We have been back home a little over a week now and I am finally getting settled into the daily routine. I have spent the week outside trying to get the yard and gardens back in shape.  We had friends set up to take care of things while we were gone but unfortunately the person who was to do the weeding fell and broke a leg while we were gone! We were very sorry to hear that but the garden weeds were delighted. They thrived in his absence :).  After much work, the gardens are doing fine.  The popcorn made it up … Continue reading Dreaming of Fried Green Tomatoes…

  Before I proceed to cover more places where the Lord shows us how to live I want to bring up some of my past experiences which may tint my beliefs in the Bible.  I spent 30 years as an engineer designing consumer products. During that time I wrote many product requirments documents,user manuals, repair manuals, and that sort of thing.  In that effort there were certain words that were strictly defined. Among those were shall, must, command. Those words were strictly enforced to mean something that was absolutely required to be done.  When requirements say the red indicator shall … Continue reading Must, shall, command…

We started off today with our usual trip the the State capital. Of course, for Kansas that was Topeka. It turned out that the capital looked more like the Addamm’s Family home than the capital. The outside of the building was encased in scaffolding and the inside was dark and dreary in almost every hall. I admit that the picture above was not typical but it was there.  About the only people we say were some fat guys laughing and joking in the Governor’s outer office.  I would guess they were “fat cats” :) After the capital we went to … Continue reading Trip Log – KS Capital, Brown vs… ,KC

     As I mentioned last night we found a reconstructed fort in eastern Colorado to visit today.  I have been looking for a plains fort like this for the whole trip and am I glad we found this one.  After an archaeological exploration the fort was rebuilt on the same footprint as the original.  Fort Bent was a commercial fort not a military one.  It was used for trading with the Indians in the area as well as supplying trappers etc.  We were told that all the shooting at the “Fort Zent” from the mini-series “Centennial” was filmed here and … Continue reading Fort Bent and Kansas….

After looking over all the literature we had collected at the Colorado visitor’s center I did find a reconstructed plains fort. It is located near La Junta Colorado which is in the far southeastern part of the State. We started for there this morning but got sidetracked by the Chimney Rock Archaeological site.  Our tour guide was a retired archaeologist from the University of Denver so he was quite knowledgeable on the site. There are several of the Chivos found at the site and it is an active dig.  There is a whole village there but only about six of … Continue reading Trip Log – Found a fort and a chimney

   We spent today in Mesa Verde National Park.  That is the park in SW Colorado where the indian cliff dwellers once lived.  They lived there about 1000 AD so it was many years before the white man came and took everything away.  The park was really neat. It tooks us about 50 miles to see all the cliff dwelling and most of this was on very curvey roads. The dwellings had a surreal feeling about them.  During this trip I have been trying to connect with my native American roots. My great grandmother was as Shawnee squaw.  This was … Continue reading Trip Log – Mesa Verde National Park

  Boy did I misjudge the trip today when I was planning it yesterday. It turned out the Durango was still 110 miles away, not the 50 I estimated! And much of those 110 miles were very steep and somewhat narrow two lane roads up and down mountain sides with too many cutbacks to even remember. Instead of taking an hour as I first thought it took us almost 4 hours. But, being in the slow lane I tried not to be too impatient. We peeked out at about 11,000 feet where the temperature dropped to 36 degrees and was … Continue reading Trip Log – Ouray Colorado!!

     We left Salina Utah this morning but not before we went back and got a picture of Mom’s Cafe and downtown Salina (all 12 buildings). :)  We then hopped onto I70 for our trip across southern Utah.  This part of the trip had absolutely amazing scenery! It was hard to pick just one picture for this post but I managed to pick one from Castle Valley. I think we stopped at every “Vista site” on the highway and there were several of them. We hit the Colorado line around noon and of course got our sign picture.  I had … Continue reading Trip Log – Colorful Colorado

 When we stopped last night at the Nevada/Utah border it turns out that the west part of town was in Nevada and the east part in Utah. Of course, as you can imagine the western part had about 8 large casinos while the eastern half was small motels and food places.  We landed there somewhat late and tried to eat at one of the buffets at a casino but found out that it closed in fifteen minutes.  It was only 8:45PM.  So I guess although the casinos were big they must cater to the Utahians ( or whatever they are … Continue reading Trip Log – Utah (ugh salty!!)

   We did a dance with Nevada today and made it across the State in one day (about 420 miles) as well as the last 80 miles of California. That makes today #2 in our day trip distance. And at that we also lost an hour as we ended up in Mountain time. What can I say about Nevada. I think two words can pretty much wrap up my synopsis of the State: Casinos & Desert. If either of those are not your thing then Nevada doesn’t have much for you.  We stayed on Interstate 80 the whole way and … Continue reading Trip Log – The Nevada Two Step….

If it’s Monday this must be San Francisco :)  .  We got here about 10AM and to our surprise we got into our room right away.  We are about 3 blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf so we headed right to there and our first view of Alkatraz.  It is much closer to San Francisco than I had imagined. I could see why many of the prisoners thought they could swim the distance to freedom. But, of course none of the were known to have made it.  After having lunch at the Wharf we headed on a walking tour of China Town, … Continue reading Trip Log – San Francisco