The Final Haul

It's funny how dire weather warnings tend to coincide with the busiest travel times of the year. West Virginia is cool and crisp as we check tire pressure, charge phone batteries, and mentally prepare ourselves to drive into the predicted maelstrom of the rest of the country. Sleet in the Midwest, snow in the Rockies, high winds, floods, and general chaos await us on the long haul west. Bring it on!

The past week at Knutty Acres has been delightfully relaxing. There were several days where we didn't step foot inside a moving vehicle (besides the utility vehicle for retrieving the mail and doing some West Virginia dog walking).

There were plenty of four-footed friends to keep us company. L-R: PeeWee, me, Sparky, and Elmo.

Once Ed and Nancy, Carl's parents, returned from Colorado, Nancy was able to give me a crash course in watercolor painting. It's been a really long time since I've painted anything besides a Forest Service sign, and I just couldn't help but fiddle with it. It's so hard to leave well enough alone.

We did a study of a light house, working from a painting Nancy had already done. Mine came out pretty well; definitely worthy of posting on the fridge.

Bubba doesn't know we're throwing him back in the truck tomorrow but he'll figure it out pretty quick. Wish us luck as we head to Spokane to join my nutty family for Thanksgiving!

Almost Heaven

Road trips are fun, but every four wheeled nomad reaches a point where they never want to crawl into one of those infernal machines again. Bubba reached that point about three weeks ago (see above); Carl and I hit the wall halfway through Kansas. That state has a way of sapping all the joy from your soul. We survived with the minimum number of stops and continued east to places I had only heard of in songs: Kansas City, St. Louis, the Missouri River, Lexington, the Shenandoah Valley, the Potomac River, and the Blue Ridge Mountains. For all the times I've heard "Country Roads" it was pretty exciting to finally be driving down them in the wild and wonderful state of West Virginia.

Carl's parents live outside of Harpers Ferry right on the Potomac River in a beautiful log house they pretty much built themselves. It's still fall here and the hills are shrouded in reds and oranges, fading slowly as the morning frosts claim more victims. There are stone walls running across the fields, old houses in quaint rows, and idiot drivers up the wazoo. Ah, yes, the things I love about being back east.

We arrived in the dark on Tuesday evening, drove Carl's parents to the airport on Wednesday afternoon so they could visit the Colorado Springs clan (oh, the irony), and now we're in charge of three Jack Russell terriers, one cranky old German short hair, and 38 black bellied Barbados sheep. Luckily most of the menagerie takes care of themselves so we've been free to run over to Morgantown to empty Carl's storage unit, walk around the historic streets of Harpers Ferry and Sheperdstown, and do novel things like sleep in the same bed for consecutive nights and cook our own meals.

The luxury of stationary down time means that I've had a chance to assemble some of our photos from the expedition. Clicking here will take you on a visual tour of our travels through the southwest. Enjoy!

The Most Epic Road Trip Ever, Continued

It's been a month since we left Alaska, and a week since our stopover in Portland. We've made it to Colorado Springs, the new home of Carl's brother and his family, and it's nice to have a couple days sleeping in the same place.

The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind: after picking up the truck in Eureka we spent the night parked off a Forest Service road somewhere in the Sierra Mountains, spent the next day driving across Nevada (a never ending state of rocky ridges separated by flat arid valleys), camped under the stars in Bryce Canyon National Park, watched the sun rise over Bryce Amphitheater, drove over to Zion National Park, went for a hike to find Carl some tarantulas (mission accomplished, much to my chagrin), enjoyed more amazing stars, woke up early to hike the nail-biting trail to Angels Landing (not for those afraid of heights - after 43 switchbacks you then traverse a knife edge aided by chains anchored in the bare rock), shared the view with some rabid chipmunks, hiked down with big smiles on our faces, rallied over to the Grand Canyon, discovered Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings time, realized the Navajo Nation does, reveled in a hot shower and a warm bed in Tuba City, marvelled at the sheer vast expanse of northern Arizona, stopped at the cliff ruins of Navajo National Monument, found our way to Utah and Moab, discovered a sweet BLM campsite on the Colorado River, read Edward Abbey in the shadow of Arches National Park, took a short trip to Canyonlands National Park, took a longer trip up Negro Bill Canyon where Bubba got to frolic to his heart's content, spent another evening reading Edward Abbey, ogled at the surreal formations of Arches National Park, relaxed for an afternoon in Moab, spent our last night at our favorite campsite, headed out to 1-70 through Colorado, and ended up in Colorado Springs. If it all seems hard to process, don't worry, I'm still working on it.

There's photographic evidence of all of this, of course, but it may take a little longer for that to get online. We'll be here for the weekend and then plan to continue our eastward migration to West Virginia, to retrieve the rest of Carl's worldly belongings. More stories and adventures to follow!