Road Trip Update #1

We are having a great time.

We left home Wednesday, June 27, in the morning. Unfortunately Joshua had a stomach bug or something that caused him to get sick before we made it to Barstow. After getting sick on the side of the road, he fell asleep so we skipped the Route 66 Museum in Barstow and headed east on I-40. We did jump on route 66 and explored the former town of Amboy which is on the route connecting Palm Springs and Vegas. After Needles we got off I-40 again and took route 66 to Oatman, Arizona, where we saw wild burros wondering the street of this former mining town. Joshua got sick one more time before we got to Kingman, Arizona, but that was the last time for the trip. We arrived at our Day's Inn around 5:00 and since it was still over 90 degrees, Joshua and I headed for the pool. At 6:00 Jon went on his 30 minute run (he's keeping up with his training for the marathon) and Joshua road his bike with him. It was a great first day on the road.

Thursday the 28th was a very full day. We were up and on the road before 8:00 so we could visit the Grand Canyon Caverns when they opened at 9:00. This is a phenomenal place and we highly recommend it to anyone heading to the Grand Canyon. If you google the caverns, you can find pictures and a description of these awesome natural caves. We headed down the road again and had lunch at the Road Kill Cafe -- very cute. At 2:00 we arrived at Meteor Crater on the eastern side of Arizona. It is the most well preserved meteor crater in the world and the first to be proved to be formed by a crater. It was in the 90s but a strong breeze was blowing and we loved our hour-long hike along the edge of the crater. To give you an idea, on the floor of the crater 20 football games could be played at the same time while 2 million people could stand around the edge to watch. Amazing! We arrived at the National Petrified Forest around 5:30 -- just an hour and a half before the park closed so we had a pretty fast drive the 20+ miles through the park. That would be a great place to go back and explore more but we are glad that we could at least see the Painted Dessert. We didn't get in to Gallup, New Mexico, till around 7:00, but of course it was already 8:00 p.m. there, so it was a very long day.

Friday we pretty much just drove through New Mexico to Amarillo, Texas. We stopped in Albuquerque and visited University of New Mexico where we got a T-shirt for Joshua. The country was awesome to see even though it was just through the windows of our car. We again got in late to Amarillo so we were having dinner at 9:00 p.m. but since our bodies were still on the west coast time, it wasn't quite that late.

Saturday we headed to Dallas and I'll have to stop for now as I'm out of time. We are in Houston today and heading to Longview, Texas this afternoon to spend a couple days with Jon's sister's family.

Thanks for keeping us in your prayers.

Sheryl