After a great night's sleep in our Ramada Inn hotel room, we had breakfast in the lobby and loaded the van and headed east once again. We drove into Tennessee and through Memphis. We stopped to see our friends Leroy and Betty Jane in Huron, TN. They moved here last year from Appalachicola, FL. After a tour of there 11 acres, we had a delicious lunch, Borsch soup, sandwiches and salads. Plus muffins and cookies for dessert. Betty Jane is quite a good cook. After our visit we followed Leroy and Betty Jane into Lexington, TN and we headed north on Route 22 and got back on Interstate 40 East. We drove through Nashville at rush hour and decided that we would get another hotel room for the night. the temperature was 88 and although it ... read more

We slept in this morning, getting up at 7:45, had breakfast and a walk and continued on our eastward journey on Route 40. The scenery was mostly flat, a few hills, a mesa here and there, and power poles and towers. There was one straight section of road where I saw a tower at the horizon and I counted the miles that we could see ahead of us - it was 14 miles. We past two distant wind farms to the south of the highway while in New Mexico. We crossed over the state line into Texas. This was our first time ever in this state. We lost another hour and are now in Central Time Zone. As we crossed the state line we noticed that white grass replaced the dirt on the flat roadsides. There ... read more

After a great, cool night’s sleep we had breakfast at our campsite. We were up early because we came back into Arizona and are now on Pacific Time. At 6:00 am here is actually 7:00 am for us. We caught an early shuttle bus to the west side of the canyon, which is the only way to see this side. Dave says they eventually want to make the Grand Canyon accessible only by shuttle bus. The system here is very good, the signage is good and the shuttles are easy to use. We took the shuttle to the first stop, and then hiked the Canyon Rim Trail for the next 3 stops, about 1.5 miles. We saw great scenery of the canyon and the Colorado River. We took the shuttle once again between points and then ... read more

We decided to have breakfast out this morning. We stopped at a restaurant with lots of cars outside and figured it must be a great place to eat. Well there was only one waitress and we waited 20 minutes just to get a cup of coffee and 45 minutes for our food. We drove to Cortez, Colorado and stopped at the Welcome Center there and I picked up a free t-shirt I ordered a couple of months ago. This is the first time for Dave in this state. We were able to get a new cable to use to attach my computer to my cell phone at the Radio Shack in Cortez. I broke the old one a couple of days ago and was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get a new one until we ... read more

Arrived at Capitol Reef yesterday afternoon and camped at Fruita Campground. Fruita was a Mormon pioneer settlement from the 1800's which lasted until 1941. There is a school house, a blacksmith shop, the Gifford Farmhouse and barn, and the apple orchids by which they earned their living. A herd of mule deer ran through the meadows of the campground this morning. We started out our day here, on the scenic drive. There are warnings everywhere not to enter if a storm threatens. The roads are frequently washed out when it rains. In the wash-outs, blacktop areas have been replaced with concrete - black top washes away - concrete doesn't. At the end of the scenic drive, we took the dirt road to Capitol Gorge. The gorge was beautiful, but really scary. Huge rocks hanging precariously over ... read more