The Journey Home

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Well the remainder of the trip was just a matter of pointing the car in the direction of home and trying to stay in between the two weather fronts. We had spent the night in Amarillo Texas and left on the morning of the 10th under very overcast skies with some light misty rain. We were now traveling on Interstate highways in order to make some good time. The sight seeing was over and the objective was just to get home. In the eastern part of Oklahoma the countryside varied from slightly hilly farmlands with a few trees and bushes to very hilly with lots of trees. They were deciduous trees that had just barely begun to change colour. As we neared the Arkansas border the skies were sunny but we could see that it was very dark to the south and assumed that it was the rainy front ahead of us. Our night time stop for the 10th was in Clarksville Arkansas.
The morning of the 11th was again overcast with a temp of 54 degrees. The cold weather was now behind us and the further south we traveled, the warmer it would become. There were a few patches of sun as we drove along I-40 eastward into Memphis Tennessee where we then turned south east. We were quickly out of Tennessee and into Mississippi and made a stop in Tupelo to see the birth place of Elvis Presley. We had seen Graceland in Memphis (his home once he became famous) on our way out west and were going right through Tupelo on the way home so it seemed a good idea to stop by. It was really interesting and his humble beginnings were such a contrast to his life at Graceland. The house was just 2 rooms and very tiny. The information and quotes from his childhood friends on plaques in an area close to the house were just super and really gave insight into his early years. According to those who knew him back then, he was very shy and polite and just a really nice guy. We did not spend a whole lot of time there because we needed to travel on to our stop for the night in Birmingham Alabama.
Our last day on the road, the 12th, would be a long one because once we crossed the Florida state line, it seemed to make sense to just get home rather than spend another night in a hotel. Home was within driving distance so we decided to just get there. The morning started out at 63 degrees with still no rain. It was overcast as it had been the previous two days. However, about 1/2 hour down the road, the heavens opened and there was a torrential deluge. It continued on and off for a few hundred miles but then it seemed that we had caught up with, and driven through, the rainy front that had been ahead of us. From the time we crossed the Florida border until sunset it was typical summer Florida weather, beastly hot, incredibly humid, and sunny with huge white puffy clouds. The temp quickly climbed to 91 degrees and was only down to 81 degrees when we finally reached home at 11:30pm.
It was good to see home at the end of that long day, but sad to think that our fabulous journey was over.
We had traveled almost 12,500 miles through 16 states with a good portion of the mileage being in Wyoming and Colorado.
Its difficult to summarize what we had seen but it was incredibly diverse to say the least. The coldest weather was 23 degrees and snowing and the hottest (other than Florida) was 88 degrees and sunny and that was all in the same day by the way. There had been miles of open graze lands and cattle, deep canyons and rivers, desert areas with little more than sage brush, grassy wetlands, old mining and pioneer towns, ghost towns, huge sand dunes at the foot of a mountain range, snow capped mountain peaks, tiny remote towns, forests, geysers and steam vents, corn, soy, cotton and sorghum fields, herds of buffalo, elk, pronghorn, big horn sheep, bull moose, yaks, mule deer, prairie dogs, and donkeys. Each state had something different to share. Sometimes it was as simple and subtle as the colours of the desert and other times it was as magnificent as the snow capped mountains or the cottonwoods and aspens displaying their full autumn colours. We had visited National Parks and National monuments, traveled on remote country roads, followed the route of the pioneers and marveled at their strength through the hardships that they endured as they went in search of a new life. We crossed big rivers, little streams, mountain passes and desert areas. We had taken the road less traveled and what a road it was!!!!

I think that the following quote from best selling author Pat Conroy is just so true.
“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”

My mind may never break from the journey but I know that as time passes, there will be things that I will not remember. We will relive and remember the journey by viewing the thousands of photographs that Id taken along the way and by reading this travel log.

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