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