Rocky Mountain High, Colorado

Daily Mileage= 193; Trip Mileage= 2017 ;WE BROKE 2K!
Today we had a wonderful time in Colorado Springs, CO. We began our trip by walking around the grounds of the Broadmoor Resort. It is one of those old fashion hotels that people came to relax and be pampered. It's where we should have been staying, but aren't.

This is the hotel. Pretty nice, wouldn't you say?

We then traveled to a delightful public park named Garden of the Gods and it is appropriately named. It is a natural, national landmark that has trails and roads through some of the best red rock edifices we've ever seen. You could spend many hours there wondering around and exploring the beauty of these ancient monoliths. We drove around and then finally took a hike (an easy one since we still can't breathe too well in this altitude) on the Siamese Trail. As you can see we "fit" right in.

Rich even tried a Herculean effort to push this rock into a straight position, he didn't win but you have to remember that

these "rocks" are at least 200 feet high and 350 million years old. (Even older than Rich!) Needless to say we were again quite impressed by the area.

Next we traveled to the Air Force Academy. It, too, is quite impressive. The cathedral has been named one of the most unique cathedrals in the world. It has a series of spires that look like delta (airplane) wings reaching towards the sky. It along with the rest of the academy is literally right next to the mountains. It is really spectacular!

It's no wonder that a visiting poet, Katherine Lee Bates, when touring the area wrote a poem called "America the Beautiful" which later was put to music. We'd have to agree with her, Colorado and it's "purple mountains majesty" are spectacular. No wonder people want to live here.

And speaking of people who live here....we ended our evening by visiting our friends, the Buglewicz's. (They are Rick and Corrine's children&grandchildren.) We had a comfy meal at home which was a treat after a week of restaurants. We always enjoy their company and tonight was no different. They have a adorable home in Golden which is in the Denver area and looks out at the mountains. Why wouldn't you want to live here? Unless of course you had the ocean and the beach bar? But it's a close second.

We had a great day and did a lot. Hope you had a good one too! Love, Mare & Rich

Sorry for the delay in posting but I forgot my camera at the Buglewicz's and didn't get it until Tuesday morning. I knew you all wanted to see the pictures!!!

A Way Out Here They Call The Wind Miriah

Daily Mileage = 625; Trip = 1,825

Today we decided to skip Kansas and head a different way to Colorado rather than end up in a Twister movie!

We drove from OKLA City through the panhandle of Texas into the northwest corner of New Mexico and ended in Pueblo, Colorado. What a ride!! The good news was the weather was really great until the end. Most of the trip looks like these photos. Just lots of grazing land and cattle.

Driving through Texas we didn't see the largest frying pan (apparently there is one there) but we did see the largest cross in the Western hemisphere. It's located around Amarillo.

Finally, we did stop in New Mexico to look at an ancient volcano site which now has plains growing on what was once the lava field. The top of the volcano is about 7,000 feet and we were feeling the altitude. Well, we will be getting used to the higher altitude from here on out since we are in the Rockies now!

It is really a beautiful country. They call New Mexico the land of enchantment and it really is. Colorado says welcome to the beautiful state of Colorado and it is beautiful! It's amazing how the topography changes from one place to another. We never cease to be amazed by the gorgeous scenery we see. Photos don't do it justice but at least attempts to show how magnificent the USA truly is.

Good night. Love, Mare & Rich

O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, Oklahoma, You're OK

Daily Mileage=330 Trip Total=1200

Today we drove through some beautiful, massive pastureland in Arkansas before crossing the border into Oklahoma. It was wonderful and has changed our perspective on AK. We would definitely go there again!

We arrived in Oklahoma City with enough time to visit the Oklahoma City National Monument. It is the site of the Federal Building that was bombed in 1995. They have done a magnificent job of creating a peaceful memorial to those who lost their lives as well as the survivors of the attack. There is also a museum that guides you through a "time line" of April 19, 1995. A day that started like any other for so many and changed their lives forever. We both left moved and teary eyed. Again, this exhibit was done so much better than we expected.

As you can see in the photos they have done a beautiful job of creating a Reflecting Pool and Field of Empty Chairs in the footprint of the building. The chairs represent the 168 people who were killed that day. They are in nine rows representing the nine floors of the building and are placed in the section of the building where the people worked.
The smaller chairs represent the 19 children who died at the day care centers that were on the site. Such a simple, yet complex design. It reminded me of the rows of simple white grave stones at Normandy.

We then had some time left to drive around the rest of OKLA City and found it modern, hip and a place that looks like a lot of fun. We expected old buildings and stockyards but that was not the case. We would love to have more time here, but we're moving onto Kansas in the morning, unless we blow away in a tornado tonight. We are watching the local news as I write this and there has already been 50 tornadoes today. These guys are unbelievable. They have reporters and tornado trackers calling in non-stop, tracking the tornadoes block by block! Talk about live coverage!!

Anyway, after our visit to the monument and listening to the tornado news (as well as the one that devastated Kansas yesterday), we are once again reminded how lucky we are and how tentative life is.
So, good night and we love you all,
Mare & Rich

Arkansas, Arkansas!

Daily mileage = 214

Total trip = 870

Well, we left Memphis and headed across the river to Little Rock, AK. It's pretty flat and mostly farm land until you hit Little Rock. Then it begins to get hilly. There we stopped to see the Bill Clinton Presidential Library (sorry all of you devout Republicans).

