How We Spent Our Summer Vacation

The short course: We traveled over 6,500 miles on two separate trips to West Virginia / Berwyn Heights, MD and Zuni, NM / Denver, CO. We were in 18 states and the District of Columbia. We were gone from home for 4 ½ weeks, a nice respite from the humidity and heat. We spent over $530 on gas.

Slightly longer, in no particular order: West Virginia and the Appalachians are incredibly beautiful. PBS radio is everywhere in the USA. Some of the best coverage was on I-70 in Kansas. The worst coverage was in southern Oklahoma…just 2 radio stations with really bad (is there any other kind?) country music. It was 107 degrees in central Kansas when we drove through. According to a young man in a central Missouri, the humidity made the heat wave especially hard. Humidity? HA! He should come to Florida. We still don’t know the correct pronunciation of LaFayette, in Louisiana. LA fay ette; la FAY ette; la fay ette…who knows; maybe we’ll get it next time we go through. Billboards – both blessing & bane. They help when we’re looking for a gas station or restaurant, but what an eye sore! And some of the ads are like a kid with a one track mind. Ruby Falls on Lookout Mt. – could have built a house with the all the wood from those signs. The world’s largest prairie dog (in western Kansas), 59 signs for South of the Border (we counted) throughout Virginia, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits drag racing museum, Gatorland, a bazillion Mickey D’s, a place near the KS / CO border where you could climb a tower and see 6 states (one probably being Confusion), and Jim Walters Homes. We drove through a rain and hail storm in southern Oklahoma that had us wondering if we would find dents in the top surfaces of the car (we didn’t). The Bosscher West reunion at Estes Park with Rose, Dave, & Michelle Daining, Kathy B, Deb Rowenhorst, and Beth, GB, & RB was a certified riot! It was the 50th anniversary of the Interstate system and we rode over the first section of 8 miles to be completed – central Kansas. It had obviously been improved within the past 50 years. Albuquerque has some beautiful bridges over I-40; they’re really done some upgrading and the city has grown tremendously over the past 20 years. Sad things: pine bark beetles are killing many pinon pines; the amount of air pollution in Denver; our Iowa farmhouse was torn down to make way for a racetrack; changes at Rehoboth; watching Zuni dancers in a plaza of the pueblo and thinking that works righteousness is such a waste…all that effort and work for beautiful costumes and dancing, and it is worth absolutely nothing eternally. Some happy thoughts: 6,000 miles and the Camry ran like a top; no one seems to be worried about $3 per gallon gasoline; we saw no bad accidents on the roads; had great hikes on the Pyramid, in Nutria Canyon, Douwe Yalanie, Estes Park; Ponderosa bark still smells wonderfully like vanilla…if we could only bottle it! We walked barefoot across the headwaters of the Zuni River in Nutria Canyon; it was really slick clay but we didn’t fall! Kudzu really is taking over Georgia. New Mexico skies are amazing! We had great fun helping Mike & Lynda, Kathy, and Beth. It is good to be home again. I like not living out of a suit case.