Vaca 2021, Day 15, The Final Day

After the Hell's Revenge ATV tour last night, we all got out the clothes that we would be wearing for tomorrow and packed the van up, one final time.  I finished writing in my journal while finishing up the two beers that I had in the fridge.  It's late and we had to be up early!  

This is how our day started.  We were up EARLY so that we could be to the meeting place for our hot air balloon tour over Arches National Park at something like 5:15am.  The friggin' coffee places ain't even open yet!  This is standing in the parking lot of a gas station with a large parking area looking towards the East.  You can't see it in the picture, but the sunrise was shining thru one of the arches on that far mountain slope.  Pretty cool.

Wait, what???  We're on the road again?  What happened to the amazing balloon pictures?  Well, by golly, they were not to be.  They have a 'sighter' who goes out even earlier to the launch site and measures the wind and monitors other "things".  We were in the van on the way to the sight when that cat came over the cb radio (yeah, that's right!) and said "Too windy.  No launches this morning.".   So the van whipped an illegal U'turn (not much traffic at this hour) and took us back to our cars.  Honestly, none of us were upset about it as sure, it would have been cool to do, but we are all fried as this is day 15 of vacation and frankly, we all want to get back home.  Get back home and see some dogs!

So now, we're somewhat hellbent... wait, is that possible?  Is it possible to be 'somewhat hellbent'?  It seems that you would either be hellbent or not hellbent... doesn't seem like a lot of middle ground here.  I'm going to say that we're now hellbent on making it home today since we have an extra 4 hours to burn since we get no balloon ride.  That map is from our rental to our home, door to door, 1034 miles without accounting for gas and food stops.  I believe that my math at that time added up to 1055 miles by the time we got home.

I have no idea where a lot of these were taken.  Somewhere between Moab, UT and Pleasant Hill, IA.  How's that?  I think that Caleb was driving at this point as he hauled us out of the balloon parking lot onto Hwy 191 and once he got on I70, it was 80 mph for his first interstate driving.  He liked it WWWWAAAAYYYYYY too much!!!

The roads still look pretty well maintained so I'm guessing this is still in UT because when we crossed the state line into Colorado, the roads went to pot on us!  You'd think with all of that tourism money, they'd have some level of highway maintenence, but the roads themselves say otherwise.

This looks like Colorado now, but the roads still appear decent... hmmm?

The selfie queen and most excellent vaca planner on earth!

 And that's a wrap.  I didn't think there was much purpose in taking pictures after Colorado as we've all driven across Nebraska and, well...  I was driving again soon after this and would drive until about halfway thru Nebraska where Rob brought us the rest of the way home.  It was a long day of driving and we all had sore butts and low backs when we hit our driveway, but, WE'RE HOME!!!

Until next year...  Cya

The Old, Lazy Couple

Look at her cute little tongues sticking out!

 

Mid-April Nonsense...

 

Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit Metal Health

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

 

Caleb's Confirmation

My (our) world is spinning out of control currently. As such, my attention to this blog has taken a hit.  I have missed posting about Caleb's confirmation!

Caleb had a pretty unique group that he was being confirmed with.  There were 3 young people who were not raised in the (a) church and took it upon themselves to get this done!  Pretty cool.

They had their reading of their faith statements in front of the parents, and there were a couple of them who brought tears to my eyes.  Beautiful!

The young ladies of the group.

The young men of the group. The two dudes in the middle are two of them who committed themselves to this!

The Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit!

The full group!

 

Desoto Wildlife Refuge 2019 vs. 2022

My lovely bride had a bucket list itch that was going to be scratched 2 years ago. It was two years ago today that we were sent home from the office for two weeks due to the spread of the Covid 21 - 2, and we were planning to head over to The Nebraska (that's a tribute to the people who refer to Ukraine as The Ukraine...) to see the migration of the Sandhill Cranes. 

 Needless to say, it got shut down as well. 2021 wasn't much better but schedules aligned a bit this year as a weekend that worked with her extra busy schedule and I wasn't on call for my job.

So this past weekend was that trip!  She decided to go back to the Desoto National Wildlife Refuge and boy was I glad!  In my original post back in 2019,  I post many more pictures than I do here because once in the place,  I realized that this is the building with the museum of the The Bertram steamboat that sunk in this area in March 1865.  There's links to more history in the original post.  Never the less,  I hold this place in high regard for what it does to my over-stressed soul these days.  To sit in that area over the water in the first pic and watch the water and wildlife is SOOOO soothing, I could have sat there until they kicked us out at closing time!  So calming with none of the b.s. of "normal" life...
 

This is from June 2019.  We had camped at the Lewis & Clark Campground up the river from here by Onawa, IA.  The drive down I-29 was humbling as the water was nearly up to both sides of the interstate on both sides and there were LOTS of people experiencing some serious problems as a result.  Currently, there are people experiencing serious problems,  only for different reasons... 

This is from last Friday, March 11th 2022.  From one extreme to the other!

Rob's "wingspan" back in 2019.

Rob's "wingspan" in 2022.  Holy smokes!

How about Caleb's? This is 2019.

Caleb now!  Wowsers!!!

This is the view from that area in the first two pics.  They have microphones set up outside with the audio being pumped into this area.  Watching all of the birds outside while listening in was pure gold!

Rob in the eagles nest in 2019.

Rob in the eagles nest 2022.

Caleb's eagle nest old...

Caleb in the eagles nest new!  He eats a LOT!!!  Notice that the eagle masks are gone due to the 'rona.