crammed for the travel exam as much as possible but like I just mentioned we couldn’t have seen it all I the allotted time. We had thoughts of going to the California coat to visit but ran out of time. I had dreams of tooling down the Pacific Coast highway tracing all the turns while watching the waves come in. Tena had dreams of going to Hollywood to check out the shops. I was just too far and I really didn’t want to drive in LA, especially after purchasing one tank of gas in California at $4 a gallon. We hope to maybe fly out someday and check it out before global catastrophe finishes it off.
I posted some of the pictures of the mountains we passed on Facebook. We started seeing mountains in Oklahoma and they traveled with us until we made it to Houston on the way back. They were a constant presence even if off in the distance, and the distances were deceiving. I remember one that we were viewing just before dark caught us. After driving two or more hours to our stop I was thinking that we wouldn’t see it anymore only to find it still off in the distance at daylight. I have pictures of us driving through the desert with snow covered peaks literally climbing right off the highway.
It’s probable that I’m going to write a good bit more about our travels in discussions about snowflakes and liberal gobbledygook. Some of the things we saw are hard to put down in words but we learned a lot about the small part of the country e passed through. Tena had told the kids if somewhere how fell into the Grand Canyon they needed to investigate it thoroughly but I don’t think either one of us was getting close enough to fall or get pushed in. The fact that we both made it home safely and are still talking to each other attests to the fact that the trip was good and the scenery was great, even awesome in places.
Memories made. Things laughed at. Time and money well spent. But it’s good to be back home to yall. Until next week. Ags.
