Oh, give me a home…

Where the buffalo roam…

and the deer (ok, elk)…

and the antelope play…

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,

and the skies are not cloudy all day!

Happy birthday, America!

What a big, beautiful country we live in, and I feel very blessed to have been able to see a generous cross-section of it on our journey.

Happy fourth of July everyone!

Not your teddy bear

We saw a LOT of bears on this trip. Most were black bears (about a dozen, including a couple of mother and cub duos), and of course the Spirit bear of my last post.

And then there was this guy/gal.

Grizzly. Big. Not friendly. You could tell by the look in his eyes he was not happy about having his grazing interrupted by 4 gawking tourists in a pick-up truck. And unlike the Spirit bear (which we got out of the car to watch), we decided we’d best do our peering at this guy from the safety of our vehicle. After all, he was a only mere yard or so (at most!) away from our truck!

And that’s when the dogs caught scent of him from the back of the truck and the hysterical barking began.The bear did not care for that at all. He was eying the dogs closely and I honestly think the bear considered his options for awhile here, and we were considering ours as well!

Luckily he decided to back away rather than open our truck topper like a pop can and have a meal of Golden Retriever with a side of Yellow Lab for lunch. I guess he had filled up at the roadside salad bar, LOL!

It’s funny, but in all our time at Kodiak last summer, with the MUCH HUGER brown bears there, I never sensed the level of tension or aggression that I did with this particular bear. And I know Ed (dh) sensed it too, as he admitted to keeping his foot poised above the accelerator ready to speed away from this bear should it charge us (after getting the obligatory gaping maw photo, of course!LOL!). It was an eerie feeling, really, unlike any I have experienced before. I certainly would not have wanted to run across this particular grizzly on foot in the woods.

Regardless, it was another beautiful wild animal to add excitement to our trip!

A blessed journey

We are home!!!! We got to Fairbanks yesterday around midnight and are so glad to be here!

But what a wonderful trip we had! Two weeks of traveling, 4996 miles, and so many wonderful sights seen across an entire continent. What a trip! And it was a blessed trip in so many ways.

I have many, many photos to share, and many blessing to relate, but wanted first to share what I thought was the  most special sight of our trip.

While crossing through gorgeous British Columbia, Canada, we were blessed to have spotted this amazing, rare animal:

This is a Kermode bear or “Spirit Bear” which is a rare white color (not an albino) of a rare subspecies (Ursus americanus kermodei) of black bear found only in a small area of BC.  I cannot believe we were so lucky to be able to see this one!

We actually were able to observe this bear for a good 5 minutes, munching on some type of vegetation, before he decided he’d had enough of us and headed for the forest.

What a beautiful animal!

More pictures soon because this was not the only bear we saw on this trip. In fact, the very next one was decidedly less friendly!

not much time

but just wanted to post a very brief update.

Our truck broke down at mount Rushmore and we spent 4 days in Rapid City SD waiting for repairs. It was a bit of a snag but if you have to break down somewhere, you could do much worse than SD. What a super state with so much to see! we thoroughly enjoyed our unplanned layover there. But we were glad to move along once repairs were made. We are now in lovely British Columbia, Canada.

We have seen some wonderful sites. I can’t wait to have some time to share them with you all!

But now we are off again! I’ll check back in soon!

Badlands

Oh, my goodness. If you ever get the opportunity to visit Badlands National Park, JUST DO IT!

What a spectacular place! We had so much fun exploring the features here…caves, bluffs, peaks, arches and canyons. All just beautiful, and so VERY different from home!

Yes, that’s me again! Wow, my own face on my own blog twice in one week! Must be a record!LOL! Well, with dh here to share some of the picture-taking duties, I hope to show up here more often from now on!LOL!

Superboy was truly in his element, exploring this place from bottom…

…to TOP!!!

Of course JBug wants nothing more than to be just like her big brother, so she did some climbing of her own. Brave girl!

And the sunset???Oh, MY!!!!

A glorious time was had by all. We do so hope to get back to the Badlands again some day!

Next up:Mt Rushmore and …a bit of a snag. 

An auspicious beginning

Finally I am able to post some pics. I am short on time, so I’ll just post a few today. Hopefully more tomorrow.

Well..here we are! Our last moment at our home in NC. All packed up and ready to roll! Everything we own is packed into this 7X14 trailer and let me tell you,despite my best de-cluttering efforts,  it is crammed full to the top!LOL!

Grabbed a quick shot of the impressive Arch as we rolled through St Louis on day 2.

We really pushed on day 2 because we were anxious to get to our first real destination:Day 3 with the lovely Karen Edmisten and family in Nebraska!

Here are Karen and I finally sharing that cup of coffee we’ve been talking about for so long! Karen was gracious enough to let us camp out at her house for a night of  great conversation for the adults,  great fun for the kids (who hit it off splendidly) and great food for all! Karen, you have to post the recipe for that bean and corn salad. Amazing!

Karen and her crew were such great hosts, we hated to leave! But we had many miles to travel so after a lazy morning we were off again! Next stop, camping in the Badlands!

Umm… Superboy, you go ahead and set up camp while I inspect this air mattress for leaks…

I think it passed inspection.

More pictures to come!I promise!

Checking in from the road

Trip is going well so far. We are in Kansas City MO and are headed out today to meet with a very special friend!I am so excited!

Notable so far:

• We saw the longest traffic jam we’ve ever seen (11 miles) in Tennessee, caused by an overturned truck on a narrow, windy stretch of I40. Thank goodness it was in the eastbound lanes opposite from us! Poor folks were getting out and having picnics on the roadside, they had been there so long.
• In St. Louis the arch and rush hour traffic were both impressive!
• JBug barfed all over Starbucks in Krogers somewhere in Illinois. Now I know why it is called ILL-inois.
• Missouri reminds me of one giant park. Lots of open green grassy areas dotted with clusters of trees.
• Flooding on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers is amazing, and yet I know we have not seen the worst of it.
• The Leapster I got for JBug specially for this trip is a BIG hit.
• Eating healthy on the road is our biggest challenge.
• Big fat Golden retrievers cannot hop into the back of pick-up trucks. Ed and Superboy are getting their exercise lifting Buddy’s furry 100lb butt back into the truck at each rest stop.
• Arthritic old yellow labs also cannot leap into the truck like they used to. Cassie, however, is much easier to lift at only 70 pounds.
• The sky out here is much bigger than at home in NC.

That’s it for now! I will try to update more later. From here out, though we will be staying less at motels and doing more camping, so I may not have internet much.

Planning our route

The plan is to leave tuesday on our cross-country trip. I’ll write more about our itinerary as we firm up the details, but…

it looks like we will be skipping Iowa this time through.

Any other areas we should be avoiding???

Any heads-up would be appreciated.

Pack-man

Went and picked up dh at the airport today!

Now, the REAL packing begins!

A wing and a prayer

Last night we had another gorgeous guest come to bid us farewell. An absolutely stunning Luna moth flew in through an open window and perched on the wall just above the baseboards. The children were, as you can guess, absolutely stunned by his beauty.

I snapped this shot, however,  just before he flew headlong into our spinning ceiling fan! We quickly turned it off but he had quite a wild ride for a moment! Hoping he was not injured, we gently scooped him up and put him outside, but he hung around the window…

still attracted to the lights inside the house. So, we turned them all off and waited quietly as he flew away, guided by a sliver of a moon, on his wings and our prayers.  May God grant him, and all travelers, a safe journey and a gentle landing.