While visiting our daughter and her family in Laramie, WY I took the opportunity to drive (about 1 1/2 hours) to Saratoga, WY to visit the hot spring pool there.  Saratoga is a small town of about 1,200 people.  The pool has been named "Hobo Pool".  I'm not sure why because I haven't seen any "Hobos" there on any of my visits.  The water temperature varies from about 106 degrees to 110 degrees F depending on how close you are to where the hot spring flows into the larger pool.  I was told that the pool remains free to the public because it was a condition imposed by the local American Indian tribe that donated it to the City.  The pool is about 30' square and is open 24 hours/day.  There is no fee nor life guard.  It's really nice to sit in the hot water while the local temperature is below freezing.  The hot spring flows into the pool and out into the adjacent river (North Platte River).  I really enjoy visiting this pool - Pat does not like the sulfur smell.

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We are vacationing here in Laramie, Wyoming, visiting our daughter Mandy and family.  Early in January they had a horrific snowfall that hindered getting in and out of their driveway and street.  What you see in this picture is just leftover snow from that storm, (taken from their front porch).  Also in the picture is our grandson Brandon.  I'm sorry he is in the shade because he has the remnants of a black eye.  He said he got it by hitting a chair. (??) We are mainly relaxing and enjoying the grandchildren.  Doug, however, has decided he can't resist the call of the hot springs in Saratoga , WY.  He even bought a new swimsuit for the trek.  (As you can imagine, it was hard to find a swimsuit in the dead of winter here, but he managed.) 

We are watching the weather forecast to time our drive home.  We were thinking of staying until after the Super Bowl, but there may be a storm coming Monday along our route, so we are not sure yet.  One of the things we MUST do is go to Brittany's gymnastics class to see what she is able to do since we were here in the summer.  We have been given strict orders about that. 

This Christmas was great and we had lots of family and friends in the house.  Actually we had 2 Christmas dinners - one on the 23rd and another on the 25th.  I have been wanting one of those old cast iron wood buring stoves to sit on the front porch.  This is actually a "down home" version of a chiminea that are being sold virtually everywhere - I like the antique style vs the ceramic chiminea.  Now I can sit on the porch in my rocking chair and I have a place to put my coffee cup.  The weather has been a little cold and wet here recently so I built a fire in it yesterday.  It works great.

 Living in Houston most of my life, I am used to fall not really arriving until after Thanksgiving.  But it has sneaked in here in Huntsville.  Even my little Red Oak tree is fully red now, and leaves have fallen from other trees around.  Apparently the deer are pleased with those leeaves on the ground because they have been out in mass eating them.  Here are a couple of pictures of trees in our yard:

Sunday evening we were coming home to see this special visitor in our lawn.  He seemed be to at home and even stayed a while after we parked and went into the house.  He walked around as if he owned the place - he walked into the back yard and eventually moved on after about 30 minutes.

This is the kind of view we have in our back yard and even in the front yard on occasion.

I have been quite a procrastenator about concluding my thoughts about our road trip in May.  (Of course, it took me months to put my 572 pictures in our photo gallery.)  We went almost coast-to-coast, as you can see by the map that Doug posted below this.  We stayed in very nice hotels, nice hotels, average hotels, and one that I can't call any better than mediocre.  We ate regional foods, learned a lot of history, crossed a lot of rivers.  We went through areas that we had expected to be blah and discovered rich history and beauty off the interstates.  We also discovered that you can't find IHOP's everywhere!  That was a bummer!  We followed the Oregon Trail in some places and realized the difficulties faced by the early settlers of the Pacific Northwest.  We also found out that May is just a little early to explore that area of the country.  Roads were not open all the way at Mount Rainier or Glacier National Park.  That didn't stop us from see magnificent sights, though.  All I can say is that we live in a wonderful country, and we have been blessed to be able to see so much of it.

If this is the first time for you to visit our site, scroll down to Road Trip--1 to see a few thoughts I published as we drove.  If you are interested in seeing some of our pictures, click on Photo Gallery at the right, then click on Travel, then on Road Trip.  You will see that I have broken up our trip into stages, so you can look at only the area that might interest you.  I also have posted our trip to Puerto Rico earlier in the year.

The following map shows our route for the road trip that we took in May.  We began from our home in Huntsville, Texas and drove to Herndon, Virginia where our son and daughter-in-law live.  Then we drove to where our daughter and her family live in Laramie, Wyoming.  Our next major stop included visiting some dear friends in Seattle, Washington, Orcas Island, Washington and then a short trip to Victoria, British Columbia.  After this we drove back to Laramie, Wyoming and then home to Texas.  We took the opportunity to stop in many different places along the way – our trip was about 9000 miles and took about 5 weeks.

Pat has added entries into this website that provide details of places we visited along the way.

I am sitting at our daughter Mandy’s thinking about getting home at last.  Tomorrow we set out for Texas realizing that the cool mornings and mild days will be behind us.  A couple of days ago, we were needing our jacket most of the day as we went close to the mountains of Glacier National Park.  The road through the park was still not open, but we had wonderful views as we drove around the park in the south.

Another of my favorite views.

On the other side of Glacier, the weather was much warmer.  We spent the night in Great Falls, Montana, where the Missouri River flows through.  Before getting there we must have killed thousands of little Montana bugs.  Our windshield and the front of the truck was just covered with dead bug bodies.  Yuk!

The next day we stopped at the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn, or Custer’s Last Stand.  We took a little bus tour narrated by a young Crow Indian college student.  We learned a lot of things we didn’t know as we stood looking over the area where the Indians were camped (full of trees by the river) and the barren hills where the soldiers had to make their stand.  For one thing, Custer’s army was full of foreigners who didn’t even speak English.  Strange! 

These white markers were everywhere, showing where a soldier had fallen.

When I get home, I will try to summarize our wonderful trip.

The last 2 days have been full of awesome scenery.  While we were in Orcas and in Victoria, we had wonderful weather.  Yesterday we had misty rain on us all through the North Cascades.  But we still stopped at every scenic view and short trail that we could.  The western side of the Cascades is like a rain forest, or maybe it IS a rain forest.  We even saw dogwoods, but they were Pacific Dogwoods, and the blooms were bigger.

Ferns were all over the ground, and the evergreens were thick and tall.  Apparently the Western Hemlock is the main tree, but there are Douglas Firs and Western Red Cedars also.  The road between the two sections of the North Cascades National Park was just opened a short while ago, and snow was piled up on the passes.  We couldn’t see full views because of the misty rain clouds, but it was beautiful enough.  Waterfalls were everywhere because of the snow melting.  (I am addicted to waterfalls.)

When we got on the other side, it was dryer and warmer.  We stayed at a small town called Winthrop.  A beautiful river flowed behind our hotel room!  The town looked like an old western town with board sidewalk, etc.  It would have been a perfect place to spend some time.

  On our hotel balcony! Western look!

Today we saw Grand Coulee Dam, a massive structure that makes a 151 mile-long lake extending to Canada.

The rest of the day we went through rolling wheat fields until we got to Spokane.  What a neat city!  A river runs through it with massive falls during spring and early summer.  There is a big river front park in the middle of town with a fountain, a carousel, and best of all, a gondola over the falls.  Now that is my kind of adventure!  It wasn’t a short ride either.  Loved it!  (another waterfall for me)