It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: Around and Around We Went--The Trip before the Trip

The idea when we started was to blog about the trip as we went. That idea was one of the first things in the "went" pile, as we spent of all of our days enjoying the days. There was very little left over at the end of each day to even jot down a few notes about what went on that day and having the discipline to make myself do anything had also ended up in the "went" pile. Mostly, we were driving and looking out the window or riding and looking out the window. About the only administrative things that were done during the trip was the expense book and highlighting on the map where we'd been.

The general plan--and that's all there was, really, was a general plan--was to go east along the northern U.S. border in September, south along the east coast somewhere to Key West in October, November across the south U.S. to end up in Sacramento before Christmas. And, that's pretty much how the trip went. Every day was a new day and decisions about where to go along that general plan's path were made as the day unfolded. We went to places that were suggested by those we visited with along the way, made detours based on weather and the effects of weather, backtracked when we felt like it, and just generally wandered our way around this big country of ours. We missed a lot of neat places and missed more than a few connections with friends and family, yet we experienced as much as we could jam into our senses at the time.

It could end up being a book instead of a series of posts if I do the whole trip on one post, so I'll break it up into the different legs of the trip. This post will be about the section of our trip from Arizona to the Seattle area.

While we traveled from Prescott up through Sacramento to Seattle beginning in April, we didn't keep track of those miles or the costs involved. Some bright spots were getting to spend a few weeks with my Mom and siblings, a couple of weeks looking after the new grandson, and getting to spend some good one-on-one time with the older grandkids. Along the way, we tried to be tourists in our own neighborhood. Here are some pics: