With sadness, I must announce that we have ended a continuous, approximately 12,740-mile, trip that started last Dec. 26th (2004) and ended early November 2005. Grab your US atlas and with no more than your finger, trace along with us - you may need to use one of your stronger fingers! Leaving out volumes of details, our trip took us from Denton, Texas east to Georgia, south to Florida, north to Indiana, south to Tennessee, north to Ohio, west to Indiana, north to Michigan, west to Montana, southwest to Oregon, north up the Oregon/Washington coast to the ferry and then to the northern parts of Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada, back south via the ferry and then through Seattle and south to the middle of Oregon,
west back to the coast, south to San Francisco, southeast to Gilroy, CA, over to Yosemite NP, north through Sacramento, northeast to Lake Tahoe and Reno, south to Carson City, southeast to Las Vegas, east to Flagstaff, east to Albuquerque, south to Carlsbad, south to Pecos, TX, east to Ft. Worth, and back to Denton. Whew!!! We did not track the miles on the car. We are constantly asked which place we liked best and the answer is we liked them all - okay, a couple were iffy.
Would leave again in the morning if possible. But first, we will spend the holidays in Denton, getting our annual checkups done, and visiting. So, we will park for a couple of months and have a good time here, too.
Even with paying as much as $3.49 per gallon for fuel (our record price), this style of living is still considerably less expensive than owning a home - plus it's a lot more fun.
When traveling, part of what we do is continue to chase my lifelong dream of eating/dining in great unique local restaurants - every one in the nation. For example, Duran Central Pharmacy (in Old Town Albuquerque) is a real pharmacy with a small dining area. It's a small adobe building that almost sits on the street and they serve breakfast and lunch - there will likely be a line for lunch. Duran's has been around since 1945 and they serve authentic New Mexican dishes with world-famous red and green chile. New Mexican food is different than the normal Tex-Mex. One word of warning... New Mexican food is hot and spicy - not for the wimpy and it may stop you in your tracks even if you like hot foods but only have them occasionally.
I think David Greer (he and Lana traveled with us for the northwest portion of the trip) learned about real clam chowder. He and I probably had chowder for lunch or dinner 30, 40, 50 days in a row - always at a different place. We even found the restaurants that won the Oregon Chowder Cookoff for the last couple of years. They were great! David is still complaining that we blew away his "eating out" budget - but he also talks about that great chowder, too.
We also visited many, many museums (Flight, Atomic, Liberace, Texas, Railroad, Petroleum, Rattlesnake, many more). We toured mansions, will go in any Park that seems interesting, and any other place that is offbeat, unusual, educational, or just seems like fun. For example, we drove by the TeePee Motel (Route 66, New Mexico) where you spend the night in teepees (seriously), visited the "West of the Pecos" Museum (Pecos, TX) where Judge Roy Bean dispensed frontier justice, learned how and cooked fresh oysters on the grill in Canada, watched wild turkeys feed in front of our coach in Montana, saw the costumes that Liberace wore, watched sea lions sun themselves in front of our coach in Canada, stood in awe at the base of some of the biggest trees in the world, learned how they find oil, saw one of the finest car collections in the world, looked up under and down onto the Golden Gate bridge, learned about and tried Dim Sum, had a private tour of a Napa Valley winery, met Stan Dishong who designed, built, and rode some of the world's fastest motorcycles, visited the "Peanuts" museum, went deep into Carlsbad Caverns, and even made it to the "Rock" - Alcatraz Prison.
Not trying to be maudlin here but it was a lifetime experience.
What a lifestyle! We, obviously, recommend it.
