Eureka, I made it home...

Hello fellow travelers.

I made it home last night about 11:30. Took a cool shower to wash off the trail dust and headed to local watering hole to make sure the neighborhood was still standing after the unpleasantness the previous night - but that was kept downtown. Apartment and neighborhood are just as I left them - the apartment is a mess and the neighborhood is clean and quiet.

I am off to the post office to get the mail started and that may be a mess to clean-up. You can only stop the mail for 30 days - I was gone 40. I tried to extend the stoppage another 10 days while I was out on the trail, but they wanted the confirmation number from the original stoppage and that was sitting on my printer here at home. The National Park Service has been great, I can only hope the Postal Service is just as nice and efficient.

Later today, after I empty out the Conestoga, I am off to the County Fair. My daughter has her own vacation planned and she leaves soon for Disneyland, then 2 days later she leaves for Samoa and Australia. That means the final postings will be completed as the week progresses. To add to finishing the blog, I have fire safety duties at THECRUCIBLE.ORG for a fire cabaret that is next weekend. You can go to the website if you are interested but practice is Sunday for 6 hours and then on Tuesday and Wednesday for 5 hours with the first live performance Thursday evening.

I will work around all of this and finish the blog by the end of the week.

If you ever need a place to visit for vacation - think Southern Utah - as the t-shirts say UTAH Rocks! and it does. If you like the outdoors Southern Utah is it, especially if you have a 4 wheel drive vehicle. I traveled in a Ford Mustang Convertible and had a great time. Having a 4 wheel drive vehicle would have made more areas accessible and I would have needed another week. As it was, I spent 8 days and barely had time to for a couple of hours at each park. I did visit Mesa Verde in Colorado in that time as well (which is in the top 5 places on the entire trip - but more on that in the coming days).

Thank you for traveling with me, I am sorry that I did not have the time to blog as much as I thought while traveling. Bad Internet access as well as exhaustion led to the minimal writing during the journey.

I would take this journey at the drop of a hat and an improved bank account. :)

If anyone is going to be visiting any of the parks or areas that I have covered, drop me an email and I will gladly share my experiences and pratfalls to save you some time.

For those of you that are local, I am going to find a place to have a little party to show my pictures and experiences. From a quick counting I took about 3,000 pictures - but with a digital camera, that is nothing. Just happily snapped away hoping that 1 or 2 would turn out nice - and hopefully they have. I have not had the time to look over all the pictures, even the ones on the blog. I was just trying to meet the deadline of exhaustion.

Just as a taste of what is to come, here is the thermometer from Death Valley yesterday before I left for home.

And speaking of taste - I have had 2 showers, brushed my teeth, a couple of cocktails, a nice sleep in my own bed and another shower - and I still taste trail dust in mouth. I hate to imagine what it was like in the Old West driving a herd from Texas to Dodge City! No wonder the saloons were crazy - the heat, dust and smell of the trail would drive anyone to drink. And it would not take much alcohol to make you drunk after being on the trail for a months at a time.

I hope you have enjoyed the journey so far and I promise to get you home by the end of the week.

Thanks for traveling with me!

Michael