Our Last hurrah!!!

The big day is almost here. The Old Salt and I will be leaving on Friday morning for what we have dubbed our "Last Hurrah" trip. Hopefully time, age and money will prove our title wrong. But for now we expect this to be our last big effort at seeing the country.

I printed off the triptik from AAA and it has the mileage from our front door and back again at 4,927.6 miles, and that is just taking us from one address to another along the route without any exploring. So we expect to get well beyond that before we get back home.

First stop will be to visit my nephew in Denver. From there we go to San Francisco to ride a cable car and see the "Painted Ladies." Then we will go down the coast to LA and on to San Diego to visit with the Old Salt's grandchildren. After leaving San Diego we head to Phoenix where we hope to visit with a fellow blogger . Then it's north to I-40 and Albuquerque where we will visit with two nieces and take in the wondrous sight of hundreds of hot air balloons aloft at the "Balloon Fiesta."

leaving Albuquerque, we will be visiting with a high school buddy of the Old Salt in Tulsa and going on a trip down memory lane as he takes me on a tour of Nowata, Oklahoma where he went to high school. The Old Salt's mother was a very talented artist and the first recipient of Arkansas's Living Treasure Award for her stained glass windows. She left stained glass windows in every town they lived in and there is a 12 foot rose window in the Presbyterian church there along with several smaller works. We plan to take some good photos of her windows. By the time we reach Kansas City,we will decide if we have any go left. If we do, we will head up to Omaha to visit my sister and her family.

During this journey, we hope to visit Pikes Peak, the Grand canyon, Las Vegas, the golden gate bridge, see grey whales headed down the West Coast to Baha Mexico for the winter, and whatever else we can find. We may add a detour to Eugene Oregon to see a cousin and Seattle Washington to visit with a couple of my internet friends. We haven't ruled it out but it would add more than 2500 miles to our trip so the Eugene/Seattle detour is on the side burner.

A niece and nephew (with the help of their mother) will be keeping our home fires burning, the grass mowed, plants watered and the cats fed for at least a month and possibly more like five (maybe even six) weeks.

We will be taking along the Macbook to stay in touch with family and I hope to find time to make an occasional post here. I have to admit that I have gotten quite addicted to doing some type of post each day. I will miss all the memes and blogs I follow. But, I am not going to make any promises I can't keep. So, I hope you will all check in occasionally while I'm gone in case I do get the chance to post travel updates. Heck we might even be in your neighborhood so all of you living in the western states keep your eyes peeled for a gray haired retired couple driving a grey Chevy HHR with Missouri plates.

I pray that by the time I return I will not be forgotten by all my friends in the blogging world. But, just think about all the new photo's and stories I will have to share when we return.

To quote Roy and Dale "Happy trails to you until we meet again."