All Good Things...

It is the last day of the ROAD TRIP...all good things must come to an end. We are homeward bound.

Like we aluded to yesterday we had a French breakfast. The Hanlon B&B, where we stayed, is run by Suella Hanlon. Her parents had owned the house since the mid 1900's and she just recently made it into a B&B. It was a lot of fun visiting with her. She had been a nun for about 7 years, and I suspect that experience pretty much colored the rest of her life to this point anyway. She suggested that we visit the Scottsbluff National Park...so being the easily influenced people that we are, we did.

The bluff was named after Hiram Scott. Get this. The fur party he was with got attacked by Indians and Hiram was wounded. So after a bit, when food & water were running low, the rest of the guys pulled a Darwin. Survival of the fittest and so they left him to die. He crawled to the base of the bluff and you guessed it. He died. They found him the next year, or rather his skeleton and decided that the bluff should be called Scotts Bluff forevermore. I guess it was a way to appease their conscience. "Hey, we left this guy to die and he did, so let's name the bluff after him to make us feel better about leaving him behind." That's life. Things haven't changed much in 200 years.







Rather than taking the fast way home (translate smart way); dad decided we needed to follow the Oregon, Mormon trail autoroute. After a while you begin to feel like the Willey & Martin Handcart company. Opps-Big Mistake, can we have a do-over. We thought we were taking the scenic route home. Jo reminded me that there are no scenic routes through Wyoming. (The welcome to Wyoming should have been a BIG clue...notice the scenic backdrop). Even the "new" roads have wagon ruts in them.

Jo drove about a 100 miles through Wyoming. You know it's the funniest thing. When I drive she gets nervous. When she drives I get really nervous. Here we are outside Casper.






One more thing. The animals in Wyoming. Big Duh. First a swallow divebombs the car. Well, you know, when you divebomb something you also have to get out of the way... in a hurry. He didn't. Don't know if you call it road-kill or air-kill.




Also, how hard is it to cross a two lane road with cars coming about every 10 minutes or so. Do the antelope in Wyoming just set up a picnic in the middle of road? Or do they play chicken? (maybe they are playing antelope). Anyway, there were road-kill antelope on the side of the road. I still can't figure out how they manage that one. Maybe there is something in the water. Hmmm, maybe it's just Wyoming.





Got into Utah about 8pm. Almost home. Jo and I decided that Katie could go to college. That Matt doesn't have to stay at home forever and be a mama's boy and it's okay if Brody just comes only for a visit. Mom will survive with just Dad hanging around. That's a relief (for me anyway). I didn't want to have to pack my bags and start another ROAD TRIP next week.


One more thing...Before we started the trip I calculated we would go 1970 miles. We went exactly 1963.1. Don't you dare say I can't plan a trip. After 4 days, several missed turns, historical sites, etc., I only missed by 6.9 miles. Google is good!


Where too next? We think Nauvoo would be interesting. Only next time, we are going to take more time. We want to be less acquinted with the road and more acquainted with where we visit.