We leave Raton to start our drive home. First, we go to Albuquerque, N.M. and stay overnight. On the way, we pass through Santa Fe. Next, it's back to Oklahoma City. We decide to skip Little Rock and go on to Nashville. Piper and I make Mark listen to E! on XM and he now knows more than he wanted to know about Hillary Duff, Robert Downey, Jr. and Johnny Depp. From Nashville, we stay on I-40 and go through Knoxville, then Ashville, finally hitting our door none the worse for wear and definitely feeling it was the best vacation ever! [View Full Entry]

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Piper and I have been hanging out at the hotel taking advantage of the indoor pool. Mark is with his buddies (Gary, Michael, Jorma, and Nick) at the NRA Whittington Center taking a 3 day course in the Barrett 50 cal Rifle. Piper and I decide to venture into Raton for lunch and find the Sweet Shop. In business since 1923, it is currently owned by Mike J. Pappas. His father opened the Sweet Shop in 1923. In the gift shop I see a book entitled, "Raton - History, Mystery and More." I enjoy the bits I read standing there and [View Full Entry]

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The drive from Texas to Raton, NM is incredible. Piper thinks that a mountain out the window looks like a volcano...turns out she's right. It's Mt. Capulin. There aren't a lot of places to stay in Raton, we are at the Holiday Inn Express. When I check in, they let me know there is a complimentary dinner for guests every night - potato soup and chili dogs tonight - and hot breakfast every morning. Cool! When I walk the dogs, housekeeping gets on their radios and soon I have a crowd on the patio admiring the dogs. Daily, they'd meet us [View Full Entry]

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Oklahoma City to Raton, NM. We are still on I-40 West. Today is a great travel day! Lots to see. Gigantic windmills courtesy of the Oklahoma Wind Energy Center dot the landscape. They look like something out of a sci-fi movie. We also see one of the real buildings that the animators creating the movie, CARS used in the film. In CARS it was the custom paint shop of one of the characters. Lots of tiny derricks also dot the landscape, along with windmills straight out of Wizard of Oz. Managed to get a shot of the Welcome to Texas [View Full Entry]

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Knoxville to Memphis and everyone is getting used to traveling. Rowan sleeps with her head on the cooler, Biscuit likes to be the co-pilot and often seems to think Mark can't drive without his head over Mark's shoulder surveying the road. Piper has been watching movies and reading when we haven't been annoying her with, "Look Piper! Cows!" As we were driving down Hwy 40 West, we see a pickup heading East. In the bed of the pickup is some kind of vending machine that is strapped in and standing up against the cab. Standing up against the vending machine, [View Full Entry]

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Traveling from Memphis, TN to Oklahoma City, OK. We go from Memphis to Arkansas. I didn't like the first 2 hours of Arkansas, it looked flat and uninteresting. Sort of anywhere, USA. Closer to Little Rock, Arkansas got beautiful. I think I like seeing mountains - it is so different from where we live. All of Oklahoma is beautiful to me. The day is overcast, looks like big thunderstorms may be moving in. It doesn't rain on us, but the sky makes everything look lush and green. We are relaxed, just enjoying the trip. [View Full Entry]

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Knoxville, TN is beautiful! Rolling hills, green, I could live here. We ate at a Pueleo's Grill - wow! That was some awesome food. Our friends, Brian and Lucy, who are from Knoxville, introduced us to Ham n' Goody's Lemon Iced cookies a few years back. We looked up the location before we ever left home and that was our first stop this morning. I went in with Piper and the owner was there. I told him we'd come all the way from NC for his cookies and asked if I could take pictures of us in his store. He [View Full Entry]

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Well, the rental van didn't work out so we put down 2/3 of the bench seat in the Subaru, put the gear box on the luggage rack and headed out. The dogs have been fantastic - they settled right in. Our only mishap was, literally, pulling away from the house when Rowan decided to sit on Piper's lap. That was 100 lbs. of dog she didn't particularly want sitting on her. We made a barricade using the cooler to keep Rowan away from Piper and headed out again. We stopped at a gas station that had a lone picnic table [View Full Entry]

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