Final Destination - Colorado Springs

August 3, 2010; Colorado Springs. We arrived in our new home town of Colorado Springs today, and settled into a campsite at The Garden of the Gods Campground. We had a very relaxing evening sharing dinner and hanging around our campfire at our campsite. We have traveled just under 5,000 miles and have visited or passed through 20 states since our voyage began on June 12th. Wesley says he could do this forever. I think the rest of us are ready to settle down for a while. Tomorrow we will go check out our new house to remember what it looks like and get an idea of where to put furniture, etc. The kids haven't seen the house yet. We will also do other errands like buy a washer and dryer, pay some bills, and research where to service and store our RV. Most likely we will unfortunately have to put "the Beast" up for sale, but since it will likely take a while to sell it, we plan to use it at least monthly and it will also be available for lease if anyone is interested. We will stay in our campsite tomorrow night again. On Thursday all of our furniture will be delivered. We'll spend one final night in the campground since the move is scheduled for two days and we don't know when beds and stuff will be set up. Then on Friday we'll move in and unpack the RV for the official end of one journey and beginning of another.

Rocky Mountain National Park

July 28 - Aug 2; The Rockies. The pass through Cheyenne, Wyoming was a bit disappointing so we didn't stop there but headed straight into Colorado. We were headed to Estes Park just outside of the Rocky Mountain National Park. We spent a few days there, using our camp site as our base camp. Wesley and I played a lot of horse shoes; we enjoyed some group campfires; and we enjoyed the beautiful mountain scenery around us. For two days, we visited the national park. On the first day we climbed to the highest point (by car), which is over 12,000 feet. We did a bit of climbing on foot. The kids' favorite climb was alongside a beautiful waterfall. On the second day, we went all the way to the other side to the small village of Grand Lake where we had lunch and homemade ice cream and did some fishing. On the trip back over, we saw many more animals than previously, primarily elk. We got out of our car for some great pictures of a large male elk crossing the road, and later pulled over alongside a small group of elk that were literally three feet from our car.

Putting in Some Miles

July 25-27; Heading West. As great as it was, from here on out there are no more people to visit, and no sights to see. We just want to find a place to set up camp for about four days. To do that we would need 2-3 good driving days, since we think we want to spend our four day camp in Colorado. That didn't start off too well since we didn't leave Gail and Ray's house until about 5:00 P.M. But we drove a few hours and camped out then had a long driving day yesterday before setting up camp at a very nice KOA on the western border of Iowa. Today we made great time driving across the plains of Nebraska and are spending the night at a campground in western Nebraska outside of Cabella's, a famous outdoor sports store. Tomorrow we will stop in Cheyenne Wyoming which is having their Frontier Days and maybe even go to a Rodeo. Then it's into Colorado, OUR 20TH STATE, tomorrow evening!!!

The American Girl Store and Wrigley Field

July 24-25; Chicago. On Saturday morning, our dear friend and former Tampa neighbor Gail McDermott met us at the house and we all took the train into the city. The girls were spending the afternoon at The American Girl Store and the boys were going to try to see the Cubs game at Wrigley Field. It was a memorable day. Abby (and Kit), Karen, and Gail had a terrific time at The American Girl Store shopping, getting Kit's ear's pierced, and having a fancy lunch. Wesley, Zachary, and I paid way too much money to a scalper on the street to get into the sold out Cubs v. Cardinals game at the historic Wrigley field. It is an awesome place, along the lines of Fenway Park in Boston. It was built in 1914 and it is a beautiful ball park. We had a great time. Of course we thought of Grandpa Merwald since the Cubbies are his team! We all met back at the train station for our ride home, and ended the evening playing games at Aunt Ruth's house. The next morning, we were supposed to leave early, but realized we had left a set of keys in Gail's car. So we then had to drive 45 minutes to Gail and Ray's house in Elgin to get our keys, which turned out to be a great thing to be able to see Ray and spend a few more hours with our dear friends from our Cheval neighborhood. We went out to brunch at their favorite local place and then back to the house briefly. Gail and Ray spoil our kids and always give them gifts. Ray, a collector, gave all three of our kids pocket knives - Abby's and Zack's to be used only under adult supervision of course. It was so good to see them and all the people we love in the Chicago and Michigan area over these past days. And what a rich time with Uncle Denny and Aunt Martha. They are like third grandparents to my kids now and I really felt like family with them. Our kids verbalized their visit with them as a highlight.

