Ila's Final Blog

So many of you have asked me what was "the highlight" of the trip and I just struggle to answer that question. It was SO vast, SO beautiful, and just so many different areas. It is impossible for me to just pick one thing that was most beautiful or interesting because it all was. I absolutely love the mountains so for one final picture post, I am using this shot of the St Elias mountains. As you can tell, they were as beautiful as all the other scenes we saw like this but I don't think we posted this particular one.

Some of you have asked about the price we paid for gas. I asked Phyllis because she was the one "in charge" of that area. She said Canada took tops for high with it calculating out to between $5.50 and $6.00 per gallon. She said Alaska was between $4.00 and $4.50 per gallon. We had no difficulty getting gas. I believe I remember a time or two that a pump or two was "sacked" but there was usually another one available.

And I know I commented I was glad to get home and I was. I am glad to be home. But that is true of me no matter where I go or for how long I am gone. The final section of the last chapter of Bob Benson's book "He Speaks Softly" is entitled "A Faithful Father Waits." In it he writes about going to watch marching band competitions when his son was playing in the band and how the band spends hours and hours in preparation for these events. In this scenario, everything is judged on precision and that final "pulling out all the stops" to "give the judges everything they have." He asked his son if he could describe what it felt like marching toward the stands filled with cheering parents and friends and his son just grinned. He told him that some day he would probably experience that same "rush" feeling when he had a son that was competing. But then he concludes with some thoughts about the heavenly Father. As a closing thought, he writes:

"It was Jesus himself who reminded us that we were to call him Father -- 'Abba Father' -- which is a lot more like calling him Dad. I think Jesus was telling us that our Father is the one in the stands who is standing on the seat, waving his coat in a circle over his head with tears of pride and happiness running down his face." I don't personally believe He is standing up in heaven waiting and watching for us to trip over our shoe laces or looking for a smudge on our face and whatever else people might dream of to conjure up "fear" of God. He loves us. He gave His Son for our sin. He wants us to succeed.

That is the final scene I want to leave in your minds. Yes this land (USA) is beautiful and we are such a blest people. But I want what I do here on earth to be part of what God recalls when He sees me approaching heaven. Do I do everything perfect? NO! God asks us to do our best and I truly try but I'm sure sometimes I fail even at that. But God knows my heart! I must strive to keep it "right" with Him. I love Him supremely and I know He loves me. PTL!

Many of you have commented on how much you enjoyed our blog. Well, we enjoyed creating it. There were times when we were quite tired and that was mentioned and probably came through in the writing. But, it was fun to write and we had so much to tell about what we saw. We even had some humor to throw in some times. Who knows, maybe you will even go back and look at it again and enjoy it once more. We surely do hope so!

Sunday 13th

Hi, it's Phyllis,
Guess I better weigh in on the last blog. It was a fantastic trip, and if I was 20 years younger, I would seriously consider Alaska as a place to live. But, like Ila, my recliner sure is great. Now, I'm not into cooking, so I haven't got that started yet. It was so good to be home, that I didn't leave, except to get groceries, go to the post office and to church today. Exciting things happened here while I was gone. For those who don't know, I live right next to the Des Moines River and the levee is in my back yard. Right now that levee is stacked high with sandbags. My daughter and son-in-law with the help of relatives, moved most of my things to higher ground, (Brenda and Bill's garage and house), and then on the 4th of July weekend, moved everything back. I knew it was happening, but there was nothing I could do from Alaska. Thanks to everyone who was reading our blog and praying for us. I don't suppose we will ever know how many people followed us day by day and shared in our adventure. We drove about 11,000 miles and OH the sights we saw. I can hardly wait to get my pictures printed. Thanks to all of you who accompanied us on the adventure of a lifetime.

This is Linda and I finally decided I shouldn't wait until I have time to do this or I'll never get it done! The amount of things I had to do since I returned home on Wednesday is astronomical. Yesterday I went to Tipton to pick up my mail and attend a grandchild event and Monday I am going to Lee's Summit to see my new grandson and his big brother.

I actually cooked today and it was really good! We had a lot of very good food on our trip as well as some that wasn't so good, but my own cooking definitely tastes good!

I can't really say that I have a favorite part of our trip. The most I can say is that I really enjoyed seeing a lot of scenery I had never seen before as well as a lot of animals in the wild I hadn't seen before. Some I had seen in zoos, but that is just not the same as seeing them beside the road or in the open water.

I have been asked is I'd do it again, and yes, I would go again. I would recommend to anyone to go and drive all the way like we did. It was very special. Of course if you don't want your vehicle to get dirty inside and out, then don't drive. Alaska does have carwashes! We saw a lot of things that you wouldn't necessarily see on a tour and we didn't spend valuable time at the tourist traps. We visited with a lot of very intersting people, both Alaskans and visitors from other states and countries.

Sometimes we have been tired when it was time to write in this blog, but I am glad we did it and I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed doing it and reading it ourselves. Happy traveling!

Linda

Thursday, July 10, 2008

This is Ila and I'm writing to just let those of you who have gotten into the habit of checking on us daily know that we arrived home safely late Wednesday afternoon. It took a bit of time to get unloaded and we were all tired so didn't do update last night. If you are interested, you might check back here to see if we have been inspired to write a final few words about our trip. I'm not going to attempt to do that this morning. I want my cup of coffee and my recliner! If you can't relate, try taking a six-week trip and spending all those nights in a motel. Just see how good that recliner feels. HA!

