Home Sweet Home

Yup, we made it. we were only gone for a day over three weeks but it seems a lot longer... maybe because we did so much and covered so many miles in those 3 weeks. (6459 miles, just on our car, not including traveling in other peoples vehicles.) We are so very happy to be home and in our own beds and space. Whew. It was fun and great but... whew!

Joe is doing better today, made it all the way till this evening before he had any chest pains and is keeping his sugars in better line. Thank you for all your prayers on his behalf. I am convinced that that is why he did so well on this trip. We hope that with a few days rest he will be much better.

So here is the last of our saga: We left the crazy area of Utah that I showed you yesterday and traveled through a more open area for a while.

So as we continued through Utah and Colorado on I 70 things continued very beautiful. This is a more full picture of the view from our hotel ... was it Thursday evening. Isn't that the crazyist rock formation? I love the gold frosting on top. It looks pretty small from this angle but it was very imposing. Click on the picture to get a bigger view of it.

This is a closer shot of the base of this rock... butte, whatever it was... Pretty cool huh!

Okay, all we could say was WOW also. 

As we moved into the Colorado area the scenery began to change a bit... well, quite a lot actually. We followed along the Colorado river basin for a long ways, watching river rafters coming down the very, what Joe called, ruffly river. We couldn't get any good shots of that but I got this one of the stiller waters further up the mountains.

 Down into mountain valleys and back up, down and up... all at 65-75 mph with a few slow downs for 55 mph corners... and all in rather heavy traffic with lots of semis. I loved the scenery but man it was scary driving.

Isn't this a beautiful sky?

After we went over the first really high summit at 10.600 feet where I got a headache from the altitude we stopped for lunch in a cute mountian tourist town. Not a fast food joint or chain store to be had. We had a wonderful lunch and Brenna and I found a wonderful gift shop that had the most unique things for very reasonable prices. We wanted to shop for hours but we only took a half hour. It was fun though. 

We drove over the second summit, the continental divide at 11,600 feet, where Hobbs, our car, was choking and trying to over heat, through a mountian (creepy) and wiggled down into Denver and headed South. We traveled through lots of big nasty heavy rains and lightening all the way through Denver and to the boarder of New Mexico. 

You see the encroaching black cloud to the right? that was completely black and full of lightening. See the rain falling in what looks like a waterfall from heaven on the center and left? When we got to those they whipped into partial twisters and lifted our wiper blades off of the windshield so that they only skittered across the surface and shook the car. Scary stuff. 

The next day was Friday. We took a little side trip up to Eagles Nest and almost to Angel Fire, 50 miles out of our way. This is on the way up to it. 

Joe wanted to show us this increadible Vietnam War Memorial. This was built by this man on the last spot that his son had been before leaving to Vietnam where he was killed. The father used all of the insurance money to build memorial to his son and other Vietnam Vets. It has a great little museum off to the right of the pictures.

This is the entrance. The memorial is in the background down a hill overlooking a valley in the mountains  As you go down the hill the bricks on the side have the names of the fallen. There aren't that many so I assume they are of this areas. 

 This is the right side of the memorial. The point at the right side is the front of it, the back part is an amphitheater.

 This is the front, standing below it and looking up.

 And this is looking into the amphitheater from the left side with the front on the left of the picture.

 This is standing at the back of the amphitheater and looking down with the front point in the center there. Isn't that just a cool feel of eternity and living forever and inclusive of many... I think it is a beautiful piece of art... art being something that can express the soul.

 This is Joe and Brenna with the memorial in the background.

 There is a nice helicopter from the Vietnam war off to the right of the memorial, commemorating the great impact the helicopter had on this war.

This was really special and well worth the side trip

 The drive up there was really pretty also, all along 25 mph switch back roads through beautiful little bubbling rivers and such. We saw dear and antelope. There were warning signs on the road to watch out for bear also but we never saw any. 

Thank you so much for all of your prayers. I know that is what kept us safe on this trip and kept Joe doing so well. Lots of healing happened in Brennas heart along the way as she processed stuff with us through the long days of driving. We had lots of good opportunities to present the work that we are doing for Christ to many people. Some new and some who support us but were unclear as to exactly what we do. 

We look forward to what else God has in store for us. 

