ALMOST HOME!!!

Good Morning...I will try to fill in the blanks at a later time, but for those of you following us...we are ALMOST HOME! It has been two weeks on the road and lots of wonderful visits. After two days and nights at the Wild Horse Sanctuary we took off for COLORADO! We traveled south out of South Dakota to NEBRASKA and down the western end of NEBRASKA into WYOMING right near Cheyenne and then into COLORADO. Stopped at a COLORADO welcome station and found that Estes Park (our planned destination) was having a Scottish Highlands Festival that weekend and were told that everything within miles of there would be packed full. We found a State Park at Loveland, CO...about 30 miles due East of Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Park and stayed three nights there. The 30 mile drive to ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK was lovely up thru a deep narrow winding canyon. We saw BIG HORN SHEEP grazing right in someone's yard along the way! We drove back and forth to the park several times viewing ELK! The ELK were just coming back down from the mountains and beginning to gather their harems!
We had never seen the BULL ELK before with big racks as we had only been there in the spring and early summer months. We saw MANY ELK and MANY BIG BULL ELK with large racks and heard them BUGLE out...it was awesome! The few days we were there were cloudy and rainy and we were not able to go to the western side of the park as the TRAIL RIDGE ROAD was fogged in and they closed it because of SNOW!!!! We had SNOW flurries on our windshield!!! Had a great time anyway. From Rocky Mountain Park we drove south thru DENVER, COLORADO SPRINGS and PUEBLO, CO and into the Northeastern part of NEW MEXICO to RATON, NEW MEXICO via I-25! At Raton, NM we picked up a local road that took us toward the panhandle of TEXAS. We stayed at CAPULIN, NM near the CAPULIN VOLCANO NATIONAL MONUMENT. We could have driven to the top of the volcano but did not! Drove down thru the panhandle of TEXAS, staying one night at Childress, TX and visiting several of Dennis' cousins that we had not seen in many years! Visited PEG & JIM HARDWICK at Chico, TX...then east to MT. VERNON, TX to visit AUNT FLORENCE CAMPBELL and daughters Rose & Kathy...then south to TYLER. TX to visit cousins STAN DOTTY BARTZ...WHAT WONDERFUL VISITS WE HAD WITH EVERYONE!!!! From Tyler, we continued south to near COLLEGE STATION at IOLA, TX to visit Linda's brother, IRA & WILLIE FAYE BETTS and family...MORE WONDERFUL VISITS AND REUNIONS! Pictures will be limited for now as the laptop that contains MOST of our photos has decided to take a vacation...so hopefully we will be able to find someone who can save the info when we get home!!!! From IOLA, TX we headed homeward east across I-10! At present we are still about 250 miles from home...so should be there early afternoon. WHAT A FABULOUS FIVE MONTHS IT HAS BEEN!!!!