Saturday, October 8, 2016

DAY # 36 - Wytheville, VA to HOME SWEET HOME!!!

We were SO HAPPY to be headed home today!!!!  We would not have traded this trip for anything in the world because we have enjoyed every single minute of it and all that we got to see and do and people visited and everything in between!!  And this is pretty much what we got to see in our travels today.....lots of clouds and toward the end of the trip, RAIN!!!  Bless Hurricane Matthew's heart for welcoming us home.

The clouds did remind us a lot of the Smokey Mountains earlier in our trip.  We love the Smokey's!!

We were doing so well until we happened upon this accident.  Not a good day for this person!!  Fortunately, it looked like everyone was ok....but I am sure they were shaken up!  And fortunately for us, it was only a 3 mile backup we had to patiently wait to get through.....not the 20 mile backup we had from the accident we had yesterday!

It was SO GOOD to see West Virginia welcome us home.....and we stopped at Walmart in Charlestown to get some groceries.  Maybe next year we will have a grocery store in Brunswick again!!!

Good to see the POTOMAC RIVER again as well....River looking good and flowing nicely.

FINALLY.....the much anticipated STATE SIGN!!!!!  

HOME . SWEET . HOME

 Like I said.....it is SO GOOD to be home again.  Tim-A-Do has taken such GREAT care of our home and Madi for us while we were gone.  Couldn't have done it without you Tim!!!  Kiitos Paljon!

A few stats of our trip:

  Length of trip: 36 days (shortened by 2 days so we can attend a temple meeting tomorrow, Sunday, as we have been called as the new Baptistry Directors for Saturday mornings.)

            Miles traveled: 7,418 miles.  (Dad had estimated 5,000 when we left home.)

            States traveled through: 18.

Temples visited: (20).  Did family sealings in Phoenix Temple.

            Car problems: None.  Oil Change in Phoenix.

Friday, October 7, 2016

DAY #35 - Knoxville, TN to Wytheville, Virginia.....

Almost Home!!!  :-)

As we left the GREAT STATE of TENNESSEE this morning, there was one more CONFEDERATE FLAG which is trying to hold on to the past!!!

We were looking for 'brown signs' to figure out where we wanted to stop and explore today.  We found this great place in BRISTOL TN/VA.....literally right on the state line!!!  IF you look real hard in the Bristol sign, you will see "VA" on the left under the word Bristol and "TN" on the right under the word Bristol.

We found this great little Birthplace of Country Music Museum and decided to make a visit.  It was worth the stop.  Even though we are not really country music fans.

A look out the 2nd floor windows reminded me of being in Mt. Airy....and the pretty changing leaves.

 As you can imagine, there is country music art all over town.  Dad quite liked this one.

 The VIRGINIA / TENNESSEE STATE LINE literally runs down the middle of this main downtown street.....Virginia on the left and Tennessee on the right.  So, Dad wanted me to stand in the middle of this busy road so I could stratal the state line and be in both states at the same time.  I thought he was crazy, but I did it any way!

 There was this cool statue across the street from the museum.  I decided to 'take the stage'.

As we were leaving town and headed to Wyethville, VA for the night, it started to rain.  Hurricane Matthew was moving in.  Good time to drive on out.

As you can see, we are almost home!!!  HOME SWEET HOME awaits us tomorrow.  We are excited to finally get home too.  Love y'all......

Thursday, October 6, 2016

DAY #34 - MEMPHIS, TN TO KNOXVILLE, TN - Back on EASTERN TIME 

and getting closer to home.

We left our hotel in Memphis this morning and headed for GRACELAND, the home of Elvis Presley.  We saw lots of these billboards and knew we were headed in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the lines were very long and we were on a time schedule because we had a 5 hours drive today to Knoxville, TN.  We opted NOT to wait in those long lines....plus the cost was $80 per person if we wanted to see all there was to see.  We walked across the street and saw the house where he lived from through the trees!!  I had actually been in his home 20 plus years ago with Steven when I drove him back out to BYU after his mission.  The cost then was far less than this price AND we just walked right up to the front of the house and went in.  It has become very, very commercialized now.  Too bad.  It was much nicer back in the day.

