Map of Road Trip 6

We saw a lot of states in the (just under) five months of Road Trip 6.

There's no place like home.....there's no place like home...

We arrived back at our home on Whidbey Island about an hour ago.  We are overwhelmed with joy, and a feeling of being blessed.

We drove a bit over 1300 mile in 2 1/2 days, leaving Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park in the early early morning.  We drove 525 miles the first day, 600 the next, and about 180 today.

We were so excited.

We left out home here over 20 weeks ago, a very long time to be away.  We missed the smells of our woods, the views of the woods outside our windows, our woodburning stove, and so much else (including daily showers).

This is the end of our sixth road trip together.  Six.  We realized today that we don't really have a period of time in our marriage when we weren't on road trips---even in the first 1/2 year we were together we spent a lot of our time repairing our first camper for our first road trip.

We love both facets of our lives---being in our camper alone on the prairie, in the woods, or in the deserts, and being home on Whidbey Island.

We both feel so blessed with our lives, all 60+ years of them for both of us, and with our lives together in the bed of a pickup and on Whidbey Island.

Welcome home to us!

I really sink at selfies.

We see the racetrack in Death Valley......and lose our teakettle

We are in Death Valley, meeting Kathy and Bill here. The weather has been weird, like it has been in the desert Southwest all winter.  Lots of rain.  California needs it, so we don't mind the disruption.

One day we rented a jeep and drove to some places that we have not been able to visit.  It was a lot of fun. 

Viewed some parts of Death Valley that were spectacularly beautiful.

And got to a spot where we have wanted to visit for several years:  Teakettle Junction.  It is so named because people used to hang a teakettle on the part of the sign indicating where people should go to follow them.  Now, people hang their old teakettles.

That's what we did.  Ours had been used for six road trips, and was wearing thin.  We decided this would be a good resting place for it.
 
 

Vicky entertained us with "I'm a little teapot short and stout...."

 The next spot we went to is one of the natural wonders of the world:  The Racetrack.

On this dry river bed rocks move and leave tracks.  Scientists have theories about how this hapens, but no definitive proof.  It is really something.

Then we drove to two mines.  The first was the Ubhebee Lead Mine.

The second mine was the Lost Burro mine, on a road that was classified as an "easy Class 3" road.  This means that it was kind of tricky.

For one part, I walked out on it to make sure there was a place we could turn around if it became impassable.

Here we go!

 The mine had a number of structures that were interesting to see:

 See Vicky?

Kathy, Bil and me at the mine:

 A few other photos of our week here with them:

Trump takes office, vows an end to ‘American carnage’

"American carnage?"  Huh?

What and ugly and nonsensical way of describing the inevitable growing pains of a country that has increased by over 200 million since WWII and which is now a part of a stronger global world.

Our parents grew up either dirt poor or lower middle class, and became engineers, nurses, teachers, and college professors.  Both of our fathers volunteered for WWII, as did Vicky's son for Iraq and Afghanistan.  The two of us have been educators, counselors, and police officers.  Our children have become successes at a wider variety of fields and endeavors than can even be imagined, or actually in some instances even described.  All good, decent, hard-working, and caring.

They are but a tiny fraction of the many people who are as beautiful as the country we live in.

There is no "American Carnage."  It's a Great Country.  Here it is, from our photo album of places we have seen in the past five years on our road trips: