taken from the Hyde St. Pier

Looking down Geary Street from Powell St.

Grand Hyatt Hotel and downtown skyline from the outside elevator at the Westin Hotel

Coit Tower and the Bay from the outside elevator at the Westin Hotel

The old Sir Francis Drake Hotel and Harry Denton's Starlight room at the top

Going UP !!! Taken from the outside elevator at the Westin Hotel

Post Street and Powell Street at Union Square......yes, the garbage runs in SF on Sunday!

Post Street between Powell and Stockton at Union Square

Stockton Street at Union Square

Top of Statue at Union Square FROM the Cheesecake Factory Rooftop

Jonathon Livingston looking for a handout......he was actually outside the glass partition

Saks and Tiffany's from the Cheesecake Factory Rooftop

Happy Anniversary !!!

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary !!!
We had a great brunch at the Cheesecake Factory on the rooftop of Macy's. We ate outside of course so I could get these great pics! When we finished our meal, we walked over to the Westin Hotel and took a ride on the outside elevator that I enjoy so much. Of course I got some more great pics there!!
I think I have figured out a new way to get pics on this blog so I will put a bunch on that we took yesterday and today.

The Westin Hotel from the Cheesecake Factory

Beautiful Saturday Afternoon at Aquatic Park

I guess after our long road trip, we aren't through feeling like tourists yet, so this afternoon we took the 19 muni down to Aquatic Park (affectionately known as The Wall) and took a few pictures. We wandered out on the Hyde Street Pier and got free tickets to go on all the ships with our Senior Lifetime Pass that we bought when we were at Yellowstone! Sometimes it pays to be old!

WE ARE HOME !!!!

We are at last home again in our little apartment in our beautiful city of San Francisco. We arrived yesterday afternoon and just finished the unpacking this morning! It was an incredible amount of "stuff" that we had. Both of us packed about 3 or 4 times as many clothes as we actually needed.

Our sweet Penny at Avis took care of us so well and expected us in with the car today since she had been reading our blog! I guess we killed the car for Avis. We put so many miles on the car that they are not able to use it anymore for a rental. Sorry, Avis! It was a great car though and it performed perfectly for us. We changed the oil in Rochester, Minnesota and Penny made sure we got credit for it off our bill.

Since we went to bed so early last night, be both were up and wide awake at 5:00 this morning! I did a grocery order first thing so was able to get it delivered this afternoon. Now we will have some food in the house again!

I went to the post office today to pick up the mail. We have had it on hold. They had to give me one of those plastic tote bins to carry it home in. It's really odd to see one whole month's mail all at once!

Thanks to all who have sent welcome home messages, we really appreciate it very much. I may keep this blog going from time to time, so check back occasionally for updates on the Stevenson's!

On October 26th we are leaving for our next adventure. We are going to Nashville and Memphis with Kevin, Barbi and Mom. Can't wait for that, it should be a lot of fun. I can't believe I really get to see the inside of Graceland after all these years!

Our love to all
Wayne and Colleen

Homeward Bound !!!

Good morning from Provo Utah. We are in a beautiful Marriott room (I LOVE their beds) and we pampered ourselves last night and had room service. We had the greatest meal and watched the baseball playoffs.

We are planning for today to get to Winnemucca and then home tomorrow (Monday). We are both a bit tired and ready to be home. It has been an incredible journey for us. We have met lots of really wonderful people, seen some fantastic scenery, dispelled some of our own prejudices and taken some really great pictures.

The final tally of the numbers will be:
34 days on the road
Over 7000 miles driven
Visited 18 states
Entered all 4 time zones
Stayed in 24 different hotels/motels

Thanks to everyone who has been with us on this journey, it was fun knowing you were all reading and following us along. This has certainly been a dream come true. We are so happy that we made the decision to take this trip. We are also very thankful for just so many things that made this trip so enjoyable. We had absolutely no trouble of any kind, good weather 98% of the time, met lots of great people, had no problems finding rooms, restaurants, etc. The whole thing was just seamless and so very incredible.

It is amazing to us that two people can spend so much time in a car on the road and not encounter any problems or troubles. We are very thankful for that.

Really looking forward to smelling that concrete and seeing our beautiful City tomorrow. We miss our little apartment. It's going to be nice to be able to settle in for the night without having to unload 8-10 pieces of baggage onto the cart and into our room!

This blog has been so much fun doing, I think I will keep it going for a while so ......stay tuned.

Much love to all
Wayne and Colleen

Yes, It's True, We are in VAIL, COLORADO

Good morning from the beautiful Vail Colorado. Yes, they let us stay here, can you believe it?! Two old, out of shape, tired people like us and they actually let us get a room here. We even went to a great Italian restaurant last night and had a very nice meal. Of course, we ate at about 4:00 because we had not had lunch yet and were very hungry. Being that early, we were the only ones in the place, but they served us and were very nice anyway!

