Homeward Bound At Last!

This morning, for the second time in my life, I woke up in a field somewhere in West Virginia.  This was the last time I would be waking up in a tent.  I reflected on our journey, how in just over a month's time we traveled through 25 of the 50 states, and visited over 20 National Parks or monuments.  This was the second time in less than 10 years I was able to an adventure like this, and I would do it again in a heartbeat! There are so many wonderful places and things  in this great country of ours, and even if we spent a year on the road, we would barely scratch the surface of all there is to see and do!

Once again, I awoke before my over-tired traveling companions.  This is partly due to the fact I've been able to get sleep in the truck, since Dawn has insisted on doing 95% of the driving.

  She loves my truck, and doesn't get much opportunity to drive it....so she wanted to drive this whole trip, partly so she could say she did it, and partly to give her something to do!  Just being a stationary passenger for long periods makes her antsy, something that never bothered me!  Tyler, on the other hand, would sleep till 1 pm if you let him.    So, I let them have their beauty rest while I did some exploring!  We were camped along a river, so I walked down the trail that ran along it.   There were some kids on bikes that passed me, but for the most part it was deserted and peaceful.   It just seemed to go on forever, so I headed back, to find Tyler and Dawn were awake and packing up our tents for what would be the last time!  After we showered and changed, we were on our way! We stopped just outside the park for gas and provisions, and made our way to the highway.  

 The rest of the trip itself was pretty uneventful, passing through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and it was dark by the time we hit Connecticut!  Tyler called his mom once we crossed the state line,  and she sent his stepdad to come pick him up.    Tyler and I unpacked the truck while Dawn "reunited" with the kitties. (She was able to get Black Bart inside within 5 minutes...she had been out for 3 days!!)  The cats were all glad to see us, and we were glad to be home.   We didn't make it to all the destinations we had hoped to, but we sure saw plenty in the amount of time we had!   Due to Tyler's school obligations, we started a day and a half later and finished a week earlier than we had originally planned, but that's ok.

  It gives us a reason to plan to do the rest of our trip again in the future!  I just have some monster credit card bills to pay off first!!

Well, that's our story.  I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it!   I wrote this blog mainly to preserve all the happy times we had and record them before they faded from memory.  I thank Eric and the Travbuddy Website for giving me a forum to do so, and it is a bonus that I got to make some new friends, and share our story with so many others who have read about our adventures and viewed our photos!  I hope I have inspired some of you to get out there and see some of the wonderful places we have visited, just as I am looking forward to someday visiting many of the locations written about by my fellow Travbuddies!  (I wish I had known about this site before I left, it certainly would have helped my research!)     Thank you all!

-Walt