Cross Country Adventure

It's been a long time time since I sat down to write a few words on this blog. Now I'm going to put my thoughts together and try to take you along on our trip.


We decided to drive to the Grand Canyon. We would like to visit all the National Parks in the country. We'll see how that goes. The states outside of New England are soooo big. Took a long time to cross them. We were away from home for four weeks. Missed our kids and grandkids so much even though we talked almost every day.

We packed up the RV and headed up the Mass turnpike to New York. It's a beautiful ride in the fall. Leaves of all colors. Hay bales rolled up for the winter. We made it to Pennsylvania the first night and set up camp near Lake Erie

We continued on through Pennsylvania and Ohio stopping along the way to enjoy the country side. Had to hit a few antique shops but we new we had to keep going. Lot of miles to go.

 

Wish I could have stopped in Indianapolis to visit Stacy Nash but I don't think she has a retail shop. Love her patterns.

Crossed into Illinois where my husband grew up. We planned on visiting with family on the way back home. So across the state to Missouri.

We have been to the Gateway Arch before but it's always beautiful to look at sitting near the Mississippi River. The floor at the top of the arch is glass. Quite a feeling when you look down. (I don't even like to climb ladders!). We drove through the Ozark Mountains. Found a cute primitive shop where I found old blue calico fabric. I was going to use some of it on some projects to sell but haven't been able to part with it yet.

 

The next state was Oklahoma. Every state we went through had it's own beauty. The earth there is so red. Much flatter landscape than I'm used to. We went around Oklahoma City and would like to have spent more time there but it's a big city to take an RV into.

This seemed like a very wide state and we were taking our time looking around so I won't go into all our stops but we got pretty good at hooking up the RV and packing up in the morning.

 

Texas was our next stop.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

They really know how to do a welcome center and rest stop!

We walked around at the welcome center  to stretch our legs and send some pictures to the kids.  

We were crossing the Texas panhandle and I know there is a lot more to see there but we were pushing along to New Mexico to visit friends in Angel Fire.

I've never been to the Southwest before except to fly to Las Vegas. Such a beautiful part of our country. We were lucky to have beautiful weather . Very low humidity. Days and days of sun. I know it's dry there and they need rain but we felt fortunate. We traveled to Santa Fe and Taos. Just loved these cities. The adobe buildings are so beautiful!

Made our way to Angel Fire in the mountains of New Mexico. Such gorgeous views. I have many pictures but I'll only post a few. 

This is the view from the top of Angel Fire ski resort. 10,700 feet above sea level. Lot higher than home and we could feel it.

We had a great visit with a friend from school and his wife. What fun. We hadn't seen each other for 35 years! Lots to catch up on.

 

We left there and pushed on to our final destination. The Grand Canyon. Incredible!!! We stayed for three days and you could spend a lot more time there. I'll post a few pictures but we took many.  

The elk and deer just wander around not paying much attention to all the people.

We went through the painted desert on the way out of the park. Just beautiful. This is a tower that over looks the canyon and desert.

From here we started the trip home. Round trip mileage 5,320 miles. Don did a lot of this!!

We had a wonderful time. Lots of places I like to go back to and spend more time.  This should be on everyone's bucket list.

 

This is certainly a lot longer than I intended it to be. Thought I would blog on my way out there but too much to see.

 

Thanks for coming along with us.  Take care.  Jan

 

 

 



Summer has flown by!

Summer is just about over. Where did it go! It was hotter than usual this year. Made us want to stay in the air conditioning.

Our family was doing fun things. We went to Wells Maine for a week in our camper. Just beautiful there.

Our granddaughter Heather traveled to Germany with Operation Friendship for three weeks. She had a great time. Came home with some beautiful pictures of Bavaria. She saw some friends that had been to the U.S. last summer and stayed at her house. This is Heather touring an old building. Lots of castles there.

 

My oldest Grandson rode in the Pan Mass Challenge. 192 miles on a bike! From Sturbridge Mass. to Provincetown Ma. Can't find my picture of him crossing the finish line. Blogger still seems hard to use.

 

Our youngest grandson has had a busy summer. He's been out on the boat with Mom and Dad. He's a little fish.

 

He also got a new swingset and loves to have Grampie climb the rock wall and get into the playhouse with him.

 

 

 

 

 

This is Nicholas with my daughter and son-in-law at the Steak House in Wells Maine. MMMMgood.

 

 

I'm working on needlepunch for the Woolen Memories hook-in in October. I'll show you one of my projects in the works.

 

 

 

I've made a few other things by other designers, Maggie Bonanomi and Brenda Gervais.

 

 

 

 

 

I guess that's it for today. Brimfield Flea Market is next week. Can't wait. Love those Pilgrim sandwiches. (turkey)  Delish! Looking for old sewing notions. Brimfield is only 7-8 miles from my house, so I may have to make more than one trip. Depends on the weather. I'll try to take some pictures. 

 

Take care and have a great holiday week-end.  Jan

Favorite time of day

Early morning is my favorite time of day. Just me and the birds. There is a river down the hill and across the road and you can see the fog rising up as the sun comes up. This is looking down our driveway. 

I like to go out and check out the garden, dead head the flowers, try to get a look at the baby birds. Mom is sitting in the vines watching me closely so I'll have to wait til later to get a picture. The one below is from yesterday. How fast they grow. I looked up this robin with white spots on the internet and she is a partial albino robin. Never saw one before. I guess they're not real common.

This little guy was out beside the fence trying to decide how to get through to taste the tomatoes and squash plants.

Just a few pictures of the front garden before the sun comes up too strong. I try to get out there while it's cool. Can't really complain when you watch the news and see all the destruction and crazy weather down south and out west. We have been very lucky.

The last picture is on the hill in the back yard. Trying to make a little apple orchard. Probably will take a long time to grow! I'm headed out there now to do some weeding in my herb garden. Hope you have a great day today.

Take care. Jan