This will be my last blog associated with our grand adventure of traveling across America from Richmond, VA to the Pacific Ocean and back, safely I might add.
Outside of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, this represents all the new states The Traveling Koala either camped in, or drove through during our odyssey across this wonderful land. There is presently a hole for Arkansas and I have no idea when I'll ever visit it. Kentucky will probably be added when we take out trip to Yellowstone. I suspect we'll be in Florida next winter.
We sojourned in Michigan for 3 days. This allowed us some down time, as well as an overdue visit with our daughter and son in law. We left Michigan on April 7th and drove the non interstates until we arrived at Gallipolis, OH. This city is on the opposite bank of the Ohio from West Virginia.
After a brief time on US 35 in WV, we got on I-64 which we mostly stayed on until we got to I-295 in Henrico, VA.
We certainly were glad to finally get home. Our road trip lasted for 44 days. Took us 24 days until I could put my feet in the Pacific Ocean.
We've now seen a pretty good portion of this great land. The variety of terrains we drove through were so different. We went from the near flat, but heavily wooded eastern Hanover (which even in the dead of winter, is relatively green, to the sandy beaches of the City of Angels, Los Angeles. In between, we drove through the Great Valley of Virginia (Shenandoah), the green mountains of
Virginia, Tennessee, extreme northwestern Georgia and northern Alabama. There were the rolling hills and then relatively flat lower Alabama and Mississippi, along with northern Louisiana. Northeastern Texas was rolling hills, trees and some open land. As we drove on a diagonal down to San Antonio, the land began to flatten out, and get dryer, and for the most part, browner. It stayed this way all the way to Los Angeles.
There were numerous mountains/ranges along the way, but most of the highways went around them. Also, most of the mountains seemed to be rocky, with little vegetation, and certainly no trees.
Where there weren't mountains, we found high plains, plus the Mojave Desert covered much of southern California.
And when not in the Mojave Desert, there was Death Valley which includes the lowest point in the western hemisphere.
There were the White Sands at Alamogordo, NM, which is not sand at all, but a "sea" of white gypsum,
and the vast and most impressive Carlsbad Caverns, which is in essence, a mountain that had been hollowed out by Mother Nature.
We even saw aliens in Roswell, NM. :)
We saw the beauty, and awe inspiring vastness of the Grand Canyon.
We got a glimpse of the old days and what the folks of our parents generation experienced when they were moving along the Mother Road, aka Route 66, a long straight two lane highway rolling across the vastness of California's Mojave Desert, when leaving the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 30's on the way to the promised land of Los Angeles, CA.
We pulled our travel trailer over 7,942 miles. We had a wonderful trip and experience, saw things we'd never seen before, visited family along the way, but were mighty happy to get back home.
Would we do another big trip? Yes. All the way to Los Angeles? No. The next big trip should include Yellowstone National Park, which could come as soon as next spring/summer.
I'd be remiss if I didn't show a picture of our other traveling companion. Duffy was a trooper.
And at times, we did slow down long enough to smell the flowers.
Until next time, so long.
PS: I would urge everyone to explore this great nation and it's natural beauty, before you are at the point you physically can't.
REVISED 7/21/14. Added a picture. Changed some grammer.
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