Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Trip West March 2008






Trip West
March 2008
(Note: If you are only reading this blog to see what fell off our RV this month, you’re a sick person; please see a mental health professional.)

On March 5 we headed south to pick up our RV in Fayetteville, NC. We put our I-95 curse (3 breakdowns in 6 weeks) behind us and headed to Lewisburg, WV. We arrived at our property and discovered we had misplaced the keys to our garage. A local locksmith picked the lock. We dropped off a few things and headed west. We had planned to go to Louisville, KY to see Pat’s friend Margaret, but a record breaking snow storm had just dropped about 10 inches of snow there. We took a more southerly course and headed to Memphis. We took all back roads to get there but found a 200 mile trip took most of the day. We wanted more time to hike and explore so we got back on the interstates.

Raise your hand if you’ve been to Oklahoma. Didn’t think so, neither had we, so that’s why we went. In OK city, we visited the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Center. We enjoyed the section on TV and movie Westerns the most. The follow day we visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. The memorial remembers those who lost their lives in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. The museum covers the events of the day of the bombing through 16 days of rescue and recovery.

From OK we headed SW to Carlsbad Caverns in NM. We spent 5 hours touring the cave and the next day we hiked in Guadalupe Mountain NP. In Tucson we toured BioSphere2. This was a sealed experimental enclosure that housed 8 scientists for 2 years. Low oxygen levels, scarcity of food and coffee (2 cups /mo.), resulted in a poor teamwork setting. No wonder they all had been rejected by E-Harmony.

On this trip I was hoping to relive and share with Pat was certain experiences that I had when I traveled through the Southwest in 1972. This turned out to be impossible, but we were able to create our own memories. The more we travel the harder it gets to have new experiences, but we had such an experience hiking in the Mojave Desert. At the end of our hike was an oasis, complete with very large palm trees and watering holes. The only thing missing was a camel.

(Since you read the boring stuff, I’ll give you the dirt - during our 4200 mile cross country trip, we had two flat tires, but they were both on our bikes!)

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