July 8, 2008

Tues, July 8, 2008 – Day 42

This is Linda. We began our day today by driving from our motel into the Rockies. As we passed Herbert, Marceline, and Kay’s street, we waved at them. In the Rockies we visited the villages of Ferncliff and Allenspark and also the Wild Basin Area Copeland Lake. There we managed to see a mule-eared deer even though we were quite busy attempting to miss the millions of potholes. A few of them we did miss, but I tried to get them on the return trip. I think I got all of them. We took pictures at the St. Malo Retreat Center and went on through Estes Park and into Thompson Canyon. While there, there was an accident and we had to wait about 45 minutes while fire trucks, a trooper, and an ambulance went past us. We also saw the helicopter come to pick someone up. When we went past the accident scene, we realized it was probably quite serious. A small car had hit a tree and burned. Once again God was with us. If we hadn’t made a wrong turn earlier in Estes Park, we could possibly have been at the scene and possible even have been involved in the accident.

From there, we headed for home from Loveland past Fort Collins and to Cheyenne and onto Interstate 80. Shortly after we got gas east of Cheyenne we ran into quite a bit of heavy rain and had to slow down and finally even pull off at an exit for a while. It was finally done so that we could go on. In Nebraska we saw some deer or possibly antelope off in the distance.

We are in North Platt, Nebraska tonight and are even in the Central Daylight Time Zone again after being out of it since very early in our trip. Tomorrow will be a long day since we plan to drive home and it is a few more miles than we have driven in any other day on this trip.

Today was Ila’s birthday and though we had planned to have ice cream, that never happened, so tomorrow it will be a priority. Have a nice day! We plan to do a brief recap after we get home, so check on our site again.

Mon July 7 2008

Monday, July 7, 2008
Hi, it’s Phyllis again.
This morning after a continental breakfast in the motel, we got on the road again. This time we are headed toward Cheyenne. This is very interesting country. One minute things are fairly green, even with out irrigation, and just over the next hill, or around the next corner, it’s barren, brown and full of rocks. It is hard for me to imagine how anyone makes a living here on a ranch or farm. There are a lot of wind farms (turbines) and since there always seems to be wind, they are on the move. We see cattle scattered around the hills and sometimes pretty large herds. Not much wildlife, but a few deer, and lots of ground squirrels, many who did not make it across the highway. We gassed up in Laramie, where the gas was $3.89. That was the cheapest we found it since leaving home. We arrived in Cheyenne around 4:30 and stopped at the Lyle and Lorene Johnson home for a brief visit. Lorene was going to be doing crafts for their Vacation Bible School this evening, so we didn’t stay long, but really enjoyed our time with her. Lyle was on the road so we didn’t see him. Our motel tonight is in Longmont, Colorado. After finding a motel and a brief meal at Burger King, we went to visit Ila’s cousins. What a delightful family. Herbert and Marcelline Tennis and her sister Kay, made us feel just like family. Of course Ila was, but before the evening was over, we felt like we had know them all our lives. We did discover that since they were originally from the Cedar, Beacon, Eddyville area that we not only had several experiences in common, but also knew lots of the same people. It was a fun evening and we probably stayed too long, but if we tired them out you would never know it. If we had visited in the daytime, we could have seen Herb’s garden, and fish pond, and many flowers that he told us about.
Ila has reminded me that we never told you the story of “sleeping at the foot of the bed”.
It was in Langley, B.C. The bed was right against the wall, next to the window where the A.C. was located. Now since the cold air was blowing right on me, I decided that the only way to sleep at all was to change ends of the bed. Ila woke up, saw me down there and decided she would also change. When Linda woke the next morning , she thought we had lost our minds.
Well enough trivia for this time. Tomorrow we are headed East again and should be home by sometime Wednesday. Keep reading, the adventure is not finished yet.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Sunday, July 6, 2008

This is Ila writing tonight. Our breakfast this morning was compliments of the motel where we stayed last night so we had a warm meal to begin the day. There were at least 8 Nazarene churches in Nampa and we chose to attend church this morning at College Church in Nampa ID. This is the church where Kevin & Beth Borger had ministered at some time before they came to Oskaloosa.

In our trek on I 84 across Idaho, we saw various types of irrigation units with some crops of corn and lots of what appeared to be hay fields. We also saw herds of cattle – some dairy and some feed lots. There was one HUGE Holstein dairy herd just west of Twin Falls, ID. At Twin Falls, we did stop at the Snake River canyon. At the bottom, there was a golf course that I’m sure would have challenged all you golfers who are reading! We also came by a HUGE hay field and there were seven large balers working and the rows of hay they were baling were really big. We also saw what we think may have been potato fields.

Animal sightings today in addition to cattle and horses were some antelope. We kind of think that maybe some of the cattle had mountain goat blood because there were some who we way up on mountainsides and did not look all that safe. Not sure what in the world they were eating that would have been better than the wonderful green grass down low.

As we came through Ogden UT, I remembered being there in 1986 when Aaron McKee graduated from high school in Logan UT. We didn’t take time to investigate any of the area there. Heading farther on east on I84, we encountered quite a bit of highway construction and crossed over some of the rumble strips, which caused a bit of start for the one in the driver’s seat! HEE! Coming through Ogden, we also saw a Cracker Barrel sign so we know we must be getting closer to home! HA! We saw several “ranch” signs but the ranches were out of sight from the highway.

We are tonight in Evanston WY. I also have a 1986 memory of this place because on our way to Aaron’s graduation, we stopped to see our good friend, Sandy Pacha, who was living here at that time. We have this evening, called and touched base with friends in Cheyenne WY. We are hoping to perhaps catch an opportunity to stop by and say a brief “hello” to them on our way through their area but they are busy people. We will know by some time tomorrow afternoon. It looks like we should be back in Osky/Eddyville/Beacon either Wednesday or Thursday. We are getting pretty close to 10,000 miles on the van and also on three travel-weary bodies since we left.