I'm back home

I know that everyone is anxiously awaiting me to post again. I'm so tired tonight that you will get a post, though it won't be a action-packed, detail-filled description of my week away.

We left last Friday around 5:30 PM. We got back home today at 12:30 PM (then I had to go to Wal-Mart for groceries - and going to Wal-Mart on a Saturday is kind of against my religion). We traveled 3064.4 miles on this trip. If you average it out over 9 days (because we drove on parts of 9 days) and 60 miles an hour (sometimes we went 80, but other times we had to go much slower on the scenic routes) we were in the car close to 6 hours a day. I'm a bit tired from being in the truck. I'm not normally claustrophobic, but there were times I was ready to jump out of the truck because I felt like I was trapped. And more than once, Mom and I voiced our motion sickness.

Here's a bit of travel advice. Do not travel to this region of the country that we just went through on vacation unless it's sometime between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I can't tell you how many places were closed until the summer season. Some were opening back up next week, but for others, the magic date was May 23. We didn't have the chance to do a number of things because they were closed. (I didn't realize that even Dairy Queens were seasonal.) If we had gone a week earlier, we would have missed several other opportunities as well.

It feels like all we did was ride and drive and ride and drive. Texas to Oklahoma to Kansas to Nebraska to South Dakota to Montana to Wyoming to South Dakota to Wyoming to Colorado to Kansas to Oklahoma to Texas. (At least it gave me a chance to read a book and a half while I was gone - one whole book on the way home - blog tour and review upcoming.) It really feels like I didn't do anything but spend time in the truck over the past week which is disappointing in some ways.

I promise to share more stories over the coming posts. In the meantime, here are a few pictures, just a few of many, for you to see.

Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Devil's Tower.