Saturday, December 31, 2011. Happy New Years Eve. It will be a quiet New Years Eve for us tonight. We ate at the campground restaurant.

We left Abilene, TX today at 8:15 a.m. and arrived at Van Horn, TX at 1:30 p.m. We are about 140 miles from the New Mexico State Line. This was finally a short trip for us, about 330 miles today. We are on schedule to be at Benson, AZ tomorrow afternoon, we will stay there until Wednesday morning. We will view the football games on January 2 & 3.

The following pictures -- It is great; mountains, cactus plants, and 77 degrees temperatures here, couldn't be better.

Hope everyone has a great New years. If your 2011 wasn't what you expected, hopefully your 2012 will improve. If 2011 was fine, hope it continues for you in 2012.

First view of the mountains.

Cactus at the campground at Van Horn, TX. We are almost to New Mexico. Tomorrow morning we will cross into Mountain Time Zone. So we will be two hours different from home.

A road sign in Texas.

Friday, December 30, 2011 -- Another long day of driving. We drove 484 miles today from Miami, OK to Abilene, TX. We only go around 62 to 65 miles an hour. We are on schedule to be sitting at a campground for the January 2 & 3 football games and then reach our first reservation at Yuma, AZ on January 4.

It is funny the last two trips we didn't see any beef cattle in Texas. Today we took a different route (now three different routes) and we seen a lot of beef cattle. So nice to see them in the fields.

Seen a billboard advertising that Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Will Rodgers, Sam Walton (Walmart's owner), and someone I don't remember were all born in Oklahoma.

Thursday, December 29, 2011 -- Well we left Terra Haute, IN this morning at 8:30, but within 10 miles or so we were in Central Time Zone. So we gained an hour.

We are at Miami, OK. This is about 5 miles or so from the Missouri/Oklahoma State Line. We arrived here at 3:30 p.m. and it was 67 degrees and sunny. We drove 491 miles today, 8 hrs of driving.

We left home this morning at 7:55 a.m. and stopped for Breakfast at Milan. Not far, but left on a full stomach. We are stopped for the night at Terra Haute, IN. We arrived at 2:30 p.m. We wanted to drive further today, but any campground in Illinois on Route 70 was closed this time of the year. So we stopped here at a KOA.

We seen a sign in Terra Haute that "This is the birthplace of the Coca Cola Bottle". The root glass company made the first contour bottle. Ok, enough history.

Well this was suppose to be the first day on the road. Because of the snow arriving we didn't leave. So we will leave tomorrow morning.

Well here we are looking at three weeks and we will leave for Arizona. After seeing the snow and cold this morning it makes you want to go. I will never be anxious to leave the family.

We arrived home on April 3, 2011 at noon. The kids and grandkids had been checking off and on about our whereabouts. The question on Sunday morning -- about when would you be home. LOL Because of "Alice" we knew we would be home at 12:02 p.m.

After pulling in the driveway it wasn't but a little bit and Jessica and Max was at the house, Laura shortly after, and Sheri's notified us they were at Bunton and Willis Road. Very happy homecoming.

It was great to be home. The next night was birthday party for TJ, he turned 17 years young.

We have arrived in MICHIGAN!!!!

We brought route 24 from Ft. Wayne, Indiana across to Ohio 475 and then up to US 23.

Getting real close when you see the Ohio sign.

You have to look closely but the Illinois sign is there. Sometimes really hard to get these state signs. In fact I didn't get Indiana's sign.

The Mississippi River at St. Louis, MO.

Well we left Stanton, MO this morning around 8:30 a.m. We are now at Gas City, IN. That is north of Indianpolis, IN. We lost another hour today. We will be home tomorrow afternoon. Looking forward to seeing the kids and grandkids.

We lost the mountains and beef cattle awhile ago. More interesting looking at both of those instead of the flat lands. The Illinois/Indiana area just has flatland and last years stuble of crop.

