Wyoming

This is Devil's Tower -- it's in eastern Wyoming, a four-hour drive from Cody.
Here you also see Alan buying another hat -- cowboy Bob!


This is the view from the back porch/deck of the home in Cody where we stayed. What a view, especially at sunset.
Here we are at Yellowstone -- Laura is sitting between Alan and me.

This morning as I was drinking my a.m. coffee out on the sun porch, I was thinking about last summer (it is getting warmer) and our trip out West. We spent two wonderful weeks (at least I did -- Alan was suffering with shingles and didn't want to move) with our friends John and Laura in Cody, Wyoming.

What a great town. We happened to be there during their annual "Wild West Days" week, which included a really long 4th of July parade -- it was held on the 3rd and 4th of July, but we only went on the 3rd.

It gets dark really late in Wyoming and the sun comes up fairly early -- must be because it's so far north and on the western cusp of mountain time. Anyway, we had long days which was great, because John was such a great tour guide, and he arranged his work schedule so he could host many tours for us. Alan and I will never be able to thank Laura and John enough for such a wonderful time.

Anyway, I guess the warmth of the porch got me meandering back to last summer in my mind. I don't think I've written much about that trip because, really, it was a disaster. Alan got sick after three days on the road, spent 6 days total in various hospitals in the southwest, and then was immobile for the last three weeks of our trip. I had to cancel several of our housing spaces and the times we had planned to spend in Nevada and Utah and Idaho. But, God blessed us and enabled us to see much of his magnificent creation in both the southwest and up in the Yellowstone area.

The Grand Canyon is GRAND, but Brice Canyon is more beautiful and magnificent. I enjoyed that canyon much more than the Grand Canyon. We were able to see the painted desert -- painted in muted tones of lavender, tan, and gray. I suppose if we had viewed it at sunset the colors would have been more vivid. But Alan needed to get to bed.

I enjoyed Gallup, New Mexico -- Alan was in the hospital and then in bed for our three days there -- and want to go back because it's not fun nor is there much incentive to drive around the area alone. I liked the town of Gallup as well. The people were wonderful and treated us so well and were so helpful with Alan.

Sedona was a lost trip for us. We had two days there before Alan was back in the hospital, and so we saw very little of what was in the area because one of those two days we were traveling to Grand Canyon where Alan collapsed and needed to be taken by ambulance to Flagstaff for treatment which lasted the rest of the week. So what I saw the along the drive from Sedona to Flagstaff, about a 2-hour drive each way, along a winding two-lane road was mostly rocks.

After Sedona we hightailed it up to Cody -- two days drive -- and then spent the rest of our trip there. Coming home, I hotfooted it (I mean I sped a lot) because Alan was in so much misery, so our planned stops along the homeward bound route were abandoned as well.

I guess we saw what God wanted us to see. And we saw more than my parents ever saw. I know daddy would have loved to see the Canyons up close and person, and Old Faithful as well. We were able to see these places and a few others along the route, and I am glad we took the trip.

We hope to go back west -- not as long a trip as before -- next summer. Alan and I both want to go back to New Mexico and Southern Colorado. So we hope to take a two-week trip back in 2009.