As most of you know, I lost my job of 22 years in May. Cathy had to take a 4 month break in service at UCSD. We figured that we had to take positive action. We decided to go on an extended vacation. We started out by visiting several national parks and national forest areas that we knew and loved. Old friends Ed and Luann Auker met us on the fly in the Beartooths. We then backtracked a bit up to Glacier National Park (NP), a place neither of us had ever been. After Glacier, we headed east across the Great Plains, stopping for several days in western North Dakota and checking out the prairie and badlands. We continued across the plains and ended up in northern Minnesota, our belated honeymoon. Ramona caught us on the fly and stayed long enough to canoe through the Boundary Waters for a week.
After that, we spent the next half of the trip visiting friends and family, many of which were kind enough to put us up (or put up with us as the case may be) for awhile. We started out at the Driscolls in metro St. Paul. From there, we spent the next month in the oven. We went down to Chicago to visit cousin Linda Kay and DC Smith. From Chicago, we crossed Illinois and Indiana, side tracked through Michigan and ended up in Youngstown. We visited my mom, Fran and Dan, Chris Mrosko, the Millers and also ran into a couple other old friends. We reached the easternmost point of our journey at Sandy Lake, Mercer County, PA.
Heading back west, we stopped off in St. Louis to visit Skip and Judy McLain and their family. We also made it a point to see Ista Lee Jackson, who took care of Cathy when Cathy was young. After St. Louis, we went down to historic St. Genevieve and stopped in Farmington to visit niece Linda before camping once again in the Ozark National Scenic Waterway NRA. After a couple nights beneath a tree full of noisy cicadas during the day and noisy katydids happily buzzing away at night, we stopped off in western Missouri at Mary Jan and Gary Beeson's ranch. After several days in the Springfield area, we crossed over into Kansas, across the 100th parallel.
We were back out west once again, finally ridding ourselves of the oppressive Midwestern humidity. We backtracked a bit to the north, going to Denver and visiting our two friends, Linda and Sheri. We took a day excursion up to Mt. Evans and hiked around at 12,000' in coats and stocking hats, going from the oven to the ice box. We dipped back south, crossing into New Mexico at Raton Pass. We stopped off for a few hours in Santa Fe, before spending the night along old Route 66 in Grants, NM. From Grants, we headed toward Phoenix. The thunderstorms had followed us for several days. The weather in northeastern Arizona was perfect....80° with little humidity. We took a side trip through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. We ended up back in the oven in Phoenix, at Virginia and Paul's. Cathy used my soon-to-expire frequent flyer ticket on Southwest to continue on to Portland for a visit with daughter Dmitria. I returned home to San Diego and experienced severe culture shock.
Our thanks to everyone. For those of who who didn't get your picture taken and posted here, my apologies for the oversight. I took over 800 digital photos. If anyone who hasn't gotten a copy of them on a CD and who would like one, please e-mail me and I'll send one to you.
To cybervisit any particular place, click on the respective thumbnail, below. Otherwise, just keep hitting "Continue" until you reach the end.
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California |
San Bernardino |
Grand Teton |
Grizzly Bear Black Bear Moose White-tailed Deer Mule Deer Pronghorn Antelope Bighorn Sheep Mountain Goat American Bison American Elk Gray Wolf Coyote |
Black Rosy-Finch Franklin's Gull Clay-colored Sparrow Grasshopper Sparrow |
Total Bird Species One
hundred seventy-eight (178)
Days camping Forty-one (41)
Motels Five (5)
Restaurants -- Too many, but were they good
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