Looking forward to fall travel





A visitor to our campsite at Squaw Creek

Well summer is winding down and our fall travel is taking shape. It has been a great summer here in Iowa. We spent lots of quality time with friends, family and especially our granddaughter but it's time now to hitch up for adventures down the road. Hitch-itch always hits me in August and this year is no exception. We are packing up and preparing this week as well as saying goodbye to people here. We have a little bit of a roundabout route coming up. Sunday we will drive to Omaha to spend some time with good friends there, Al and Judi, as well as Dan and Dixie who are coming in from Loveland, Colorado. We always have a good time with this group and this will be a great start to our travels. Leaving Omaha we will go back into Iowa to stay near our son Gabe and his wife Melissa. We will be trying out a new camping spot south of them at Black Hawk Lake State Park. They really like this park so we are anxious to check it out. Then the real travel begins.
We are going to miss this cutie

 For several years we have talked about going to Yellowstone and the Tetons but something always came up and it never worked out, but this is the year. Along the way we are also going to stay in Spearfish SD and check out this part of the Black Hills. We will be there over Labor Day and I also want to drive to Devils Tower as this is also something we haven't seen yet. We have lots of new areas on tap for us this fall and we are really looking forward to it. 

 We have spent 5 of our 6 years of travel in the West and Southwest and yet there is so much to still discover. Rushing around in vacation mode is just not our style but sometimes it's necessary. I think the time at Yellowstone will be like that. I don't have any reservations passed that week and if the weather is good I would like to stay near Jackson, closer to Tetons National Park.  I have a couple potential parks there to call. The other factor, as always in the fall, are forest fires. Just today on the NPS site for the Tetons there is an alert and road closure due to fire. Once we are done in that area we will decide where to go next. I am trying to have fewer reservations to give us more options. I have Plan A, B and C for after that. All great places with new discoveries to be made.

 This year is the first one in a while that we have not worked some along the way and things are going pretty well. We would like to do more traveling in the summer. There are a lot of places in the North half of the country that we would like to see and people we would like to visit, especially in Minnesota and some out East and family in the Northwest. So next year we are going to do things a little differently. We will be back in Iowa in the early spring, in time for our granddaughter's birthday and then in June we will take off for the Northwest for a couple months. We have a wedding at the end of July in Seattle that we want to attend. Then the plan is to return to Iowa for another month or so and the next winter will be in Florida. Like all our plans these are all made in jello and can change to suit what's happening at the time. What's clear to us is we still have lots of places to discover. This is a large and extremely beautiful country and even if we travel 10 more years I know there will still be things we have missed. We feel blessed to have this life.

 Happy Trails..........................

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