Back from the long trip

After 25 days of being gone I arrived back home yesterday afternoon. In total the trip to New Mexico and Arizona required 6,155 miles of driving. Considering that the earth is 24,901 miles in circumference, we drove almost exactly 25% of the way around the planet if we had driving in a straight line. It was a lot of driving, but well worth it. We skirted almost all of the winter storms (there were a lot as you well know!) and only had snow-covered roads for around 150 miles when we left New Mexico and for the 100 miles between Marquette and Grand Marais.

I would first like to thank those that housed or fed us along the way including my son and daughter-in-law (Jonathan and Jessica), and friends Steve, Kathy, Marsha, David, Ardis, Ed, Helen, and Jim.

I would also like to thank Wendy for the delightful trip driving back and forth across the country. This is the first time that anyone went with my on the whole trip. It certainly made it more enjoyable and safer. I did the majority of the driving, although on the long days Wendy certainly took her shifts. She did a great job navigating during the times that I was driving.

For those of you who are wondering -- the Grand Canyon hike and Tucson Show both went better than I could have ever hoped. I'll post more information about these two legs of the journey in the days to come.

Wendy and I left Grand Marais on January 16th. We drove to Mount Pleasant and spent a night with friends, Steve and Kathy. On January 17th, we drove to Ann Arbor and spent the day with Jonathan and Jessica. As many of you know, one of my favorite things to do is to take pictures of flowers and plants. When my kids were little, I used to take them to the UofM Botanical Gardens. Jessica grew up in the area and also went there as a child. Neither had been to the gardens in nearly 20 years and Wendy had never been there. Each for our own reasons enjoyed the visit very much.

Today I'll include the pictures from the gardens. The first picture, though, is of the four of us at the Gandy Dancer restaurant in Ann Arbor -- where we went for lunch.