The End

It has come to an end...we have finally arrived home to the Valley of the Sun!

Our plans changed during our trip and resulted in us missing some of the locations we had hoped to visit, mainly Las Vegas. We were also unable to visit the Mormon Temple as promised (sorry Mom).
The last leg of the trip consisted mainly of getting home before Wednesday (the day I return to work), we did still see alot driving from Yellowstone down through a wee bit of Montana, Idaho, Utah and then Arizona.

Idaho Falls is great little town filled with a bunch of hipsters, at least where we stopped and had lunch. The place was called "the Frosty Gator"- why? We don't know. They did have a nice selection of micro brews and some yummy Cornish game hen. Couldn't spend too much time there, we had to get to Salt Lake that evening if we were to make it home in time.

Salt Lake City is pretty hip too. We saw more tattoos then anticipated and the bar life is coming alive since they repealed the old drink laws. Did not do much other than dinner at PF Changs. We did drive by theTemple and looked int to touring, but learned that you must have "your Sunday best" or rent clothes from the church, but time was our real enemy. It was going to take us about 12+ hours to get home from there and I did not want to drive at night.

We stopped in Kanab, UT for lunch and had the best Southwestern food I have had in a long time. There is a little restaurant in the middle of town called "Nedras" we highly recommend if you ever get a chance to be there. Also in this little town was an old movie set museum; apparently the y have filmed a slew of movies and TV shows in this part of Utah. "True Grit" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales" were some marquee titles.

The rest of the trip was mainly hard driving. We pasted the time by listening to a few of Hemingway's short stories (good stories if you don't mind the lead characters dying). Once we rolled into AZ it was nice and sunny, not too hot as of yet but the temp was getting higher. Our route took us through the reservation and was suppose to bring us in the eastern side of Flagstaff, but his quickly changed. About 50 or so miles outside of Flagstaff we were notified the road ahead was closed due to the big fire burning mad on the mountain around Flag. I stopped at a trading post and was told we would have to back track up the road and then drive west to the Grand Canyon and come into Flagstaff from that direction. This was a good 2 1/2 hours out of our way (we did not want to add any more driving time to our now 9 hours for the day). Learning this, we needed gas to ensure a safe non stop. At the gas station there were a couple of nice native American women inside talking about a back road that would bypass the road closure and bring you in to Flagstaff from the north, this short cut would only take about 45 min, but is was all unmaintained ranch roads. As we were talking an Indian kid comes in and says " You guys taking about the dirt road, because I am going that way and you can follow me?" Not only had heard him, a few other people you had stopped because of the road closure heard him too. By the time we left, there was a convoy of 12 vehicles following the is kid over hill and dale thought the dusty trail...what nice guy. The road was not too rough, but it was dusty. Before too long we were back on the highway (white man's road) and rolling through Flagstaff. The drive from Flag to home was the longest stretch of diving I have done all trip, but well worth it. We rolled up to our house around 9:30 and could not of been happier.

All in all we drove 3300 miles, visited 8 states, 7 national forests, 3 or more National Parks and created uncountable memories over 12 days. The best part of the trip was spending it with my new wife. We thought this type of adventure should show us the true strength and color of our relationship. I am here to tell you now that we will be just fine and if the future is brighter for us, we gotta wear shades! Tracey is my best friend and I could not be more happy with the love we share.

Thanks for following and I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I have writing them.