Love

Teri

 

Amarillo and almost home

I sure wish I could bring all this rain we have been through the last three days home with me. Lots of HEAVY rain and thunder and lightening and even a soft almost twister today which shook the car and scared me a bit. We should be home tomorrow no problem. That will be good because Joe really needs to get onto a routine

So going back a couple of days. We went through the nasty dusty plains south of Salt Lake City where we went through some heavy dust storms with wild tumble weeds rollicking across the highway. We got hit by a few of them. It is a good thing they were small Utah ones, about 2-4 feet, and not the big Idaho ones. As it was we have some big gouges on our windows from them hitting us. After we got onto Highway 70, as I said, things got real pretty. The driving still sucked with tons of road construction to slow us down, intermittent rain and lightening storms and lots of rough road with fast high way speeds but other than that it was wonderful. Her are a few pictures to give you some idea. You really cannot capture it on camera but we tried.

These first two are coming into the mountains at this point we were already saying... wow, pretty.







Then we just said WOW













Yup, that's Brenna out on those rocks

 I believe this is Navaho country, or Arapaho. Its Indian any how

Joe of course stayed up above but he at least was able to get out of the car and look at the magnificence.



 I had a couple of videos also of this area but when I tried to put them in the blog they really made it load extreemly slow. I will post them to facebook later.

This is how a great deal of the drive looked through Utah along 70

 Isn't this wild? No, that is not snow, it is bare rock... Pretty cool. God is so creative. Our souls have been so filled with the beauty He spreads around us.

Today we saw dear and antelope and prairie dogs but never got the cameras out fast enough.

So here it is 11:20 pm and we have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow so I will finish later.

Love

Teri

Edge of New Mexico...

Oh my stars, I forgot... that is what I get for posting when I am really tired. We also had an opportunity to see our dear freinds Cindy and Neil Klein and their son Evan. We get to see them every 5-8 years so this was cool. They have the neatest new ministry they and their church which meets in a Grange hall are starting. Rather than using their building fund for a building they bought an airplane. With it they will do cremation ash sprinkling to support the ministry and angel flights for their ministry. This is sooooo cool. Check it out. www.thefoundrycommunity.com Click on foundry flights.

Sooooo, here we are in Trinadad, CO, just across the border from New Mexico.

so, what do you think? Brains of the earth
poking through the surface?

Let me tell you, we saw some absolutely awesome scenery the past 2 days coming through Utah and Colorado on 70 but we are so done with twisty windy crazy, up hill and down hill, oh my heavens they have the speed limit WAY too fast for these roads and mountain passes. The weirdest thing was going straight through a mountain today, not the edge of it, through the middle of it, in one side, crazy 6% down grade all the way through the mountain and out the other side. That may be normal for people from the west side of Denver but we thought it was weird. We have also been in lots of rain and heavy lightening storms for two days. We were expecting to roast all the way across the US so I am not complaining. :-) We are trying really hard to bring the rain with us to Longview.

So, back to our stories. We left my brothers house on Monday morning and headed toward La Grande. We were suppose to visit with Cheryl Lawson, a friend who used to live with us along with her husband Tom, but Cheryl had the flu, (poor thing) so we kept on going. In all my years of living in Oregon I have never stopped at Multnoma Falls, so we did.


Of course Brenna and I climbed around the falls while Joe sat in the car. He is such a good sport about that.




This is a picture of the trail up to the falls. This is what woods are "supposed to look like" I think. I do like the foliage in Longview but this is just home to me.

We found a tree that tried to eat Brenna :-)

And this is a view of the Columbia River from up toward the falls. Okay, you can't see the river much but it sure is pretty I think. 

After this we stopped at the Bonniville Dam and looked around the tourist thingy for a while. They do have a nice little viewing thing with underground view ports of the fish ladders and everything. Unfortunately the fish are not running but it was still cool. this is the dam part.

After we got past the pretty mountian part of the Columbia River Gorge it looked pretty weird.

We were excited though to see miles and miles of wind turbines. :-). If you can't see the wind turbines you can click on the picture and it will open bigger.

In La Grande we visited with our supporter Linda Girrard. She has had a hard last couple of years so this was a really nice visit.

