Pat and Ken's Great Adventure

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

38 More States to Go!

This is the map on our Roadtrek window that shows the 11 states that we visited on this trip.

We came home on Saturday but I got busy with unpacking, doing laundry and all the other things associated with taking time off to write in the blog. Jerry and Jewel our dogs are happy to be home and have a bath. We both went back to work on Monday so we are back into our normal routine.

We had a great adventure visiting 11 states, numerous museums, and many national parks and monuments. We traveled over 6000 miles throughout our amazing nation.My two favorite museums were the Heard Museum in Arizona and the Route 66 Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma. We plan to do a more extensive Route 66 trip in the future. It is hard to pick my favorite National Park, but I loved Gulf Island National Park in Florida. We had such fun riding our bikes throughout that park. Andrews State Park near Panama City was my favorite state park. We really got a sense of how large and dangerous the Mississippi River can be from our steamboat ride on the Natchez. We also enjoyed learning more about an American icon Elvis Presley.

I also think is it important to learn about all the unique Indian tribes, so I felt fortunate to be able to visit the Cherokee Cultural Center and learn about the Oklahoma Cherokee. I also thought the exhibit at the Heard Museum about the Indian Schools was moving and hope we will learn some lessons from this exhibit on how to correctly interact with other cultural groups in the future.

Another fun part of traveling is eating all the local foods in the various states we visited. We had great barbecue meals in San Antonio and Memphis, Tenn. I loved the beignets in New Orleans and the bagels at the Bagelhead in Panama City. We also had many home cooked meals in the Roadtrek like tacos and spaghetti.

Thanks to everyone who helped take of animals or our house while we were gone. Mom- Thanks for watering the inside plants. Wes - thanks for taking care of the mail and the outside watering. R'Lene and Hector we appreciate your taking care of the fish while we were gone. And, of course, thanks to Jill and Allan for taking such great care of Jacque our chameleon. They taught him to eat nastursiums and mealy worms from their fingers.

The best part of the trip was spending one month with Ken my husband and my best friend. I feel blessed to have been able to share these amazing places with him and that we share common interests.

I hope everyone enjoyed our Pat and Ken's Great Adventure blog. It was my friend Kathy's idea and I enjoyed taking photos and sharing with our friends and family our trip. The oldest person reading my blog was my 84 year old Uncle Howard from British Columbia.We will let you know when we start our next great adventure!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Problems downloading the rest of the Petrified Forest photos

I will have to download the rest of the photos from home. We saw lots of amazing petroglyphs with interesting patterns. Then we stopped in the Visitor Center and looked through the displays. We had remembered that the last time we were here with the boys that there was a display filled with letters and samples of returned petrified rocks from people claiming that since they took the rocks they have had bad luck or felt guilty. They had a new display on the wall and had four letters from people. I think this is an effective display as that was the one thing we had remembered from our previous visit. The other deterent is they give you a piece of paper that lists the amount of the fine if you are caught with a piece of petrified rock from the park and there is a sign as you exit that you might be subject to a search. As you leave the park, there is store that sells large pieces of petrified rock and smaller pieces. So if someone wants to have one of these beautiful rocks they can legally purchase one.