Epilogue

While we were readjusting to life in Washington our motor home was still in storage in Alabama.  David and my dad flew back to the motor home in April right at the start of the epic tornado storms that leveled many southern towns.  They survived two tornado watches, but our home away from home was either struck by lightening or an electrical storm and lost most of its electrical appliances.  After a few on the road repairs it was off to the races.
Talladega Nights!

Following the races David flew home and my dad and the motor home took off on my dad's own

 "Bucket List" tour of our country until mid May. 

But that is a whole other story.......

No Place Like...

HOME!!!

We arrived home in the wee morning hours of  Kristen's 8th Birthday, March 28,2011..Five months after we left. 

Would we do it again?

ABSOLUTELY!!

The End

After leaving the beautiful sunshine and warmth of  Death Valley (and wearing shorts and sandals)  we were shocked to step into snow when we got out of the car at our hotel.  The next morning we headed north.  Our Plan- cut through Nevada/ drive over the pass from Tahoe and see my Aunt Leslie and family in Auburn.  Mother Nature's Plan- dump a bunch of snow on Central California/Sierra Nevadas closing roads.  We diverted south and then went back to good 'ol dependable I5 and turned North. 
Turned out to be the best way to end a trip to everywhere..go back to where we started ...Benicia, CA.  Thank goodness for good friends who dropped everything to entertain us, visit with us and let us crash on their couches. 


A stop to see old friends in Benicia.


After days of weather delays, including a hailstorm in Redding, we decided it was really time to leave.  To avoid the mountains all together we hugged the coast all the way back to the Pacific Northwest.



I don't know if the motorhome could have fit through...

Double Rainbow all the way across the Redwood Forest.



Wow! A really big tree!

Voodoo Donuts in Eugene is a must. Just keep your eye on them!

Vegas, baby!

As per my request, we stayed at Circus CirI know what you're thinking: why would an 18-year-old girl want to go to Vegas with her mom and siblings? Maybe it's because I was dying for some warmth during spring break? Something about Vegas was just awesome to me, even though I couldn't drink a yard of beer or play slots. We toured the entire strip in one evening, seeing the sights and the not so sightly. We watched the classic Treasure Island show, ate some wonderful food, saw things we might not have needed to see, and gawked at the amount of designer stores - all open until midnight of course.

The buffet in Treasure Island was unbelievable. Eating everything in sight was simply not an option, unfortunately. Andy found some cotton candy at the dessert buffet, which had more desserts than I even knew existed.

Nobody was left on the roof at Caesar's Palace on this trip.

Yes, there is enough M&M merchandise to fill a four-story store.

Back in New York!

But just because I couldn't gamble, doesn't mean I didn't get a chance to win! I won this on my first try! Circus Circus is kid friendly, thankfully, so we had the chance to play some games and go on an indoor roller coaster. 

Arizona

Ever wondered where the middle of nowhere is located? Welcome to Octave, Arizona. In it's golden years (pun intended), Octave was a minuscule gold mining town that even had a school and grocery store. Now, Octave is no more than a system of gravel roads leading to a few eerie mobile homes.

The nearest town is Stanton. I use the term "town" loosely. Even as a ghost town, it's barely sizable enough to be considered as such. It's basically an RV park that happens to have a couple of ghost town buildings in it. Stanton was only a town for thirty years, but there are still buildings preserved by the Lost Dutchman Mining Association.

Stanton was founded by Charles Stanton, a man as creepy as the ghost town itself. He often hired others to kill off people he knew, but eventually met his fate in his own store. 

Proof that I have been stuck in Olympia all winter while my siblings were touring the country.

On our way to our next stop, Las Vegas, we stopped by the Hoover Dam. Andy and I were impressed that they had restored all the damage caused by the Decepticons in Transformers. We hopped out of the car to take a view pics while Mom circled the dam. I couldn't even imagine her trying to do that with the motorhome. 

And to think... all of this was made to cover up the government's research on Transformers...

Little House in the Desert

After a  long drive and a fun baseball game we arrived at my parents house Friday night.  I knew we had spent too much time in the car when I asked the kids if they wanted to go back down to Phoenix the next morning to pick up their sister.
 "How many miles?" they asked.  Only 120 each way.
 "O, that's not too bad," they responded.  240 miles in the car..bring it on.  Just a short little jaunt down south.
When Karly flew to Philadelphia four months earlier we were four hours late picking her up.  Now after numerous delays Karly's flight was four hours late arriving.  Funny how if these too things had been simultaneous we would have been right in sync. 
Since we were already on our way and had some time to kill we decided to stop at a museum I had always wanted to visit..The Pioneer Living History Museum.

