After a difficult evening and not much sleep, we took to the road a bit later than usual in search of breakfast. Fortunately, we found a diner en route with coffee which lightened the mood a bit. This was to be another long day of driving because our goal was to reach the campgrounds by mid-afternoon. We pulled in about 5:30 or so local time (we forgot that Tennessee covers 2 time zones) and were greeted by Gabe's family. Within minutes of arriving, Gabe's brother in law, Tom, and I went to the camp for more beer, buns and water. The [View Full Entry]

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I got up early and did some laundry before we hit the road. Since we got out late, after a quick breakfast in the hotel, we set with a goal to get to our next destination, Memphis, early enough to visit Graceland. We got there about 3:00 and after checking into the Heartbreak Hotel, we walked over to see The King's estate. We got the audio self tour - and it was quite well done. As none of us are particular Elvis fans, it was a bit surprising how down-to-earth Graceland seemed. Gabe and I both thought it was sort of [View Full Entry]

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We got up early and rushed over to the Flying Ranch office. The owner's daughter, Christina, was set to take us all on a guided horseback ride through the ranch. None of us were experienced riders so we opted for an hour ride through the country side. Both of the kids did really well on horse back and we all had a great time. After the ride, the owner took us all in his pick up truck out into the pasture to see the bison and the long horned steer. We drove right up to them and they posed for pictures [View Full Entry]

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Many of the famous sites on Route 66 are in the short Texas piece so we only planned to cover 250 or so miles today so we could make all of our stops. The first was Glenrio - a small ghost town - which gave us an excuse to get out of the car and take some pictures. From there, we went to Adrian - the midway point of Route 66 - and stopped for a late breakfast at the Midway Cafe. If you go there, have the pie. It's great - and the women who run it are fun to [View Full Entry]

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On the way to Gallup, we'd seen signs for the Zuni Pueblo outside of town. Our handy AAA guidebook (even if your car never needs towing, a membership in AAA is worth it just for these handy guides!) said that this was a very worthwhile sight so we set out early in the morning to see if even though it wasn't in our plans. I was very interested in seeing an active pueblo and was pretty excited. We drove about 45 minutes out of the way to discover that on Sunday mornings, none of the tourist things were open. We even [View Full Entry]

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After months of planning, the Road Crew - Gabriel, Rece, Samantha and I - loaded up our rented Town and Country van with all of our travel stuff and hit the road. A brief and incomplete inventory: - 5 digital cameras - 1 radar detector - 2 laptop computers - 3 cell phones - 3 mp3 / iPod players - 12 complete MRE meals - 4 sleeping bags - 2 tents - 4 lawn chairs - 4 duffel bags / suitcases - snacks, drinks and breakfast stuff for 3 days - 2 atlases, 3 US maps, 8 AAA tour guide books, [View Full Entry]

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