We are now home

I made some notes of things I saw coming across the nation.    I cannot find them.  I also was very tired after the two days of travel in which we did 1301 miles in two days. 

We left Lincoln around 8.30am on Monday 1^st October with the boys going off to have their teeth cleaned and Ethan to have a wart taken off his hand.  Lyla was to go to the pre school but she was unwilling to even smile for us or give us a kiss goodbye.  Jacob has invited us to attend his hooding so in December we will fly to Nebraska for the event of a lifetime.

We traveled to Trinidad Colorado and the next morning we left Trinidad to go to Prescott, Arizona.  That was well over 600 miles for the day.  Just outside Trinidad there was a lit sign above the highway telling us that there was a crash just outside Gallup, New Mexico and that we would have to take a detour.  That was at exit 36 and we were only at exit 86 so we had a way to go.  When we got to exit 36 there was no stoppage of traffic in all lanes but rather they had dragged the tractor trailer over into the median and were unloading it by hand into a new tractor trailer.  It took them 2 hours to clear the road and we did not have to stop at all.

It was interesting to note the difference in the terrain.  From Maine to Colorado we have had wonderful trees changing colors and the fall seems to be progressing well until we left Colorado and then all we saw were scrubby little desert plants and loads of vast grazing lands.  In one paddock we saw Llamas.  The hills just rolled away from us into the distance and it appeared that the Flat Earth society had a point……..the earth is flat and the road stretched out ahead of us and seemed to just drop off the edge of the world in the distance.

We arrived in Prescott around 7.30pm and we stopped at the grocery store to get some milk and bread and cereal for the morning.  We needed to eat so we looked at Subway (our subsistence food as we traveled) and settled on Taco Bell instead.  We drove home and our neighbor’s dog barked and barked and we went over to see them.  They are glad to have us home.  We looked in the fridge and found bread and milk and OJ.  We made phone calls to friends to tell them we were home and our home was amazing.  Our neighbor said that people had been in the home to do stuff – she did not know what.  But we do not have any spider webs in the house – a real blessing to be sure.  We are grateful to the folks who looked after our home while we were gone.  We found out that our friend Bobbie had been to the house and was responsible for the bread etc. and Andrea had put a pizza in the fridge and also the violet crumble bars from Australia that her friend brought over earlier this year during her visit.

We unpacked the car – no easy feat- but did not do laundry because there was no detergent etc. and so we went to bed exhausted with a pile of mail waiting for us to open and a lot of it to toss away.  It is amazing how much junk mail gets through these days. 

This morning (Wednesday) we got up early and started in on getting things sorted out.  I went off to Frys grocery store – today is Senior day and I wanted to get there early so that I would not have to deal with the congestion of people in the mart-carts etc. and the old people who run into you with their shopping carts.  Oh I am old enough to qualify for the senior discount but I do not like being run down by the carts.  I took my time and adhered to the shopping list and came away with a $400 grocery bill that allowed me 40cents off the gallon of gasoline at the pump so that was pretty good.   I really do think that the prices at the store have taken a sharp increase over this past year.  The basics are not cheap and there were no frills purchased either.

It is now nearly 9pm and I still do not have the stuff all put away due to other activities impinging on my time.  This evening we were  given our formal release as missionaries and so now we are just regular people.  The mantle of missionary is one that I really like experiencing so perhaps I will go on another mission some time later.  Who knows where or when or if – but it is a really different experience to be a missionary at this age.

We are having trouble with the hot spot and I may not get to write a blog for a day or so until we get it resolved.