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!