I think I forgot to mention in yesterdays post. We had gotten off the expressway and heading to the campground and one of Bob's glass lens just fell out and went between his seat and consule. He ended up having to take off his glasses, driving with one lens in doesn't work. We had screws in trailer for glasses, so after parking we fixed his glass. He also had the last pair of glasses with him. So that helped until he fixed the new ones.

It has been a great trip this year. The sights we saw and the weather was just great. Having Jr & Luanne meet us out in Las Vegas/Arizona and showing them the things out there just added to the great trip this year. Also not bad getting out of the Michigan winter weather.

On Thursday, March 31, 2011 we left Tucumcari, NM at 8 a.m. Arrived in Oklahoma City around 3 p.m. When we went west we stayed in Oklahoma City and then south to Abilene, TX, now we are returning to Oklahoma City on Route 40. We stayed in the same campground as we did three months ago. It was surprising when we were in the office getting a site for the night the lady said to me "have you been here before - I recognize you". It was funny, we were there December 29.

We arrived today at Stanton, MO. We are 60 miles west of St. Louis, MO. It has been very good weather, no rain and temperatures have been real good. I am sure that is about to come to a halt.

We are thinking we will arrive home on Sunday. We are looking forward to seeing everyone at home. Barbara Jean wants us to wait until Tuesday to come home. Only because we missed her birthday (she did get a card and $$ in the mail for her birthday) and she wants TJ to have his birthday without us there. LOL

It has been a long 14 weeks away from the kids & grandkids.

Can you tell this is the road sign for the Lone Star state. Okay, another case of 65 miles per hour and almost missed the sign.

These are the funny looking hills/mountains in Texas and some in Oklahoma. I call them flat-top hills.

Not a good picture, but going 65 mph and the road isn't smooth I think I did okay.

Here is another day of traveling east. We left Holbrook, AZ this morning at 8:15 a.m. and arrived at Tucumcari, NM at 4:15 p.m. We drove about 400 miles today.

Seen a lot of nice mountains in Arizona and the beginning of New Mexico. Then they turned into hills. We have never been west of Williams, Arizona before on I-40. Williams is where we drove to Grand Canyon area.

Bob's comment was: We just got to the top of the hill and now we go down so we can climb another hill. This is our first time coming or going this way. I enjoyed the drive, lots of mountains and hills. Bob would rather go down to I-10 (southern Arizona) and come home that way.

We chose this way because we wanted to do Petrified Forest & Painted Desert. If we are leaving Bullhead City I think it would be longer to go south. But maybe easier on the fuel pocketbook.

This is a little blurry, but the only picture I could get of the Rio Grande and I-40. They don't give you much warning that it is at this location. There is a lot of growth in the area of the river too.

A mountain where we got off tonight for the campground.

We are at this town and the next picture is because of route 66 going down their street. Remember the show in the 60's (I think) called Route 66 with Kookie and combing his hair a lot. Oops dating myself.

This sign is in the same town as the last pictures. You see these in many places because route 66 crosses I-40 a lot. I do remember when I came out west with my girl friend, Annette, and her parents that we drove on route 66.

Neither one of us can imagine eating this size of a steak. I wonder what the price would be when you didn't eat it.

The morning started early today. We were up and around at 6:30 a.m. Left the park at 7:40 to head east. It is still a long drive home, but headed in that direction.

We arrived in Holbrook, Arizona at 12:30. That way we could see the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. It is really something how those trees turned into rock.

We started the day at an elevation of 600. At Flagstaff we reached an elevation of 7335. Told "red" (our truck) he was doing very well. We are at 5085 now.

Tomorrow we will get into New Mexico. While in Arizona we have stayed on Mountain Standard Time (they don't change to daylight time). When we reach New Mexico we will then go on Mountain Daylight Time. So we will change time tomorrow. So we will only be 2 hours different.

Very nice drive thru the National Petrified Forest and The Painted Desert. This was a 28 mile drive. Very interesting.

Petrified wood. The change is amazing.

These petrified wood was actually found like this and in the exact same place they are now. This was a tree and was broken from being under ground.

