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You know where to go with a doubt

Asheville. Bue Ridge and our last night.

Tennessee

I'm writing this from our last stop before home, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, about 300 miles from home. We have been driving 8 to 10 hours since we left Grand Canyon, in order to be home by this coming weekend for the ParkQuest Rendezvous. It's been tedious and mostly boring.

We spent a day in Asheville yesterday. Our original plan was to spent two night there, then hightail it home, but after spending the afternoon in the downtown area, we were pretty well finished. We decided against spending $200+ to tour the Biltmore, and while the downtown was nice enough, with cute artsy shops, we saw it all in a few hours and were ready to move on.

Memphis. Why does it have a pyramid?

Mast General store in Asheville. 

So much candy. So little time.

The Coffee Double Decker Bus!

First the taco bus, not the coffee bus!

It was so cute on the inside too. This was the
upstairs. 

Waiting for our drinks.

Cute tables.

So we headed up the Blue Ridge Parkway this morning. Our plan had been to stop at several of the visitors centers, do the Junior Ranger program and enjoy the drive, but we ran into some issues and didn't get a lot of that done. 

A new tire later, and we ran out of time for the visitors centers and only made it just across the Virginia line for the night. But, it was some lovely scenery. We've seen a lot of mountains on this trip, but funnily enough, my favorite is still the Blue Ridge. Familiarity? Maybe. But they are just so majestic and all those shades of blue as the peaks fade into the distance. I still love them. 

Our last national park, The Blue
Ridge Parkway

Fall is starting to show its colors.

So pretty

The blue goes on forever.

Almost home.

 

Good shot of trailer and truck.

So tomorrow we should be home. While I'll be glad to see my family and friends again (and the dogs, cats, bunnies and bird), I'm sad to see this round of travel come to an end. Yes, there have been arguments and kids fighting. I'm a little tired of the same 5 or 6 sets of clothes. I miss Wednesday night trivia. But it's been such a great adventure for all of us. And maybe even more than the fun and adventure, it's been such a bonding experience for all of us. I think we've all grown closer, gotten to know each other a little better, learned to tolerate, and maybe even appreciate, each other a little more.

So here's our secret. We're hoping this is the beginning, not the end. I hope to continue this blog with more tales of travel and adventure. We don't want this to end for good. So I'm trying to look at this as a break, to be continued soon hopefully. I'm not sure what that will look like or when or where it will happen, but we've enjoyed this so much. The good has outweighed the bad by such a huge amount. I've grown to feel like this is home. It will be weird not to sleep in this bed tomorrow night. Of course, it will be right outside in the driveway.

Stay tuned...

On the road. New Mexico.

Arizona scenery

We drove today. A LOT. From Grand Canyon to Santa Rosa, New Mexico. 10 hours. New Mexico is quite lovely. Prettier than I thought it would be. Albuquerque is a very pretty city from the highway. I'd like to spend time and see it up close next time around. I wish we had time to stay and explore, but I guess we do have to go home at some point. So one night in Santa Rosa, then on the road again tomorrow. So for today, just pictures from the road...

Lovely cliffs in Arizona.

Love the mountains

Wild looking "caves"

There were all these cheeky tourist places
tucked into some of these cave areas.

New Mexico

Sandia Mountain range

Approaching Albuquerque 

One of many artistic bridges in Albuquerque

Lovely Albuquerque with Sandia Mountain
in the background.

Grand Canyon

What can I say about the Grand Canyon? It's big. And deep. I was overwhelmed with my first view of it, trying to take it all in. We arrived mid-afternoon Thursday, after the longest RV setup time in history. OMG. For some reason, we just couldn't get the trailer in the right spot, ended up unhooking it from the truck and having to rehook it up to move yet again, because the slide wouldn't open all the way. And this was a pull-through. It was just one of those days.

Our first view of Grand Canyon

I'm here too.

No, you may not rappel down.

Pretty breathtaking.

Maggie posing outside the geology museum.

After we were finally set up, we drove back into the park to see the canyon. The visitor center is very nice, looks news, and the walk to the canyon is short. So we took in the views in mostly stunned silence for a few minutes. The kids also signed up for the Junior Ranger program, so they were working on their workbooks while we walked.

View from the top of the trailhead.

Friday, Jim and I got up really early to hike down into the canyon. You see, there are these super-easy walks around the rim, and then there are the hikes down into the canyon. They ranger from moderate to you-will-die-if-you-try-to-do-this-in-one-day hikes. The tricky part in choosing the right hike is that you really have no idea when you are hiking down just how hard it will be to hike back up. Throw in huge temperature changes (from upper 70s at the rim to well over 100 at the bottom) and the elevation (over 7000 ft), it's a little daunting. The views are worth it though. We went down a little over a mile into the canyon, to Ooh Ah Point. We made it back up without dying too, so all was well.

The switchbacks are carved into the ridges.
There are A LOT of them.

Those same switchbacks from below.

More of them. At this point I was starting to
wonder how they retrieved people who got
down but couldn't get back up. 

Isn't he cute!

Bright sun!

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We made it to Ooh Aah Point. Now to get
back up.

The view from Ooh Aah.

Still a long way down.

The way the water carved the canyon and
left these undulating lines is so amazing.

This is some of those upper switchbacks
from further away. See the little black speck
of a person walking down.

This is from back near the top looking down
at the trail we had come from. We couldn't
see it when we were going down because
we didn't know where to look. It is very well
camoflouged in the rock.

The is looking back at the trailhead where we
hiked down, from across the small side
canyon. You can see some of the trail.

The lobby of the history el Tovar hotel. Lots
of animal heads. 

We finished up the day exploring more of the park, hearing about the California Condors that are making a comeback in the park. There were 22 condors left in the world in the 70s. Now there are over 200 and 77 of them are at Grand Canyon. We also enjoyed an art exhibit of paintings that were done at a Plein Air festival last weekend (wish we could have seen that). They have an artist in residence program that Kate is aspiring to.

The porch of El Tovar

How they fed captive-bred babie condors. 

The "kids" getting their Junior Ranger badges.

Taking the pledge. Jim insists he can make
arrests in the park now.

Below Lookout Studio. 

Can you see Daddy and Maggie?

There they are. Along with photobomb guy.