1st...

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Dear Family & Friends (and complete strangers who may stumble upon this in cyberspace.)

I've set up this blog so that Traci and I can keep you all up to date on our progress when we are away on an adventure.
We may or may not be grammatically correct at all times; please don't hold that against us. :-)

I wish I would have thought of this before our trip to Ecuador - that would have been an even better opportunity to give this a try. At any rate, better late than never, and we've got a phenomenal, albeit last minute, trip coming up for our Holiday vacation.

So, here's some details. We're making a list and checking it twice of all sorts of must-see's/do's along the way. We'll keep you updated with photos and words of whatever we can.

Destination: California.
Places to see there and along the way: We'll travel from Florida through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and finally California. Our target upon initial entry into The Golden State will be the greater Los Angeles area. We'll be setting up base camp here for a couple days thanks to the generosity of Eric while he's back in the Northeast visiting the family.
Next, we'll move North, to San Francisco. We'll visit with a friend of Traci's, then go a bit further to Santa Rosa to see Uncle Rollie hopefully for the Holiday. We'll spend some time in Sonoma/Napa, hopefully collecting delicious wines as mementos of our trip. We'll try and check out the Redwoods in Muir Woods and maybe try to get to the Redwoods National Park, time permitting. We'll also explore San Francisco, visiting some of my favorite spots from previous trips and discovering new ones as well.
There's talk of Yellowstone and Old Faithful, and my hopes are high, because these are things that make the American West so unique and beautiful, and a must to experience.
We'll begin our return trip by heading Southeast into Arizona. My hope is to spend a day at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, so we'll shoot for Flagstaff or Williams, AZ as a jump point.
From there we'll continue south/east making our way back to Florida. Either en route or on return, I'm hoping to visit Agua Prieta, Mexico, at the Arizona/Mexico border. I've read there's delicious Mexican food to be had here, and we can park in Douglas, AZ and simply stroll across the border for it. And after all, food and adventure are two things we can't get enough of, so it's best combine them!
We've got some parks of interest to visit as well, but we'll see which ones we actually get to once we get there.

So, this should start everyone off with a general idea of what we'll be up to. I will see if this blog service has a "comment" feature so we'll be able to communicate 2-ways.

We depart Dec. 19th, and will return January 4th. Happy Holidays to you all!

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Comments

[Mom]

Wish we were there!
Wow, so glad you are both having such a wonderful and exciting experience.....The snowbanks up here in Maine are getting larger everyday......We sure could use the warm weather.......Have a great time and give Mon Oncle Roland and Ma Tante Yvonne a big hug from us....Have a wonderful Christmas!!! Look forward to talking with both of you soon.... Love you lots and miss you lots too, Mom and Dad XOXOXOXO