Just one more day of living history.  This time with my family.

Can't say you weren't warned.

Texas Forever, and Ever, and Ever

After we left San Antonio we had lost a bit of our lust for the open road.  We had one thing on our schedule..pick Karly up at the airport in Phoenix on Saturday the 19th. 
I had this idea that coming out of San Antonio we would follow the Mission Trail and soak up a bit of history.

At the first mission, Kristen got out with me to explore and pose for a picture.

At the second mission I got out alone and took a picture.

At the third mission we all just looked out the window as we drove by.

I think our sightseeing days are officially over.

During a lunch stop I realized if we made it to Phoenix on Friday we could catch a Mariners spring training game.  Since we were getting warn out on sightseeing it seemed like a better option to drive the long hours and get out of Texas.

New Mexico loomed just ahead.  We crossed the state line and were stopped for what we assumed was a state inspection station.  I was quite surprised to see the US customs signs and find ourselves being questioned by border patrol.  I am not sure it was such a great time to be touring in Southwestern Texas with my kids.  I was glad to get into New Mexico and one step closer to Arizona and my family.   

Death Valley

I wanted a warm spring break, so naturally Death Valley was a good place to stop. Can't get hotter and drier than a place that was once so hot that birds fell out of the sky and died. Death Valley is overwhelmingly beautiful, and the abundant sunshine certainly helped. It was tempting to spend the whole day hiking around on the rocks, but we wouldn't want to suffer the same fate as the pioneers!

Zabriskie Point

Nope, that's not water, it's salt. Andy remained convinced that it was water up until we noticed the crunch of salt under our feet.

We may or may not have tried licking it... it really is salt.

Surprisingly enough, U2's album cover for The Joshua Tree was not taken in the Joshua Tree National Park, but in the beginning of Death Valley. As soon as this bit of trivia was brought to our attention, we absolutely had to make a stop and attempt to recreate their album cover. While we were down one member and pointed slightly to the right of where they were, we still did a good job. To think that Bono himself was once standing slightly to the left of where we were... 

Where can you find the world's biggest pizza?

If you are looking for the world's biggest pizza check out Big Lou's in San Antonio, Texas.  The whole huge pizza idea was a publicity stunt and thanks to an episode of Man vs. Food the business has boomed.  The wait is almost two hours on a typical night and longer on holidays and weekends.  It is worth every minute.  Not only is it fun to watch these enormous 48 inch pies delivered to the oversized tables, but the pizza is some of the best I have ever had.  AND they have not capitalized on their fame and raised the prices.  This place is good, fun and a bargain.  Big Lou himself even came by to check on our table.

 

Remember the Alamo

I knew I was not suppose to forget the Alamo, but I am not sure I ever really learned much about it in school in  the first place.  I think our tour guide might have happened upon the reason why.   She explained that there were no Americans fighting at the Alamo.  It was only TEXANS and TEJANOS against the Mexican army.    

Unlike many Americans I have not seen any of the "Alamo" movies.  I had this bizarre image in my mind of a wooden fort single-handedly protected by Davey Crockett.   Before we toured the Alamo I followed a strange suggestion in my guidebook and took the kids to "The Alamo" at the nearby IMAX theater.  I was so glad I did.  It gives you a much better idea of what the surrounding area looked like 175 years ago.  Thanks to the film and the guide talks we attended I  now  know  that the Alamo was actually built as a mission, later abandoned, and it's involvement in Texas' fight for independence was strictly because of strategic location.  

Today the Alamo sits in the center of urban San Antonio and while most of it has been restored and preserved you still find these markers in the pavement directly in front of ice cream parlors and tourist traps.

Around the corner is the San Antonio River Walk.  I had seen this in a movie once (yes I am referring to Miss Congeniality) and it looked so picturesque that we walked the length of the canal.

After having all of my misconceptions about the Alamo refuted, I decided I wanted to know the actual history of the river walk. As we took a boat ride down the canal we not only learned about it construction under the New Deal, but we also learned about the architecture.  For instance the lack of railings along the river is deliberate.  The original architect insisted on  this because he felt the closer people were to the water the more serene they would feel. 

Houston we have a problem..

Kennedy Space Center, Shuttle Launch, and one last space stop-  Johnson Space Center.

In case anyone is wondering, Spring Break in Houston is March 14th - 18th, and the Space Center has  great 1/2 off coupons online  Gone were our days of off season, deserted amusement park touring.   I am pretty sure the entire town of Houston was at the Space Center on Tuesday.

