Having returned from deployment, I thought it was important to begin to groom my eventual replacement, my grandson. The man must dress the part.
On the road again....
Well the season is over and we have left the island for the next 7 months. When they make me King, we will have a new calendar with more months in it. Also the seasons will change. Summer will start June 1 and end October 1 as it will suit my lifestyle better. Fall would go clear to May 1 and Winter would last a month. I want sun, not cold. If I wanted cold, I would have been an Eskimo. Why do you think I left Canada in my rear view mirror?
So off we went, on a 3 week+ cross country trip back home to California via the most circuitous route possible to see family and friends along the way, mooching off all of them. As I write, we are a day out from home, now in the great state of California having covered more than 4500 miles (7,000 + km). We love road trips and we have criss-crossed the US and Canada a dozen times over the years, most often with the kids, having taken them to 48 states, 3 provinces and Mexico. And that was before we took them to Europe. There is so much to see and experience along the way. Being in no hurry (the only things left that I still HAVE to do is pay taxes and die) we now limit ourselves to driving 5 hours a day to have time to visit anything we see.
Along the way, we stopped for a few days to visit family in Nebraska on the family farm that grows corn, soybeans and also has cattle. I rode a combine and drove a tractor towing a 1000 bushels of corn kernels until I got a blowout on a 6' tall (2 m) $2000 tire. The farm is absolutely staggeringly enormous by any standard, harvesting fields that go as far as the eye can see.
OOOOPS...
As viewed from the cab of the combine... as far as the eye can see
Look at the size of the men next to the combine. The tractor and grain cart I drove is next to it
Wind down after a day of harvesting
Janice's cousin Cinde
Later, we visited the original "Pony Express" station
Then, we drove to "Wind Cave" National Park. Over the years we have visited over a dozen caves all over the US and Europe. They are all so different and fascinating. This one is the 7th longest in the world with tentacles that go every which way at different levels. They have currently mapped 262 miles of passageways and with geologists still exploring as we visited, it is estimated that they have only mapped 5% of the whole cave.
The map showing the mare's nest of passages
You can't go to South Dakota without driving by Mt. Rushmore. It's pretty Iconic. Then again, 10 miles away is the carving of "Crazy Horse" in a mountain on Lakota Indian lands. It is 10 times the size of Mt. Rushmore, was started in 1949 and is likely to take 100 years or more to finish. As seen below, they are currently working on his arm which is 261 feet long (120 M) The crane is over the area where his horse will be. We have visited about every 10 years to check on the progress.
The proposed finished product
Once past South Dakota, we drove through Wyoming's Big Horn mountains. At first, it was really pretty.
But, in a matter of 30 minutes we found ourselves in a total whiteout with temperatures dropping 30 degrees. There were no vehicles for almost 30 miles, so we drove at 25-30 MPH on our summer tires with only snow plow markers on each side of the road to guide us. The snow covered road was indistinguishable from the adjacent fields.
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Our view of the road ahead. Look closely, you can barely see the markers
Back on the road, we drove through Montana to visit our grandson Alex and his fiancée Caitlin who are scheduled to get married in the months to come.
Our next stop was in Spirit Lake, Idaho, to visit son Wesley and Amanda for a few days. When we left the island, we knew we would be driving back to California in the fall, but we never expected to be driving in snow and such cold. The coldest we got was 14 degrees F (-10C) but other than the whiteout conditions on the road in Wyoming, in Idaho we got caught in a 10" snowstorm. Crimeny!
Making our way to the west coast through Washington state, we drove south to Oregon to daughter Cassie's family for several days. There, we saw the whole fam damnly from Janice's mom to Lindy and all in between. From there we are making a beeline for the house to arrive November 16th after nearly a month on the road.
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