Here is one of his convertibles on display across the street from his home where the commercial shops are.

And, less we forget what he looks like, there is this GIANT foto of him on the side of one of the many buildings.

Back in the car we went and onward to our destination.  HOWEVER, stop the car because we 'found' a COTTON FIELD along the highway.  We had never seen these before because this part of Tennessee was NOT in either of our 2 Tennessee Missions!  This was a GORGEOUS cotton field almost ready to harvest.  BEAUTIFUL!!

Now, seeing this NASHVILLE SKYLINE made us feel like we were right back on our mission.  It was so reassuring to see this again.  Not much has changed since we were here about 6 months ago....still a LOT of traffic and the construction has still not been completed.

We saw quite a few of these signs everywhere....it will be nice to have this 'weird' presidential election over with and on to more important elections......like dad running for City Council in Brunswick!!!

True to form for Tennessee.....LOVE THEIR informational signs overhead of the highways.  They always get our attention!

And with this, we inch our way closer to HOME SWEET HOME with each passing mile.  This has been and continues to be a GREAT road trip for Dad and I.  Loving every minute of it....love y'all!!

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

DAY #33 - Oklahoma City, OK to Memphis, Tennessee....

getting closer to home-sweet-home!!

We left Oklahoma City this morning and continued our trip eastward!!!  It took about 2 hours to get to the Arkansas State Line.

 We did drive through the southern part of the Ozark Mountains.....as seen off in the distance of the foto.  It was good to see some 'eastern mountains' again!!  Otherwise, it was a LONG drive clear across the state!! 

 Hooray for finally seeing the TENNESSEE STATE LINE....felt almost like being home again!!!  Only difference is that this part of Tennessee was NOT a part of our mission boundaries.  SO, we never made it here while on our mission.

So, the Memphis skyline is not one that we are used to seeing all the time.  It is a pretty one though.

And check out this cook PRO BASS building!!  Wish we had time to explore that before leaving Memphis in the morning....but not on the list, nor do we have time to put it there!!  It will go on our 'next time' list.

And, once again, we were chasing the sun to make it to the Memphis Temple as the sun was setting.  We are getting pretty good at our timing on these.  This is probably the last temple we will be seeing on our 36-day road trip.  We won't be going by the Nashville Temple tomorrow as we drive to Knoxville, Tennessee.  But, we have seen that temple many times while on our mission.  It looks just like this one.

We headed to our hotel, a 10 minute drive from the temple, and decided we were hungry for something decent tonight.  We found this steak house right next to our hotel.  We had never heard of them before.

I guess when you have a pair of COWBOY BOOTS this size hanging in the front entry, it is bound to be good eatin!!  And it surely was.

We had our bucket of peanuts to munch on while waiting for our food.  They were good.  I had broiled shrimp and a sweet potato.  Boy, that food was so good.  Dad had a filet mignon with a sweet potato.

And that about wraps things up for the day!  We are getting closer to home and it feels so good!!  Love y'all.....

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

DAY #32 - Albuquerque, NM to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma....

moving closer to home sweet home!

We started our day off super EARLY by getting up at 4:30 a.m.  We wanted to try and catch the launching of hundreds of hot air balloons for the Annual Hot Air Balloon International Festival.  This is the largest of its kind in the world.  We were NOT disappointed.  After these 5 'dawn patrol' balloons were tested to make sure the weather conditions were good, the rest of the balloons were ready to be launched.  On Monday the event was CANCELLED due to high winds.  We were very fortunate that we were able to watch the event because the winds were a little 'iffy'!!

Once the decision was made to 'start the event for the day', these two balloons with the American flag floating in the air were hoisted up!  While the National Anthem was being sung.  It was wonderful.

We could then see hundreds of hot air balloons start the inflation process.  It was so cool.  There were hundreds of hot air balloons......everywhere you looked there were more and more.

