Trip Home

I apologize to our loyal blog fans (hi mom, hi tara) for our delay in posting. We got a little frazzled toward the end of the trip and haven’t updated for a while. So, we are back in Raleigh and below is a recap of how we got here.

….. we drove from Bigfork down through Missoula to Anaconda. In Anaconda , we met up with Mike and Dot again. They had settled in at the cabin by Georgetown Lake. The cabin sat at 6,500 feet and had nice views along with a hot tub on the deck. At that elevation, the mornings were brisk (~40 degrees) so the hot tub was booked up in the early am. Mike’s father (christine’s grandfather) grew up in Anaconda. Mike visited once back in around 1960. He was able to find the house that his dad's family grew up in.

Anaconda was built up to support a copper smelting company. The smelting factory closed in 1984 but the remnants are all over town. Mike and I played golf on a Jack Nicklaus designed course (http://www.oldworks.com/) – The course is laid out through the original foundation of the smelting plant and instead of sand in all the bunkers he used ‘slag’, which is a black byproduct of the smelting process (see the picture of mike attempting to hit out of it). It was a nice day for golf and we got paired up with an ex-con pawn broker from Detroit who had been charged with usary and had his case go to the supreme court before being exonerated due to procedural mistakes made by the prosecutors - so we heard some interesting stories.

The other days in anaconda we checked out the town, ate some nice dinners at the cabin and played cards. It was a nice visit.

We left Anaconda on Monday morning heading for springfield. We originally had designs on doing some sight-seeing on the way back but with all the miles to cover, we decided to just drive and sleep. The first night we made it to South Dakota and camped at Badlands National Park. We got there in time for sunset and then went for a short hike in the morning. It didn’t seem that bad to me.

On Tuesday, we got to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Then on Weds we got to springfield, IL.

We made it for the last day of harness racing at the fair (as per usual, we lost our a$es). Then on Friday we accompanied Tara and Keira (my niece) to the fair again. On Friday night, we hung out at the cadwells and celebrated Christine’s birthday again.

Saturday was the main event – Keira was baptized and then my parents hosted a bbq at their house. Keira was calm and composed for the baptism and the party was a success.

Sunday morning we got back on the road headed for Raleigh….and we arrived home on Monday night.

As we unloaded the car it felt like we were moving in again because we had so much jammed in the car and we were just getting used to the new place. We have gotten settled and are enjoying sleeping in our bed and showering whenever the fancy strikes us. We are enjoying cooking on a stove with proper pans and cutlery along with suitable fridge space.

We had a great long trip and succeeded in keeping it together for the most part. The weather was perfect and even with gas prices hitting all-time highs we spent less than I thought we would.

We were gone from Raleigh for 70 days. We put 11,430 miles on the car. We spent a grand total of $1,884.76 on gas in 45 stops. It hit 104 degrees in Moab, UT and one night in Bigfork, MT it was 37 degrees. We were in 25 states over the course of the trip and took about 3,500 pictures. We visited 10 national parks.

For those of you that are worried about filling your days post-CBD Adventure Blog, do not fear, yet. I’m going to look through and pick out my favorite pictures and post them in the next couple weeks. Then I might continue to post about what goes on day-to-day here in Raleigh. Again, I wouldn’t recommend reading it. But you can. If you want.