Reflections of My Travel

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This morning began the real drive home. We got up and drove carefully through the mountains. Up around Vail, we saw the most snow yet as well as the lowest temperature yet – 5.2 degrees farenheit. It was a beautiful drive. When safely out of snow and ice roads, I took over the driving for a bit to let Randal get a little nap. We made it to the Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico a half hour before closing and were able to do a little bit of exploring of it. We drove up to the rim, looked down into it, and then hiked into the bottom of the vent to see what it was like to be in the belly of a volcano looking out. It was pretty neat. It was a great view from the rim too, with over 100 volcanic cones in the surrounding area. Who knew there were that many volcanos anywhere but Hawaii. When through there, we drove down to Amarillo, TX and across through Oklahoma and Arkansas before turning at Memphis through Mississippi and finally heading to Birmingham, where we stopped at Liberty Square (which is supposed to be the largest replica of the statue – per Randal). We made another stop in Anniston before finally making it to Wedowee.

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We got up at daylight this morning so that we could get to Arches National Park in plenty of time to see it and still make it into Colorado as far as possible. The morning started with 109 miles of Randal’s favorite stretch of road. He was right; it was breathtaking. Every time you crested a hill, a whole new view was waiting on the other side. I think we stopped at every scenic view area. It was a very nice buildup for Arches. What a beautiful area! We tried to see everything we could in the park. We missed a few arches because the hike was too long and we were running out of daylight, but what we did see was just incredible. We then took a scenic byway to get back to the interstate – equally beautiful. It amazes me that there are so many things out here to see that I have never even heard of before. We made it to Fruita, CO just after dark, and not wanting to miss the Colorado mountains, we got a hotel and intend to start the real drive home tomorrow.

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Drive day. Since we found out that we would not be able to snowmobile Yellowstone, we started the trek for home. At Salt Lake City, we took a detour to see the huge Morman Temple. Very impressive structure. Very beautiful area in the temple square. They used lots of water in their architecture, which I feel is just about the most beautiful architectural design. The mountains were wonderful through Utah. We drove a little into the night, until we got to the beginning of Randal’s favorite scenic stretch of road. We set up camp so that we could see it all in the morning.