As soon as a bunch would take off, the next round would lay their balloons out on the ground and start to inflate them.

That process kept on going for well over an hour.  We just simply had to leave because we had an 8 hour drive ahead of us today.  But, we were able to watch them more as we were driving down the highway.  The skies were filled with them.

We made a little pit stop at one of the many Route 66 rest areas along the famous route.

We finally made it to TEXAS...and it seemed to take for-ever to get there too.

But pretty much this was our view for most of the day.  Like Steven commented earlier on instagram, "look, a hill"!!  That was a nice change to have a hill!!

We had heard about CADILLAC RANCH, a privately owned field somewhere around Amarillo, TX where some rich guys didn't know what to do with their 'old' Cadillacs so they decided to make an 'art display' out of them.  They invited people to stop and see them, free of charge, and spray paint anything they wanted on them.  We had no spray paint with us, so Dad wrote a little love note with the sharpie he had in his pocket!!

And here is the note.....

It was a fascinating sight to behold!

AND....we finally made it to OKLAHOMA!  Yea....one state closer to home.

And, true to our schedules, we made it to yet another temple just a sunset!!!  OKLAHOMA CITY TEMPLE.  Yes, there is a temple here!

And with that, we are pooped and ready for a good nights rest!  At least longer than last night.  We will not be getting up at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow.  We will have a shorter travel day....only about 7 hours! Love y'all.....

Monday, October 3, 2016

DAY #31 - Made it to Albuquerque, New Mexico (from Flagstaff, Az)

As we left from Flagstaff, AZ this morning, we drove until we found a BROWN SIGN to tell us that the METEOR CRATER was just off the road.  Well, we have learned that it is hard to pass up a brown sign.  So, we drove 6 miles off the beaten road (highway) to see this.  SO glad we did.  Well worth the extra hour that we spent here.

The huge 1,400 lb piece of meteorite is on location so you can actually touch it and feel it.  It is the REAL piece....not a fake!

There is an 'open window' with that gorgeous view in the background.  That is NOT a foto on a wall. This was a very nice place to come visit.  We would love to come here again and spend more time.

The crater was a pretty amazing thing to see up close and personal!  Unfortunately for us, the WINDS were a real concern today and the walk-around-the-rim was not allowed.  We could only walk where there were railings.  And even with that, we held on for dear life!!!  AMAZING.

Our next stop today would be at the PETRIFIED FOREST National Park.  This was also very, very cool.  Those logs in front of the sign are petrified tree trunks.

Parts of the forest had so many pieces of the petrified trees just strewn everywhere and mixed in here and there were some cacti.

I even found a beautiful cacti in full bloom!!!  I thought that was also pretty cool.

This was a very cool piece of petrified tree.

We interrupt this little 'show and tell' for a bathroom break.  And, just in case you were wondering where the next bathroom might be for planning purposes, the establishment wanted to make sure you knew the answer to that!

The Petrified Forest runs right into the PAINTED DESERT!  And this did not disappoint either.  It was gorgeousness all around.

And right in the middle of it all, there we have ROUTE 66 going through.  With an old abandoned car to prove it!!  This was just too cute not to take a foto of!

At this point we were behind schedule and really wanted to get to ALBUQUERQUE by sunset and see the temple.  The scenery all along the way was just GORGEOUS.  Not one single dull turn in the whole drive today.

And you know what......Heavenly Father kept that sunset around just for us.  It was literally on it's last rays as we pulled into the temple parking lot.  We were so grateful for that.  Beautiful temple in a beautiful part of Albuquerque.

As I turned around in the temple parking lot, this is what I saw.  Indeed blessed with our timing!

Our adventure to HOME SWEET HOME continues.  So much to see each and every day.  We are SO BLESSED!  Love y'all.....Headed to the 515....hope y'all are ready for us to come home!!  Oh, and by the way.....we LOST and HOUR today.  :-(  We had just gotten used to having 3 hours!!