It's new and in the downtown area. It has re-vitalized the area and was designed to look like a bridge (and is next to one on the Arkansas River). The bridge was his theme during his presidency on helping the country "bridge to the future." It was much better than we thought and we know that Tom D. is dying that we would even stop here!!

We then left and continued to Hot Springs, AK. Many of you are probably wondering why? I guess Mare was the one who thought it might be interesting to see the area. It is now a National Park (the smallest) and in addition to beautiful rolling hills, hiking trails etc., there is a small historic "main street" that has these wonderful old bathhouses.

In the late 1800's up until the 1970's, people would come to Hot Springs to get "baths" from the naturally hot, mineral springs in the area. The water bubbles up through vents and these huge mansion type buildings were built in front of them. They called it "Bathhouse Row." They are now being restored and run by the National Park as a gone-by era. There is still one that operates today although once the medinical value was disproved, most people stopped coming. It was the birth of the spa treatment! (And get this, a 20 minute bath and 20 minute massage is only about $50.00; definitely not NY spa prices!)

The water is hot but people also drink it. In fact you have all probably had some mineral water that you paid a fortune for. We just filled up our water bottles on the street for free!

The last interesting thing I'll leave you with is that there's also a race track here, Oaklawn Park. Apparently, many Kentucky Derby contenders are trained and race here.

It must be in the water.

Maybe tomorrow's winner visited Hot Springs not too long ago!

Good night,

Love,

Mare & Rich

Walking in Memphis

Well today we definitely did some "walking" in Memphis. We saw the Peabody Ducks walk into the beautiful lobby fountain from the elevator. Yes, I kid you not. For those of you who do not know about the Peabody ducks, they have been doing the ceremonial descent down from their roof top penthouse to the lobby for over 50 years (of course they are different ducks because ducks don't live 50 years).

It's really quite a sight. At 11AM each morning the "duck master" dressed appropriately, goes and gets the ducks from the roof into the elevator where they descend upon a rather large crowd of humans waiting to see them. They walk down a red carpet and into the fountain in the lobby of the hotel. They stay there until 5PM when they are then gathered and taken back up in the elevator to their roof top "palace" until the next morning. It's really pretty neat. The hotel is old and wonderful but the ducks steal the show!!!

Then we went walking with "Elvis" at Graceland. What can I say? His home looks like something we all lived in during the 60's and 70's(complete with shag carpets, mirrored ceilings and formica counters). It was amazing. For it's time it was a mansion but now compared to what we have, especially on Hilton Head, it seems rather disappointing. What wasn't disappointing was the memorabilia that the house holds. It was amazing to see all his gold/platinum records and the outfits he wore and his cars. It was definitely worth seeing and gave us a totally different view of Elvis. He actually seemed like a pretty nice, decent human in addition to be being so talented.

Then we walked down a different path on the restored trolley they have running down here. We met this wonderful, kinda lost soul named Tony. He shared with us more history and stories about Memphis than any tour director would have. He was great. We learned more about Memphis in 30 minutes than we had the 2 days we've been here. We saw an old slave auction block, a deserted slave quarters (holding building before the auction), the hotel where Marvin Gaye was killed, the Gibson guitar factory and the where the largest BBQ festival will be held in a couple of weeks. Thanks to all the walking Tony did in his life, we made out. Hope he is taken care on his future paths.

Anyway, we decided, May is the month to come to Memphis and between the blues and BBQ festivals that take place here during the month we will definitely come back again. Anyone care to join us, Walking through Memphis, next year???

It was a wonderful day and as we had our $10.00 glass of wine watching the ducks go home for the night we agreed, life is good!

Love,

Mare and Rich

Are we there yet?

Today we left Brian & Andrea's a little later than we expected but that was ok because we made it to Memphis with plenty of time anyway. The trip was only about 6 hours but I'm still not feeling that great so this seemed like a long trip for me. We drove through Alabama and Mississippi into Tennessee. I also never realized how close Memphis is to the border of Mississippi and Arkansas (across the muddy Mississippi). It's kind of like the "3 angle" states. Fortunately, we made it here and have already eaten some great famous Memphis ribs at the Rendezvous. They were good, not too smokey and they had a great hot sauce. They don't even serve them with silverware, you just eat them of the bone! I figure I'll either get better or really be sick!

Tonight we're taking it easy so that we can put in a full day with Elvis and ducks. More about that tomorrow.....

As requested I am giving the mileage of this journey.

Our Chevy Prism had 117,472 on the odometer when we left HHI.
Day One to Atlanta was 287 miles.
Day Two to Memphis was 369.

Total to date: 656.

Yes, it is hard to believe that we are taking our 100K+ mileage car on this road trip. Rich says we had one Geo that had 150K and would still have been running if Scott hadn't totaled it!

Love,
Mare & Rich

PS Thanks to Tommy for putting our triptik map on this site. As you can see we're only in Part 1 of the trip, there are 3 altogether.

Picking Parkings Places

Hi,
Well, we decided we had to have one final lunch at our local favorite bar on HHI, Woody's. Met Tommy there and said good-bye to all (imagine their profits will go down while we're gone). When we were parking the car, I promised Rich I wouldn't tell him where to park for the remainder of the trip. Anyone want to bet on how long that will last?

Made it to Brian and Andrea's home in Atlanta. It's always comfy here and we're having a glass/es of wine to start the trip. Tomorrow we're onto Memphis, TN.

Take care,
Love,
Mare & Rich