We are going home on Monday! The St. Croix airport opened on Thursday, and we have reservations for Monday, so God willing, we will be home by late afternoon. Yay! Since our flight to Miami leaves at 6 am and we’ll be traveling all day, I’m posting my blog today.
We’ve spent four months and twelve days on the mainland – (on vacation from retirement as Karl puts it) living most of the time in our fifth wheel, camping and traveling and enjoying. My blogs since the first of June have documented some of the highlights. For many, many years, Karl and I have kept a journal of our trips and adventures in our campers, and this summer was no exception. So not only do I have my blogs, we have a journal with lots of memories and places to hold our memories. As this trip was so long, we decided a fitting end to our journal for this year would be a set of lists to recap the summer. I decided it would be fun to share some of those with you:
Top four tourist sites we visited:
Monticello (Virginia)
Niagara Falls (New York)
Buffalo Bill Canyon and dam (Wyoming)
Seneca Caverns (West Virginia)
Top three meals:
Jen Leman’s chicken in foil while we were camping together
Karl’s chicken Frangelico that he made at Liz and Greg Luce’s house
BJ Nation’s Walleye fish fry
Worst night:
The night we had a mouse in the camper
Best night:
Camping near Douglas, laying on the picnic table watching the stars
Top three musical experiences:
Sawyer Brown, Bellamy Brothers and Joe Diffie at Frontier Days
Michael Martin Murphy at Frontier Days
The Cowboy Gathering in Encampment
Top four whole days:
Experiencing the Eclipse in totality
Sharing the celebration of Amanda and Jarrett’s wedding day
Discovering a gorgeous waterfall in the Sierras
Spending time near Haggarty Creek
Hands down funniest moment:
Playing Uno with Branda and Dave Steege while camping together. Dave was sitting across from me so I couldn’t drop a ‘draw four’ on him, but he kept changing the color to something I didn’t have. I merely said, “Dave for every time you change the color, I will visit my wrath on Branda (who was sitting next to me) threefold.” We didn’t play again for close to 20 minutes while Dave laughed uncontrollably. Priceless!
It doesn’t take much thought to add item after item of great moments, beautiful vistas, spending time with precious people, and being blessed. Now we are off on a new adventure – living on our beautiful island and doing what we can to come alongside our friends and neighbors to rebuild what the winds of Maria swept away.
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