It's a Wrap, 2015.

We're Home!

That's a bit of a misnomer, since we live in the motorhome full-time, but we're parked at "home", and enjoying seeing friends and family. The last 156 miles was logged on Thursday last, as we wrapped up our 2015 travels. And what a year it has been!

We traveled 9,112 miles, used 1023 gallons of fuel (for an average mpg of 8.9), spent 198 hours driving at an average speed of 45 miles per hour. Whew! But what a trip! From the West Coast to the East Coast, and from northern Maine to El Paso, Texas, we have seen a whole bunch of this wonderful country. We're asked what we liked the best, but have found that the question is impossible to answer because each area has it's own unique beauty. The cornfields of Iowa and Illinois stretch for miles on an early June morning and you can almost hear the bright green stalks reaching for the sun. The hustle and bustle of our nation's Capitol is at first intimidating, and then oddly comforting when we realized that this beautiful site is a symbol to the entire world that America still stands strong. Philadelphia, New York, and Boston are the center of the East Coast, with 400 year old buildings right beside tall office complexes. We expected the people in New York City to be a little rude (that's the way it seems in the movies!), but for the most part we found a lot of people going in a lot of different directions in a hurry, but always willing to stop a moment to help a visitor. In Maine, the crashing Atlantic waves seem to throw Lobsters into the pot, until you see the scarred lobster boats and the lined faces of the crews that risk their lives to harvest the seas' bounty. Vermont, although one of the smallest states, is also one of the most beautiful. Great granite quarries carve slabs of stone from seemingly endless mountain ranges.

Who can imagine the roar and the grandeur of Niagara Falls? The sheer majesty of the two adjacent falls is impossible to comprehend. And in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona? The smell of sagebrush, oil, and Bar-B-Que is everywhere! Dusty? Yes. Windy? Yes. Flat? Yes. But there are very few places to go that you can see the curvature of the earth, and that makes you feel very insignificant.

We had a few mechanical hiccups with Nessie, but nothing that a bit of creative thinking couldn't remedy. Our health remains good, as evidenced by the weight gain from all the good food! Little Sasha, the Boston Terrier, has learned to adapt to the lifestyle very well. She spends her first few walks in a new area sniffing and "prospecting", then she's comfortable. On travel days, she gets into her bed on the floor between us and goes to sleep. Only when we stop does she roust herself up; most of the time she's quiet no matter the noise, rattles, or clanking going on around her. She's a great traveler!

What we found in five months of traveling was that we need another five lifetimes to see our country. We've seen some of the highlights, but need to return.

Maybe next year!

That's a wrap for 2015 traveling. Thanks for going along with us. We'll be back on the road in early 2016, if the Good Lord is willing and El Nino doesn't wash us away!