Well, that's the end of my trip...

I got back last week, after a whirlwind visit to Montana to see my friend Laurie Ray, the bounty hunter/repo woman who saved my daughter's life in 2008.  We were lucky enough to be there to celebrate her grandma's 96th birthday with a group of Montana folks.

She's sort of like, "Back off, young man!"

We spent the final drive back from Kalispell to Seattle (On Matt's Birthday, which was the day after Grandma's) trying to wrap our heads around this 13,000 mile epic journey, trying to list the best, the worst (there really was nothing bad), the funniest, the most intense, the most intriguing...Here is the final summary list we came up with:

People we’ve seen and met:  Jack, Rowan, Coby; Stan and Liz Burroway; Thornton (aka Wattie) and Shirley Garrett; The Utah Shakespeare Players; Angie Leedy; the smiling Mormon teachers at the LDS seminary and the American Heritage School, especially Ruel, my evil twin Constitution teacher; Mike and Katie; Leslie, our Navajo guide; Kasey and Tonya; the fake “Marshall” of Dodge City; Tom Morris; Barry Marks; Leroy Thomas and Zydeco Trouble; Maynard Walton; Rachel Meyer; Julie Bradlow; Kris and Don Meyer; Laurie Ray and Grandma Jane!

Spirits we’ve encountered:  Francisco Coronado, the prisoners of Tule Lake;  Captain Jack, Rosie in Gold Hill, Mark Twain, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Elvis Presley, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman; George Strait; Paul Raymond; John Brown; Angel Delgadillo; the Acoma People buried in the walls of the first Catholic Church; the Apaches in the Death Cave in Twin Arrows, Arizona; Billy the Kid; the rowdy ghosts of Canyon Diablo; BB King; Emmett Till; Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr; the Four Little Girls in Birmingman; Charles Pinckney; Button Gwinnett; Buck Owens; John Wayne and Owen Wister; the Donner Party; the Acadians; William Johnson, the Barber of Natchez; the Ute, Cherokee, Lakota, Acoma, Anasazi, Navajo, Cheyenne, Natchez and many other tribes

Writers we’ve enjoyed:  Robert Louis Stevenson; Annie Proulx; Flannery O’Connor; Michael Connely; St. Paul; Francine Rivers; Allen Ginsberg; John Steinbeck

Presidents whose libraries we’ve seen:  Dwight Eisenhower; William Jefferson Clinton; Jimmy Carter

Great events and we’ve experienced:  Wedding at the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel; Vegas! The Show; The Taming of the Shrew; The Mormon Tabernacle Choir; Zydeco Breakfast in Breaux Bridge, LA; Good Friday in New Iberia; Easter Sunday at St. Augustine; New Orleans Gay Easter Parade; Blues and Funk on Beale Street in Memphis; Loretta Lynn and others at the original Ryman auditorium; Vince Gill at the Grand Ole Opry; Cajun dancing at Prejean’s in Lafayette and Mulate’s in New Orleans; sunrise hot air balloon ride over Albuquerque; Grandma Jane’s 96^th birthday party in Kalispell, MT.

Hot springs and spas:  lalicious pedicure at the Spa Toscana at the Peppermill in Reno; private baths and body scrubs at the Quawpaw Baths in Hot Springs, AR; hot, cold and medium plunges at the Boulder Hot Springs in Montana.

Museums and Monuments, National Parks and Historic Sites: Crater Lake; Captain Jack’s Stronghold; Tule Lake Segregation Center; Reno Art Museum; Mark Twain Museum in Virginia City; Temple Square in Salt Lake City; Arches National Park; Monument Valley and the Navajo reservation; Zion National Park; The Grand Canyon; The Cadillac Ranch; Historic Dodge City; Hovenweep National Monument; Acoma Sky City Pueblo; Charles Pinckney Historic Site; Coronado Quivira Museum; Birmingham Civil Rights Memorial; Lorraine Motel; Edmund Pettus Bridge; Kelly Ingram Park; Money, MS country store; Pirate House and Slave Market Museum  in Charleston; Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum; Joseph Smith Historic Site; the African American Museum in Natchez; The Billy Graham Boyhood Home and Museum; Oral Roberts University with its Prayer Tower; the Christ of the Ozarks; Thorncrown Chapel; Paul Raymond Boyhood Home and Manhattan, KS Town Library; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Wichita Art Museum; Pea Ridge Battlefield; Vicksburg National Monument; The Woody Guthrie museum; the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum; the Alta Lakota Museum; the old Colonial Cemetery in Savannah; Pea Ridge and Vicksburg battlefields

Roads:  Historic Route 66; the Mormon Trail; the California Trail; the Great River Road; the Loneliest Road; the Redneck Riviera Road; the Salt Marshes of South Carolina; the Natchez Trace Parkway; the Blue Ridge Parkway; the Las Vegas Strip; Arkansas Highway 7

Cities: Reno; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City; Albuquerque; Amarillo; Wichita;  Topeka; Little Rock; New Orleans; Birmingham; Atlanta; Memphis; Savannah; Charleston; Charlotte; Nashville

Worst mishap:  Matt’s toe during the Arches National Park Hike

Lost items: neck pillow, wireless mouse, Sonicare toothbrush, laptop power cord, Matt's seven year coin (I got him a new one), some unmentionable items also

Best views:  Monument Valley, Mount Shasta, Crater Lake in the snow, Delicate Arch, The Grand Canyon, the mighty Mississippi, the Flathead Valley in Montana, the Nicholas Sparks Carolina coastline

Most relaxation: reading on the porch swing at Zion Mountain Bison Ranch, lying on Folly Beach, playing craps in Las Vegas

Best food: Navajo tacos with fry bread; Las Vegas Buffets; crawfish boil and gumbo; fried catfish and hush puppies; giant steaks in Elko Nevada, Amarillo, TX; ribeye at the Hive restaurant in Bentonville; Bison ribeye at the Virginian restaurant in Buffalo WY;  Bite Me Barbecue in Wichita Kansas and the Whole Hog BBQ in Little Rock AR. Tuna nachos with watermelon pico de gallo at Folly Beach.

Biggest (and pretty much only) fight:  over the newfangled coffee maker at the Museum Hotel in Bentonville

Matt’s most creeped out moment: near the Apache “Death Cave” in Twin Arrows Ghost Town; top of the Acoma pueblo with dead bodies in the church walls

Adina’s most creeped out moment: when the woman at the B and B said they used the fire hoses to cool down the marchers in Birmingham.  Runner up:  12^th grade civics class at American Heritage School

Total miles driven: 12,800

Best hotels: View Hotel , Monument Valley; Occidental Hotel, Buffalo, Wyoming; Hamilton-Turner Inn, Savannah

Thanks to everyone who read my blog.  Thank you to the sabbatical committee at Northwest for giving me this amazing gift.  Thank you to my parents, who provided additional funding for lodging.  Thank you to Matt Beall, my partner in travel, in recovery, and in life.  

What Next?  It's time to move into my new house, about which there will NOT be a blog, because it would be a lot less interesting.