We bypassed the crowds in the space exhibits inside and joined the crowds lining up for the tours of the astronaut training facilities. 

 I was under the impression that NASA maintained some kind of anti-gravity chamber.  In actuality the only way they achieve weightlessness on Earth is in an airplane that can maintain a free fall for 22 seconds and in this massive 40 foot deep swimming pool.  Because training for 22 seconds at a time is impractical, all astronauts training for space walks spend much of their time in this pool.  Eleven hours of training in the pool for every one hour they will walk in space.

After waiting over an hour in line for the tour our timing could not have been more perfect.  Like the tour immediately proceeding ours, we got to see the astronauts working below the water, but unlike anyone else that day we got to see them lifted out of the water and helped out of their spacesuits. 

 On our tour to mission control Andy was looking forward  to seeing the actual "Houston" that Neil Armstrong was talking  to.

 It was a bit disappointing, but at the same time exciting that we were instead allowed to see the current mission control center.  There is only time to see one during the tour and our guide said it is infrequent that NASA allows tours of this facility.  After touring CNN I think we were expecting something a bit more high tech, but all of the space shuttle missions have been managed from this facility and it has 131 plaques to prove it.  Two plaques, one for Challenger and one for Columbia remain hanging on the wall in an "ongoing mission" status to commemorate astronauts that did not return home.

As we left Houston we couldn't help but compare it with our time at Cape Canaveral.  Kennedy certainly had a flashier facility, but both centers seemed a bit dated.  Houston did win the prize for out of date when a video during our tour frequently mentioned  when the US would start construction on the International Space Station.  Regardless, both Space Centers offer a fun glimpse into the real working side of NASA and in hindsight I am not sure I could choose one over the other.  I would probably just skip many of the exhibits and spend my time on the "behind the scenes" type tours.

An afternoon in the Big Easy

After a not so perfect night in a cheap hotel we had a perfect afternoon in the Big Easy.  I cannot recommend the La Quinta Inn in Meridian, Mississippi but I can recommend sightseeing in  New Orleans. 
Our visit was one week after Mardi Gras; this was not exactly coincidental.  Someday I would love to come and see Mardi Gras in all of its glory, but not for my first time in New Orleans and NOT alone with my kids.  I was so excited there were still decorations everywhere and beads hanging from the trees.  Kristen even acquired a few strands that were low hanging and ready to fall.

The kids thought I was crazy when I said we were going to the oldest cemetery in town, but this place is so cool.   Like nothing we had ever seen. 

Andy's favorite thing in New Orleans, "The beignets at Cafe du Monde"

Kristen's favorite thing in New Orleans, "The beignets at Cafe du Monde"

My favorite thing in New Orleans, "The architecture, touring the cemetary,  exploring the French Quarter, admiring the houses in the garden district, AND
the beignets at Cafe du Monde!

Farewell to the Motorhome

Sunday, March 13th
Farewell motorhome-
We have had the best of times, we have had the worst of times.  We wish we could take you with us, but it is time for us to go on alone.  No tears, David will return and take you to see all of your rv friends at the  NASCAR race in Talledega next month.  No laughing as we try to fit everything we need into my tiny little Corolla.  A new adventure begins... 

The World of News and Coca Cola

In sharp contrast to our days spent touring historical sights we spent a day immersed in up to the minute news and pop culture.  First up was a tour of CNN.  Initially the the kids had no desire to tour the network, but later exclaimed it was the favorite part of their day. 

The tour starts with a trip up this seven story escalator into the "world."  In the screening room at the top we saw our first glimpses of the destruction in Japan.  It was incredible to see the news from overseas "breaking" right in front of us.

 Across Centennial Park from CNN is the World of Coca Cola.  It is an extreme glimpse into pop culture of the past hundred years.  My picture did not come out, but I loved a sign from the 40s boasting of the new "family size" 16oz coca cola bottle with "three servings" to share.  

 Coca-Cola really is everywhere- even in space.

At least she was honest.  By the end of the day I think Andy had persuaded her to try to Coke.

 It was an exhausting day touring a entire world.

Nothing that a trip to the all you can drink tasting room can't cure.

We were camping at Stone Mountain campground so the next morning we took a gondola ride to the top.

The sun was out so we decided to ditch the gondola ride and hike down the mountain.

Andy of course had his own idea for how to get down.

Stone Mountain is a family amusement park (mostly closed for the winter) that is known for it's carving of three leaders of the confederacy- Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.  It is hard to tell from this photo but Davis' horse is the size of two school buses.