My Journal

Today was our last travel day to get home. We did not have far to go so we stopped at Skyline Drive to hike a little bit. We enjoyed the hike and we really enjoyed getting home. We needed to see our kitties. At first they were surprised it was us coming in but they greeted us happily and settled in on the couch with us right away. It is good to be home!

Today was a travel day. We covered close to 500 miles. We tried to drive the blue ridge parkway but as we headed up the mountain the fog was so thick I could not see more than 15 feet in front of the truck. That made for slow driving. There was also rain in the forecast so it was an gamble if we could get any hiking in and the drive from the highway to the parkway was 18 miles so we did not want to back track.

We are lucky we did. We saw wild turkeys! There were 3 different groups and as a bonus we saw deer too! We never were able to hike and we needed to skip 3 different places we would have stopped at but hey you can’t control the weather.

We tried to stop in a bigger college town but the 6 hotels were all sold out due to a Math competition of all things. We needed to travel more miles than planned but lucked out at a Days in and was able to eat at a local restaurant that was in business since 1955! The children now run the place their parents started. I had the catfish dinner and Miriam had the Haddock. They also had pies and ice creams! I had a malted milk shake and they had similar milk shake mixer like we had at Nice N Sweet. It brought back some cool memories.

Today we had the pleasure of driving a bunch and also stopping at an amazing state park in Tenn. The name was Burgess State park and there were 3 water falls. The first one was visible from the parking lot. The second one was a 10 minute walk and was 2-3 times the drop. Then another 10 minutes down the trail and the last falls was amazing! The drop looked to be 60 to 100 feet. It was amazing!

So today we went to the Crater of Diamonds state park in Arkansas. We found things!!!!! Unfortunately none of them were diamonds. Oh well we had fun. Miriam was the first one to find a potential diamond and I later found a few smaller ones while wet screening the dirt. Turns out what we found was some other stone. The dreaming sure was fun!

Today was a travel day. We were heading home but then decided to be crazy any go deeper into Texas to see the Bluebonnet flowers and then on to the Crator of Diamonds state park. There was a 12,000 and a 20,000 dollar diamond found there and you get to keep what you find! Woohoo fun!

Today we traveled into New Mexico and visited the El Malpais National Monument in stead of the El Morro one like we planned. It was totally worth it. We hiked some different terrain and loved what we saw. At one point we were up on top of sandstone peaks looking down hundreds of feet to the valley below. This was an amazing place.

This morning we git up early so we could watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon. While walking from the parking lot to the rim trail we saw an elk or mule deer with antlers. That was cool. What was not cool was that I started dry heaving and breathing hard. So the altitude got me again. No biggie since we would be leaving and heading to the Petrified Forest National Park.

It was great to return there but it was lacking after seeing the Grand Canyon. We did some hiking and had fun so that is all that matters. Tomorrow will be El Morro National monument for some more hiking then more traveling towards our home. Life is good!

Grand Canyon day!

We made it to the Grand Canyon and it was great to see it again. Unfortunately I seemed to have been affected by the higher altitude and was having a tough time keeping my breath. I was gasping a lot and feeling drained with minimal exertion. I ended up riding the couch while my wife did the shuttle bus tour.She is loving it and that is all that matters.

AM:
2:45 min hike! Today was a good one. My wife’s hike was 45 min longer. She made it to the top! She is amazing.

After that I was done. I have been tired after the hikes to the point of needing to rest. Too much fun!

AM:

2 hour hike! Yep we did another hike. Go figure.

In the afternoon we did a 1.5 hour jeep tour with some off roading. We should have done the 2 hour one which was more extreme. We had a good time but we wanted more!