Day 11 - Tuesday, November 18th - Santa Rosa, NM to Albuquerque, NM We catch a few sites additional sites of Santa Rosa as we leave town. We bypass going into the Route 66 Auto Museum so as not to get behind so early in the day. Too late we realize we probably should have wandered in given its unique offering of sixty restored classic cars and trucks on display. We head right to the expressway to begin a busy day. We’ve decided to take the Santa Fe Loop which is an earlier version of Route 66. In addition, we decide to take a side trip to Las Vegas, NM - didn’t even know there was a Las Vegas aside from Las Vegas, Nevada. From Santa Rosa, NM, we turn off I-40 after just a few ... read more

Current State Every so often, we feel badly about how seldom we are posting for this trip. However, it only lasts a minute because we realize very, very quickly that our fun and the uniqueness of our time together takes precedence over anything. It has been extraordinary in spite of requiring a lot more daily planning than we had ever figured. We are actually finishing day 30 and on our route back home. We spent the last couple of days visiting one of Jerry's nephews and his family near Dallas, TX, stopping in for breakfast with one of Rita's cherished friends/colleague near Houston, TX, and today, visiting with Jerry's nephew and his family in Slidell, LA. We'll be off toward Memphis tomorrow. Jerry's got a bad cold but so far, he's getting through it. So, still ... read more

Even Further Behind Here we are, actually on day 22 and we're still trying to post for days 4-6. We're going to forego much verbiage and let the pictures give a clue of what we've done in order to try and make some progress on postings. Who knows if we'll ever succeed at catching up. Obviously, our priority is enjoying our time so guess you'll all just have to understand (or not) We'll be in Sedona, AR for Thanksgiving. Now, going back to days 4-6. Day 4 - Tuesday, November 11th - St. Louis, MO An absolute highlight day of our trip. We had lunch with Aunt Rose (Rita's dad's sister), and cousins Jan and June. It was a treat to catch up with the families. Aunt Rose and Jan had been in Milwaukee a couple ... read more

Special Note We did not want to write our final day's travel until we had caught up on the days we missed because a few of those days were some of the most special and would contain many of our best pictures. Those who subscribed, you will have received emails for the individual days. For those that are visiting periodically, the days we added that we had previously skipped are: * Days 4, 5, 6 (9/19 - 9/21 Glacier National Park) * Days 7, 8, 9 (/22 - 9/24 Canadian Rockies) * Days 17, 18, 19 (10/2 - 4 Grand Tetons and Yellowstone) These are all posted now and thus, we give both our last day's journey and a trip summary. Last Leg Home It was the longest drive we had because there were no planned ... read more

Badlands Our revised plan gave us a relaxing early morning before heading out to the Badlands. We had a challenge to face as the ladies in North Dakota a few weeks back had said they believed the North Dakota Badlands were better than the South Dakota ones. Obviously, they were somewhat biased but still, it gave us pause to see what we'd think since we had already seen at least some of the North Dakota Badlands and thought they were excellent. The roads leveled out pretty quickly after leaving Rapid City. Did you hear the whining? Jerry was like - what exactly is supposed to be out here? Finally, in the distance, one could see something, though I have to admit it wasn't very obvious. Rita tried to explain that unlike the mountains you could see ... read more