We had a miserable night in the hotel in La Grande. The air conditioner was buried behind the bed so I froze my but while Joe and Brenna roasted. Ah well, was the only really bad hotel night we have had.





The next morning we headed out across Oregon and a great deal of Idaho and into Utah. It had some pretty scenery but mostly it was long dirty dirty dirty miles, complete with dust storms and tumble weed attacks. Joe had a lot of chest pains that day so we stopped early, not far out of Salt Lake City. The next day we finished off Salt Lake City and went south of their and onto Interstate 70. Now that is a beautiful, beyond belief ride. Some of it so pretty we just kept saying OH OH OH OH. I will talk about that tomorrow, Same place, same channel.

Love

Teri

Colorado and lots of rain

Hey, maybe we can bring the rain squalls that followed us all across Utah and into Colorado home with us!!!!!!

We are in Cliffton Colorado tonight. We were going to try and get a bit farther down the road but just like yesterday Joe started being distressed about 4:30 and started having chest pains and terrible headaches so we called it quits at 5:30. Here is the.... The scene outside our hotel room. We think it must be fake. It is probably a blow up like the pyrimid in "Despicable Me". Honestly though we saw some incredible scenery today going across I-70. More about that later after I get caught up.

So, last Saturday we visited with my neice Katrina a little more and then tearfully bade goodbye to my sister and brother in-law and Katy and headed up to my Aunt Dottie and Uncle Dons' in Marysville (just north of Everett, which is just north of Seattle.

That is my Aunt Dottie on the left. She and my uncle Don support us both financially and in prayer. Aunt Dottie is another one of those wonderful prayer warrior people. She also writes the most beautiful notes of encouragement. Just when I am feeling flattened or discouraged one of her notes shows up in the mail and just warms my heart all to pieces.

My Aunt Gail is on the right. I have never been as close to her, mostly because she is very quite, but very very sweet. (Dottie is loud and verbose like me).

As I go through these pictures note the beautiful flowers and landscaping. That is my Uncle Don. He is amazing. This is Uncle Don and Uncle Larry, Aunt Lois and Brenna sitting in the back yard. Isn't it amazing what he did with a narrow lumpy lot?!

Joe had a wonderful time hanging with the guys and telling what Brenna described as Gorrilla hoo hoo stories. This is him and my three uncles, Larry, Richard and Don










I also got to know my new Aunt Lois a little bit on this visit. I had only met her a few other times at family gatherings but had never had a chance to talk to her. She is also very quite like my aunt Gail.








We had a wonderful barbeque and visit here and then went on up to Mt Vernon where we met my other best friend, other than my sister, Valerie and her new husband Craig. They are from Canada so we met at a hotel as we didn't have time or finances to get passports into Canada. Valerie and I were roommates in Bible Collage, 1977-1980. We were inseparable, to the point where people said they couldn't remember which was which. That is even funnier than you think as Val had long bright red ringlets at the time and my hair was in a huge loose afro. I am tall and loud and Val is medium and extremely feminine and giggly.. or she was then... giggly I mean. Anyway. We have remained soul sisters all our lives. It was so wonderful seeing each other again. we talked for 6 hours and thought it had only been an hour or two. We could have talked for a couple a more days easily.

This is only my second time meeting Craig. They have been married just a year and a half. He is really a neat guy. He used to be a pastor but now he is a psychologist and chaplain in prisons. What a ministry and the stories he told! He and Val also have a good bible study going in their home. He and Joe really hit it off too.
I told them they looked like they really must like each other in this picture. :-)


The next morning we said good by to Val and Craig and traveled south of Portland Or to see my brother Jef and his family. Jef and his wife Heather took us out to dinner with their two grown daughters Kendra and Kristina and then to their evening church service. What a rockin church! The band is led by a guy who used to play with Amy Grant. You can only imagine how great the band was. WOW! the preaching was awesome too.
This is my baby full brother. He was born when I was 2 so he was my cute little baby brother that I showed off to everyone. It was very good seeing him again.

Brenna and Kendra had a blast playing together although Kendra is 20 to Brenna's 17. They played badminton and then went jogging together. This is me and Brenna and my sister in law Heather and Kendra.









Again. I should have gotten two days on this but I am so tired. More tomorrow.

Thank you again for all your prayers

Love
Teri