Our next trip was to Virginia to vist Jeff and Laura.  The weather was really nice for the first 3 days, and then the blistering heat came.  Jeff barbecued on Saturday, the 3rd, and some friends of theirs came to eat Sunday evening, the 4th, and we went to watch the fireworks from the parking roof of some building where Jeff works.  The fireworks on the mall (which was quite a ways from us) was not all that great and lasted only 20 minutes.  But there were fireworks surrounding us from different neighborhoods.  The day we had chosen to go sightseeing on the capitol mall was so, so hot.  We got to see 2 things that we had not before, up in the Washington Monument and in the Capitol.  The Capitol Visitor center is quite impressive, and Jeff was able to get us some last minute tickets for a tour.  Our capitol is beautiful, worthy of our country.

This room was the orginal House of Representatives meeting room, but it got too small.  Isn't it pretty?

This was our next trip, camping in Arkansas in May with our friends Brenda and Tony.  The weather was just perfect and so was our campground.  Though we had been to Hot Springs before, we did some things that we hadn't done before, like taking a Duck Boat tour. We panned for crystals (not all it's advertised to be, but I did get some pretty ones), went up in the observation tower, found out that it was too expensive to go into the hot baths, played miniature golf in a creepy place, and picnicked in some nice parks.  The actual Hot Springs National Park is free and beautiful.  It actually had a nice campground with hook-ups, but we didn't know that.  A stream ran beside it.  It was such fun with Brenda and Tony.  There was a super clubhouse in the campground, and we went over there every night to play Mexican Train or Phase 10.

Here we are going into the lake on the Duck Boat.  (Glad it didn't do like the one in Pennsylvania that was hit by a barge.)

This is the stream in Hot Springs National Park.

I am long overdue for saying anything here.  We have taken 3 trips and I have not said a word!  The first was a 7 day cruise in April that went to Honduras.  We'd never been there before. One of their products is mohaganny.  We bought a beautiful ice bucket out of mohaganny.  One of the highlights was a visit to the oldest church building on the island. When a hurricane came through, it was the only things still standing.  A lady there told us the history and sang some hymns for us, acapella.  It was quite moving.

On our stop in Cozumel, we went to this museum that told Mexican history starting from the Mayan civilization.  They had replicas of the Mayan structures, then of the Catholic Churches that were built. It was awesome.

 It looks real, doesn't it?

I don't write on this often enough, and I forget how to put all the pictures in my phto gallery.  I must do that later.

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. 

 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:

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.

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)

Before I begin updating our latest adventures, I must tell about something that we saw a few days back.  We were traveling through the Columbia River Gorge—river on the right and a wall of rock on the left.  We looked up, and there were 2 mountain goats!  Wow!

As I mentioned in my last installment, we set out on the ferry to Victoria, BC.  Our friends, Tom and Carol, are a lot of fun.  Tom does not know a stranger and is very witty, (well crazy actually).  They are able to give us a lot of information about not only the San Juan Islands where they live, but Victoria also.  Tom made reservations for us at the Swans Hotel, an old place with a restaurant and a brew pub.  Most things are in walking distance.  However, we had decided to stop at Buchart Gardens before checking in.  Somehow, though, we missed the turnoff, so that idea went down the tubes.  But we had all seen the Gardens before, so we decided to just enjoy the town of Victoria.

Our hotel room was unusual—2 story.  There were 2 bedrooms (we were sharing the hotel room), but the bathroom was downstairs.  One bathroom for 4 people?  But we managed to live with it, just scheduled bath times at different times.  There was a kitchen, and Carol brought many snacks for our lunches—cheese, pate, “designer” bread, olives, etc.  We had a fake fireplace and a patio.  We spent some time just relaxing in the room.

The parliament buildings here are so impressive.  They stand right at the harbor where all the tourist action is.

I supposed we could have had a tour of the building if we had taken the time.  But we had a castle to see.  This castle, Craigdorroch, was built by a coal magnate.  After his death it was used for many different things, a school for one.  The paneling in the building was so magnificent. I like it when I can tour a place like this at my own pace.

  This picture is looking up the staircase.  You can see the wood here.

We ate wonderful meals in Victoria at excellent restaurants, in fact, we ate way too much!

I can’t leave this blog without telling again how beautiful Orcas Island is.  It is heavily forested, hilly, with lakes as well as the ocean.  We passed one area of water, a sound and saw funny sticks in the ground. Tom said it was an oyster bed!  As I said before, their view is magnificent.  This morning it was very foggy, and I took this picture before we left.  It shows ocean currents, and it looks like a river with grass beside it. But this is all water.

One of the most impressive things in this area is Mount St. Helens which erupted 29 years ago. (I know that because we were there on the exact anniversary and everything was free.)  Weyerhauser company planted a lot of trees afterward, so much of the blast zone is heavily forested. The recovery is very obvious and has amazed scientists at how quick it has happened.  Along the river, everything is still gray, though.

Something that most tourists don’t see is a little museum before you get in the actual park was called 7Wonders Museum.  It is sponsored by the Creation Institute and showed how quickly things were changed by the eruption.  Canyons were formed in a matter of hours or months, not millions of years.  We bought a book full of pictures written by 2 scientists that are Christians explaining these things. In this little museum there were 7 things that they showed as “wonders” discovered by this eruptions.  (Of course, I can’t remember them right now.)

One thing rather eerie is that a lava dome is building up inside the crater.  Soooo, it could erupt again!  Here in this picture the dome is the bulge in the middle.

After leaving this area, we decided to go up to Mount Rainier.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there clouds were covering the top.  The road wasn’t open all the way through the National Park because of snow.  When we got to as far as they let us go, I felt like we were in Norway.  There was supposed to be a beautiful valley, but the snow was piled too high. This mountain has 26 glaciers.  The only one we saw was this one:

I am a little disappointed that we couldn’t go all the way through the park.  Apparently May is really too early to tour in the north.  We have noticed that lots of things were not being done this early.  (Like boat cruises on the many rivers we have crossed.)

We thought about staying at the Inn at the top, but the cheapest rooms had no private baths.  (No good for old people to have to go down the hall in the middle of the night.)  And, too, looking at the snow built up there made us a little nervous since rain was expected in the area.  We knew that we might get stuck up at the top, and we were to meet some friends in Seattle.  We stayed at a little “lodge” at the bottom, and it did rain during the night.

We stayed in Seattle two nights, but didn’t see any of the sights.  I washed and we spent half a day with some friends of ours who are missionaries in Thailand.  We had met them 30 years ago while we lived in California, and we have kept up with one another through the years.  They were “coincidentally” home for their yearly vacation, and based out of Seattle right now.

Now we are with friends on Orcas Island.  This man and Doug worked together for several years, and he and his wife retired on Orcas Island. It is very beautiful here and peaceful.  They have a lot of land, so have no really close neighbors. They can view the Pacific Ocean from their living room. Tomorrow we are taking the ferry to Victoria, BC.  That will be another installment.