Happy Trails with Mike & Ellen Taylor

Several weeks ago we were at an RV park and we were with a group of campers talking about places we'd been. Grand Canyon came up, and one guy said simply, "It's not real." We all laughed--you know, mirrors, smoke, etc. Well, now we know what he meant. It was incredible and awesome and beautiful. We decided it would be fun to take a tour, so on Friday a van picked us up at our campground, we picked up a group of German tourists at another campground, and spent the day in Grand Canyon. We really enjoyed the trip, and Mike was happy not to have to drive. We got to see endangered condors soaring above the canyon. That was a real treat!

http://picasaweb.google.com/TxMike3

We also drove to Sedona, AZ and were surprised at what a beautiful little city it is. The rock formations and their colors reminded us of Bryce Canyon in Utah.

Sunday we left AZ for Santa Fe, NM, our last stop on our grand adventure. Santa Fe averages over 300 days of sunshine a year. Unfortunately, it has rained here every day so we haven't gotten to walk in any of the many parks, or hike any of the trails. I did, however, get to visit the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, and really enjoyed it. I learned so much about her life and work. I was familiar with her large flowers, which I love, but got to see her abstracts, sketches, and landscapes; and learn about her life in New York City and in New Mexico, and her famous photographer husband. Santa Fe is a beautiful city with unique architecture, but is also very crowded and the traffic is terrible.

This is our last post for our blog. It makes us sad to realize this. We have truly had a wonderful, near-perfect, dream-come-true trip. Hard as it will be to get back to reality, we know that there are more trips in our future, and we're already starting to plan!

Some last notes:
We've driven almost 20,000 miles, about 12,000 towing the trailer and the rest on side trips, sightseeing, running errands, etc.

The strangest thing we've seen: in SD and in AZ, mobile homes with tires lined up on the roof.

The most we've had to pay for diesel fuel for the truck was $3.24/gal in a small town in CA near Yosemite. The least we paid was $1.99 in Quartzite, AZ last winter.

18-wheelers come in more colors than cars: various yellows, orange, and coral; magenta, bubblegum pink, maroon, ordinary red; navy blue with pink pinstriping, cobalt, columbia, turquoise, and baby blue; teal, hunter, and sea green; even gold and mauve.

Sirius Radio has accompanied us through the whole western United States, mostly tuned to Margaritaville and Sities on Six, and sometimes to golf tournaments or NASCAR.

Carmen (our Garmin GPS) has been immensely helpful the whole trip, finding Post Offices, grocery stores, and RV campgrounds; she sometimes gets her left and right mixed up, so we always look at her map; the funniest things she's said are, "In .6 miles turn left on Hiking Trail," as if it were Kingwood Drive, and we were towing! And, "In .3 miles turn right on East University Doctor." Think about it.

It's amazing how few clothes and "things" we actually need to get along. We plan, however, to burn most of our clothes when we get home, we're so sick of them!

We wonder if Gracie and Max will remember Cubby, and he them. And we wonder how long it will take Gracie to put Dan's young dog Strider in his place, and if Max and Strider will enjoy playing together. Bet Max will teach him how to catch squirrels.

Happy Trails to you, until we meet again.