There' s no place like home

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. And there's no place like home! The trip was wonderful!! We were so blessed to have the opportunity to take two weeks to travel and to be graced with such wonderful weather.

We arrived back in Memphis around 6 p.m. Saturday after having traveled 5820 miles in 16 days. As you can see in these pictures the terrain changed drastically in the last two days of our trip. As we got out of sight of Pikes Peak things went completely flat. Even east CO was FLAT!! And all through KS and OK...F L A T! It was great for farming and windmills but not nearly as scenic to us as the mountains. We were eager to get home and saw the sign in KS indicating that we were nearly to South Haven. Unfortunately it wasn't Southaven, MS. It was in KS. The last day traveling in was rough. Car lag had finally set in. On previous days we had traveled 10-14 hours at a time with each of us driving several hours before swapping out. On Saturday, however, we were doing good to make it two hours before having to stop, stretch, and swap drivers. We were so exhausted! We finally reached some mountains again in west central AR, and as we neared home, we saw the rice fields planted and growing again on the flood plains of AR. (That's always such a pretty sight to me. I love the green!) It must have rained pretty hard while we've been gone because all the local rivers around here are WAY up. We even saw some of the homes along I40 with water up to their back doorstep. Hope you all enjoyed following us through this amazing journey.

God blessed us the whole way! We completely cleaned out the van when we got home last night and had it ready to go. This morning we left for church in the van and got about a mile away from home when the check engine light came on. We thought it a bit ironic and slightly funny, but continued on for church. A couple of blocks later the van began hesitating and lurching some, so we decided to take it back home and swap cars. We'll figure it out in the next couple of days I suppose. But isn't God good?! I LOVED the mountains; I enjoyed the ascent and descent at Pike's Peak, but my blood pressure would have reached a new elevation too if 1000 miles from home our van just died! So grateful for the fun and safe trip that has given us so many special memories!!