The inside of one of the Petrified Wood (also known as rock).

This and the next pictures are from the painted desert. (more to come). We started this driving tour in the beautiful sunshine, but it clouded up. We seen more color here than it is showing on the pictures.

This is writings (pictures) from many many years ago (a lot of years ago). They drew pictures instead of writing.

The utility poles you see are the ones that ran along side route 66 years ago. Now you have I-40 running in some of the areas that was route 66. The campground we are in tonight is on the original route 66.

A map of Route 66. Different times during this trip we were either on or seen the original route 66.

This and the next two pictures are more from the Painted Desert. It was so pretty

Monday, March 28, 2011

We took Jr & Luanne back to Las Vegas Airport. We all had a very nice time seeing the sights around the area. Their airplane was to take off at 4:35 p.m., before they left home it was changed to 5:05 p.m., and today she received a phone call it was changed to 6:00 p.m. I checked later and seen it was at 6:09 that it actually took off. They were suppose to land in Detroit at 12:49 a.m. Should hear from them when they arrive home. They couldn't use Luanne's cell phone after landing becuase it was in the back seat of our truck. Such a shame she won't have it until we get home.

We have enjoyed seeing different wild animals. Today on our way to the airport Luanne said she sees dahl sheep. Sure enough we pulled off the road and backed up to observe six dahl sheep. The next two pictures shows those sheep.

Tomorrow morning we will be leaving Bullhead City and heading east to Holbrook, Arizona. Stopping there to see Petrified Forest and Painted Desert.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

We drove to Oatman, AZ today. Had a real nice time. It is about 40 minutes from Bullhead City, AZ

This was an old mining town. They have all kinds of stores, ranging from arts & craft, clothing, knives, and old antique stores. Just kind of fun walking around town. They do a comedy gun fight in the center of town too.

The "wild" burros that wander into town are decendences of the burros that the miner left here when they gave up the mining business. These burros that come to town knows that they will probably get carrots to eat. There is places that sell carrots for feeding them. No one takes care of these burros, they just kind of come and goes as they please.

We left there and drove out the long way back to Bullhead City. We seen some very curvy roads and the wild burros out there. Beautiful area of mountains and valleys.

This is just one area of the town.

Such a cute little burro.

We ate lunch at the same bar in Oatman that Bob & I ate lunch in last year. This has dollar bills all over the walls. Goes back to the mining years. During the mining years, a miner would give the bartender a dollar to hold and when he'd come in his drinks would be subtracted from the dollar he left. There is some very old looking dollars on the wall. In fact, Jr noticed some that were just a little bigger in size than ours are now.

Bob seen this sign at the bar and just had to take a picture of it.

This and the next picture is the young ones. There was probably six young ones and we had never seen young ones there before. We were there much earlier last year. We've been to Oatman three times now.

I think he was so tired he just had to take a nap out along side the road.

After leaving Oatman we seen these burros in the desert. Bob estimated we were 10 miles outside of Oatman.

We came back to the trailer after traveling to Oatman. There is a hill behind our trailer with cactus plants. So Bob stayed at the trailer and the three of us went up to take the following pictures of the cactus. He said someone had to stay here to call 911 if any of us fell.

Jr was taking a picture of the cactus, so I took a picture of him.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

We had a great day today. Enjoyed seeing the sights with Jr. & Luanne.

We went to Hoover Dam. As you will see they have completed the new bridge and it is quite a sight to see the Hoover Dam from up there. So neat they made a walkway for people to be able to walk out and look at the Dam from way up high.

We then went to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Seen some two toned mountain. Really a nice drive thru the this area. How rocks end up looking like this is interesting.

Ended the evening with a card game back at the trailer. We played three games yesterday and three games tonight. Luanne & I won two games yesterday and tonight Bob & Jr won two games. I guess we are tied now.

The new bridge overlooking the Hoover Dam is dedicated to these two men.

This is the walkway at the new bridge overlooking the Hoover Dam.