Home Again, Home Again

Travel day number 9 went well. We made it home with no difficulties along the way. The weather cooperated, and we didn’t see too much heavy traffic as we traveled. We started in Missouri and traveled through Iowa and back to Minnesota. Spring completed its regression, although I will say that I saw some hints of green that were not here nine days ago. It’s coming, Minnesota! Spring will arrive before we know it. For me, the highlight of today (aside from making it home safely), was a hike in Myre Big Island State Park (Minnesota state park number 17 on our ongoing quest to hit them all) just after we got back into our home state. It was a fun way to wrap up this trip while thinking ahead to more adventures in the future. Plus, the day was so nice – how could we resist? The icing on the cake was the eagle that landed in a tree right along the path where we were hiking. I couldn’t have scripted it better than that!

Entering Iowa

Not much green here

Leaving Iowa

State Park number 17

Pretty bleak landscape

But I found some green here and there

I said, "Look adorable." He said, "I tilted my head 3 degrees toward yours." 

The eagle we found

As per tradition, we stopped at Dairy Queen before landing at home. Yum! Upon coming home, we began the mundane tasks of life, such as doing laundry, making grocery lists, and unpacking. All good things must come to an end, I suppose.

 I always like to do a wrap up at the end of a trip, just to put it all in perspective. Here are some stats for our trip.

9 days on the road

1 day with no driving

Longest day driving 577 miles; shortest day driving 274 miles

3,314 miles traveled, and R.J. drove every mile

Saw 4 states we had not seen before: Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma

Pictures taken: right around 1,000

Trip Lodging cost $551.60 (for 5 nights’ accommodations)

Gas cost: $287.61

Food cost: $100.38

Souvenir cost: $4.32 (almost forgot to buy any)

We kept the total cost under $1000, which was our goal. Making our own meals, including feeding ourselves quite a few peanut butter sandwiches as we traveled, really saved a lot of money. We did bring along some groceries, and I didn’t include those in the dollars spent for food; and of course, family and friends fed us some delicious feasts as we stayed with them. We were blessed. In reality, we only spent $47.00 for groceries and such along the way, as the rest of that $100 was spent at the Outback. Eating out is expensive, but we proved you don’t have to do that when you are traveling - and then we splurged a little for a date night on the road.

I have some travel reflections and tips, but I’ll save them for another blog. For now, I will leave you with a list of all the things I did NOT take pictures of, in amongst the 1000-ish pictures that I took on this trip.

1.       One cool thing that happened while we were driving along the Gulf was that a Spoonbill Roseate flew right by us. You don’t see many pink birds doing fly-bys in Minnesota, so I would really love to have a picture of that. The one I took is too blurry to be of any use, but at least I tried!

2.       Another miss of an “out the car window” photo-op was when I saw a coyote or some such canine trotting along in the woods alongside the road. Obstructed. Blurry. Sigh.

3.       The time the seagull flew right alongside the car, outside my passenger window, I not only missed the photograph but I also missed seeing it. I was looking the other way when R.J. saw that happening.

4.       We saw an extremely specific roadwork sign in Louisiana, which was there and gone before I could take a picture. It said, “Roadwork next .644 miles.”

5.       Another sign we saw a couple of different times made us stop and think. It said, “Hitchhikers may be escaping inmates.” Ok, then…. No picture, so you’ll have to take my word for it. (Or maybe I’m being held hostage by an escaped prisoner we picked up as a hitchhiker.)

6.       One more sign photo-op was missed, this one for a quilting shop. It read, “WOW!  Scream until your husband stops!” Hilarious, but I didn’t get the picture.

So while I always go overboard with my pictures, I do miss some, delete many, and only post a fraction of what I keep. Count your blessings, people (while you look at just a couple more pictures)!

Hometown

The view, back at home. I think it's a little greener than it was when we left.

And one last picture of the Gulf shore, just to remember it by.