The Dunes of Lake Michigan

July 20-23; Warren Dunes State Park at Lake Michigan. Since our trip to the woodcarver delayed our departure from Ohio and made us stay an extra night, we were a day late leaving for Lake Michigan. Since we had family meeting us there on Tuesday, this meant a 6:00 A.M. departure and an eight hour drive on the 20th. I loved taking off in the morning when the kids are still asleep in their beds. So cool! We have a lot of family and friends in both Chicago and Michigan so we picked this park on Lake Michigan sort of between some of them so they could meet us there. It was a fabulous whirlwind of a time. Karen's Aunt Ruth and Uncle Denny arrived at our site about 5 minutes after we got there. After a short visit with them, and after climbing about 1,000 foot dune, we headed over to Karen's Uncle Rob's beach cottage in Bethany Beach for a great dinner. After dinner we had ice cream at "The Well" and then headed down to the beach for a bonfire, swimming, and s'mores. This was our first visit to The Great Lakes and it was awesome swimming in the fresh water. We even swam in the dark and didn't leave until we were forced to by a rain storm at just before midnight!! We didn't get to bed until 1:00 A.M. The next day we woke up only about 10 minutes before Karen's college friend Ginny Heiken and three of her kids arrived knocking on our door from Grand Rapids. We visited with them for a while and the kids got along great running up and down the dunes. We were about to go the beach when one of her daughters started throwing up, so I ended up taking five kids to the beach by myself for a few hours. After the beach we cooked out and had more s'mores, before our dear friends departed. The next day our friends from our church in Tampa came to visit for the day, Jessica Warner and her two boys. Brian couldn't make it. He is heading up a church plant outside of Chicago. We had lunch, climbed dunes, went to the beach, cooked dinner, then went to The Well for ice cream. On Friday morning, a bit exhausted, we packed up and headed towards Chicago for a stop at Aunt Ruth and Uncle Denny's to do some laundry, camper clean up, and relaxed visiting prior to going into the city on Saturday.

Amish Country

July 18-20; Visiting the Amish in Ohio. South of Canton, Ohio along Route 39 we visited the towns of Charm (no kidding), and Berlin. The largest population of Amish in the country live in this area. More than Pennsylvania or Indiana. We drove the entire scenic route, then toured the Yoder Family Farm. The tour was great. It included two homes, a schoolhouse, a large barn, and of course a buggy ride. The kids loved it and we learned about about the different orders of Amish, how they live today, and the history of how they arrived to the area. A highlight was the kitchen, where they were cooking and baking, and of course selling some of their goodies. We bought cookies, peanut butter made with marshmellow in it, and bread. Yum! After touring Amish country, in the town of Dover, we toured the former home and a museum housing all the carvings of a man named Warther (Warther knives) who is known as the world's master carver. This side trip was too amazing to have room to write about. This man carved perfectly accurate replicas of each steam locomotive designed in U.S. history using wood, and ivory. Incredible, with moving parts. Each one took about a year. He was offered large sums of money for them but turned it down and died a poor man. He said, "A man doesn't sell his hobby." He was also famous for carving small working pliers out of a small piece of wood just by making cuts in it, and made 750,000 of them in his lifetime, usually for children while he was talking to people. His grandson still works there and carved pliers for the kids. It was incredible.

Walmart Camping

July 17, 2010; somewhere in western Pennsylvania. We were pretty wiped out after our New York driving ordeal so decided not to even try to make it to the next campground. We decided to spend the night in the parking lot of the first Super Walmart we could find (they allow RVs and trucks to park overnite). This Walmart was up high on a ridge and there was a nice strong breeze so we opened the windows before we headed into a quaint little town for dinner. We found a small pizzeria and got a table outside right be a large beautiful fountain. After dinner we headed back to the camper to watch a movie we had rented from The Red Box and then headed off to sleep. The only disadvantage to camping at Walmart in addition to the obvious fact that there are no hook-ups and you have to run your generator all night for power is that it's quite bright unless your RV has total light blocking shades, which ours apparently does not. In the morning, I walked across the shopping center to Panera's to pick up coffee for Karen and me and pasties for the family, and we hit the road.