5 mo's/9500 miles the circle is complete -we're home

Arizona landscape is sparse but beautiful with the mountains in the background. Nice to see and leave behind as we head home.


You know you are in California with all the windmills. There are some in other states but not as many in our desert.

The mountains in the distance,even though hazy are great to see.

And the traffic-who could forget the 3:15 homeward bound workers headed out of Orange County. We did not miss this or see this much traffic in any of our travels.

The cirlce of states are complete -next year we'll fill in some of the missing states as well as a trip to Alaska via Canada. The trip is to resume the end of March 07.

Through New Mexico to Arizona then to CA

Adding the last new state before reaching home. New Mexico


Sunrise in New Mexico was beautiful and the landscape had more to offer as well.
This is a massive rock mountain at one of the rest stops.
Across the distance driving through New Mexico.
A view of Arizona as we get closer. We stay for the week end and head home Monday (after the rain in Ca). The weather in Mesa Az is in the 70's and 80's with a mild wind. A great way to end a long trip before returning home.

leaving Texas for home

As we prepare to leave for Ca and the correct mirror still not in after 3 weeks of trying, we had to do a "fix". Hopefully it will last until we are in Ca.

With the sleet and snow we discovered a large amount of ice on the slide as we put it in. we had to put it in and back out to remove the ice before it would seal and not leak inside.

We thought this was an interesting way to decorate the over pass at one freeway exit. It was done in mosaic tiles.
Texas is mainly flat in the western side with lots of oil wells as the two views below show.

Texas offerings in the weather department

Texas finds us enjoying our grand daughter and some of the weather. 11-29 was spent at a park, warm and about 75 but windy.(note Pam's hair)




The 30th finds us waking up to cold and sleet-- see the ground and tables. It is to be about 34 degrees for the high. They are calling for snow -- could we be snowed in and have to wait for the thaw to go home--- noooot -- nothing will keep us from home for Christmas.

Double click on this photo to see the ice cycles on the grill and bottom of the neighbors coach.



The sheets of ice below are from the side of the coach. We moved one of the slides in and this dropped off the side.

As I do this blog it is snowing and the ground is getting whiter. This is the same table and ground as above now with snow added to the sleet.

passing through Oklahoma on the way to Texas

We now fill in the rest of the states we have visited since leaving California. A couple more and we will be home for the Christmas holidays.

We enter Oklahoma and once again it is raining.

A small view of Oklahoma landscape above and below.



Notice the mirror or lack of it on the other sideof the steering wheel. The strong winds in Oklahoma sucked it right out of the mounting. We stopped shortly after this happened. Now we wait for a new one in Texas.

As you can see by the sky and wind in the flag Texas greeted us with winds but no rain.

things around Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri

There is a huge gathering every year in Helene Ark for jaz and blues. This wall was painted depicting many of the players. I believe it was painted in 1989 if I recall correctly. It is put on by King Biscuit and this last year they had over 100,000 people come.

Forrestdale Church and cemetery are one of many examples of small old churches that remain throughout the south. This one appeared no longer used but the cemetery was still being used. It dates back to the late 1800's. From my understanding of Arkansas, you can still bury family on your property. We saw several instances of this and had thought it was perhaps old burial grounds but was told otherwise.
What a gorgeous sunset. Appears the jets from the local base may have been doing some flying and left there trails in the sunset.

We saw seperate calf houses in one of the other states, here they have seperate rooster houses.


There are swamps all over the state and some have the tree stumps as shown above. This one was fairly clean some are all green due to algae.

Kudzu is seen growing up the towers above. You can see it also laying like a blanket over the rest of the trees and bushes. It is said to grow a a foot a day and in ideal conditions it can grow 60 feet a year. I came from Japan as a nice plant but seems to love the conditions in the south. You don't want to stand still to long you could be the next reclaimation project. It covers houses left unoccupied for length of time. Take a look at www.alabamatv.org/kudzu for more info.

This is the 1896 Pillow Thompson house in Helene Ark. We took a tour and were the only people due to the lateness in the season. We spent at least 1 1/2 hrs listening to the history of the house and the area.
The area around the window is all cut colored glass - click twice on the photos to see how pretty it is.

This early food warmer is an area above the radiator that has shelves and doors. It was used to keep food warm before serving.

Cotton fields and harvest time

Harvesting of the cotton is going on all over Arkansas now. They harvest/gather it in these trucks and dump them in a packer.

They make about 4 trips through the field and have to dump in the packer.

This is the packer and it can hold about ten of the truckloads of cotton before a stack is made. The upright arms are the packer and it moves back and forth across the whole container packing the cotton tight.

When the packer is full the container is moved away slowly and a tight stack of cotton is left behind. Someone sits on top of the stack to pull the plastic across to cover it tightly.

The cotton is covered in plastic on the top portion and is later moved by truck to the cotton gin for processing and then to the barges for market.

Arkansas and states nearby

Some more of the fall colors. Inlarge the photo to get the full effect of the mountain.

We could watch the river traffic from our coach. The barges were moving cotton and other things to market. They could push several barges at a time.

This is our campgrounds on the Mighty Miss.

We stayed at Tom Sawyer Island on the banks of the Mississippi. Note the handy artwork someone did on a tree at the entrance to the campgrounds.


A trip to Arkansas and a chance to visit some of mom's family.

the great blizzard of 2006 (maybe)

We stopped at the home of Superman on the return trip. Metropolis has a paper called the Daily Planet as well as anything Superman you might want.



We noted a difference in the color in the trees. In Minnesota the trees were already bare. These were along the turnpike headed to Tennessee.

We had to indure the great blizzard the first day and as you can see below Bill had to change his attire from his winter shorts to include sweats for warmth.


He swore off long pants when he retired -- but sometimes things change your plans.