2013 9,000 Mile Trip

Discussion in 'Long Haul' started by Les Izmore, Jul 8, 2015.

  1. Les Izmore

    Les Izmore Junior Ranger

    18 degrees in late May in NE Colorado. The temperature dropped 50 degrees in about 5 hours.

    Our iced-up Camp Inn after driving south to avoid a late spring cold front.

    At City of Rocks in SE Idaho, where the Oregon Trail and California Trail converge.

    Also City of Rocks.

    This was a spur of the moment trip after Alea came home one night to tell me she had just quit her job. She had been looking forward to going to Orlando to visit her sisters in another month, back when airfares had spiked outrageously. We did the math, and for the price of one return trip we could both go and probably not spend that much on gas. So we hit the road with our 2012 Camp Inn 550 Ultra (#531), being towed by our 2013 Mazda CX-5.

    Since this was more of a decompression trip for Alea we didn't take many photos. Early on, we stopped at the Golden Spike National Historic Site, a place we had passed by many, many times, and finally took the time to stop. It was well worth the detour, with regular reenactments of the two trains meeting out there in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn't mind seeing that again some day, and planning to spend a bit more time there (we stopped for about two hours).

    We (me, Alea and our dog Lana) drove through the Southwest to visit my niece in Texas, then on to Orlando to spend Spring Break with family and Alea's old college buddies. From there we went up the coast to Philadelphia to see another of her old college friends, spending some time in Charleston along the way.

    The return trip focused on allowing me to do some genealogy research. So there was a stop in DC, some time spent around the Wilderness Gap, stops in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas before the long haul back home.

    We spent some time at City of Rocks National Reserve, which is less than a day's drive from home, but one of our favorite places to visit. Awesome Old West vistas, some world class rock climbing and occasional packs of singing coyotes running among the Pinon Pines. (Oh, and a campground with squeaky clean toilets with nice, hot showers.)

    By the time we had returned home we had spent 49 straight nights in our Camp Inn, traveled through 24 states and Alea returned home refreshed and in a much better state of mind than when all this began.
     
    Monica & Bill likes this.
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