update

I'm back in Rock Hill (well, Charlotte at the moment) and will not have internet for awhile until I have more work. Just letting my readership know, in case you want to contact me...use snail mail or cellphone; my chances to get online will be sporadic.

More about the trip soon, when I have some time to write.

The journey continues...

We made it to Clarksville, AR tonight, but I'm worn out. Hopefully tonight I can get more sleep than last night.
We had a really interesting day. The highlight of the day was a visit to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. I had never been there before, and neither had Carrie. It was a moving experience just to be there and walk around the grounds.

We also made it to Okemah to see the water towers.

Too tired to write more, or even post pictures (hence the links!)

Tomorrow: Tennessee!!

Writing from Amarillo

I'm in a hotel room in Amarillo... so far the trip is going well! I have about 150 photos that I want to post, but that isn't going to happen. But here's one that I liked today:



We saw some petroglyphs, but didn't have time to see many... there are hiking trails that take a long time and I imagine there is much more to see than the little bit we saw. Here's one example, with a couple of petroglyphs (on right and left):


We are already on Central time -- I will lose four hours this week: one extra on account of stupid Daylight Savings Time. But that means I ought to get to bed -- I'm going to turn over a new leaf tomorrow a.m. and get up early enough to leave when I said we would!

Day one of trip...

This will have to be a retroactive post, as I didn't get around to writing any yesterday. We had a great first day, and saw some things that were new to both of us. We decided to take a detour on a section of [the former] Route 66 between Topock and Kingman. We stopped at Needles, CA, before the detour, and I talked with a nice ranger who told us some about it and about Needles, too, for that matter. [Doesn't Needles ring a bell? It's the home of Spike, Snoopy's brother! The ranger said Schulz placed him in Needles because that's where he himself spent at least part of his youth. He said there are two theories about why Spike is often seen with a saguaro cactus, even though there aren't any in Needles: either Schulz traveled to the Whipple Mountains about 60 miles south of Needles and saw some there -- it is one of only three places they occur in CA ones in California! -- or he just used them because that's how people everywhere think of American deserts.]

The view from Needles -- I took this one to remember that I was in Needles and to show how green the desert was as we went through. It's the Mojave Desert and it was very green everywhere we went in it. I was so surprised! (The second photo was nearby, and it shows the green even better. Even the mountains were green!)



Anyhow, the detour was really interesting, and almost too exciting in places -- the road is narrow, and on the high pass over the mountains there are very sharp turns. As the Needles ranger told me, it's a safe road if you obey the posted speed limits! Before the pass, the road goes through Oatman, and old gold mining town. There are burros wandering all over town, lots of them, and people are allowed (even encouraged, it seemed to me) to feed them! The town was crawling with tourists. here are a couple of photos:




This place, in Oatman, had lots of wind chimes. Carie thought the number and size of the visitors' motorcycles was impressive, also!