After leaving Wichita yesterday, we drove to Dodge City Kansas hoping to see some historical places and things. We of course looked for Matt and Miss Kitty but they were nowhere to be found. As a matter of fact, nothing was to be found, nothing historical anyway. We located a place to eat lunch called Montana Mike's which was just across the parking lot from a big sign that said "Boot Hill". I figured we were close to the history we were looking for. Wrong! After having a great lunch, we went across to the building near the Boot Hill sign and discovered only a big tourist trap kind of place. You pay an entrance fee, go into a room to see a video, then exit the back of the room to the "western street" (which we could see from the parking lot). It looked like a bunch of very small Hollywood set buildings lined up with old paint. Behind the buildings was supposed to be a "part of Boot Hill" in the corner at the top of the hill. I asked the girl at the counter in the gift shop if the grave markers were there to see and she said the original ones were gone and "we have put replicas there"........pass! We bought a t-shirt that said "Get out of Dodge" and then did just that!

Driving through western Kansas is a beefy experience to say the least! We saw one feed lot after another with the small rolling hills just covered with pens and thousands and thousands of head of cattle. More cattle than we have ever seen before! When we arrived in Garden City Kansas (which by the way has absolutely nothing to do with anything resembling a garden or anything green!) to spend the night, the lady at the hotel desk told us there are 2.1 million head of cattle in the surrounding area! I think we saw at least half of them ourselves!

We left Garden City Kansas and headed for Denver. Along the way we talked about whether or not to go back to Yellowstone as we had originally planned to do, or just head home. We decided our being homesick was growing each day so we would not return to Yellowstone this time and instead we would head home. We miss the smell of concrete in our City!

So Wayne found a different route to take which brought us here to Vail Colorado and we are very happy we took this way. The Rocky Mountains are absolutely breathtaking. We drove through Denver without stopping and was thrilled to see the beautiful mountains after so long in Western Kansas and the flat hot dry territory we had been through.

We arrived in Vail and immediately I felt the higher elevation. Just two or three steps and I am out of breath! Depending on where you are in the valley or on the slopes, you are from 8000 to 11,000 feet up. It is beautiful and I took many many pictures of course. I will put the pictures up here tomorrow since we are in a bit of a hurry to get started this morning. We just heard there was 1-3 inches of snow expected in Salt Lake City today and that is our next stop so we aren't happy about that!

We are definitely getting excited to be back home. We are getting a bit tired. We have seen 18 states, traveled over 7000 miles by the time we arrive back in San Francisco, and have had an absolutely magical and wonderful time on this road trip. But now it's time to decompress, and be back home in our little apartment in San Francisco and be ready for our next big adventure with Kevin Barbi and Mom the end of this month. We will be going to Nashville and Memphis to see Graceland. For any of you who know me well, you know how big a thrill this will be for me to see Elvis' home.

So, that's it for today as we are going to get packed up and get back on the road again and make our way back home.

By the way, our license plate game is now only missing THREE plates. We saw Delaware actually as we were in some small town in Western Kansas, I don't remember the name right now. So that only leaves Rhode Island and Connecticut and Hawaii. We have seen 47 different license plates on this trip! Fun, huh!

Love to all, time to pack up
Wayne and Colleen

Wichita Kansas via El Dorado

Good morning from Wichita Kansas. First, I need to correct a couple things from the last post. That "head cold" turned into a trip to a small community hospital in Fulton Missouri called Callaway Hospital. Everyone needs to write the name of this medication down: Azithromycin
Ask your doctor about it the next time you get a respiratory issue. They gave me a shot of the "A" drug and a packette containing 6 pills. You take two the first day and one a day for 4 days after. After only the shot and the first two pills, I felt tremendously better. This stuff is great!

Leaving Kingdom City/Fulton Missouri, we drove to Emporia Kansas. It was the first day we had any rain while driving. It rained almost all the way. We decided to stay in Emporia, which is real close to Wayne's hometown of El Dorado.

The next morning we drove into El Dorado and had a magical day for Wayne. He was telling me stories and relating memories all day. We first went to 1450 North Topeka Road where Grandad Watson the dentist lived. We got some pictures of the house, not so well kept of course as when Grandad and Grandma lived there, but still a stately looking house.

While we were driving slowly and clearly looking "touristy", a guy pulled up and stopped in the road just ahead of us. Out came Mr. Robert Wood. He said we looked like we were lost and he wanted to help. We were afraid we had looked suspicious and Mr. Wood wanted to check us out. He was the nicest man. Wayne told him the story and he shared some facts about the area as he knew it. We asked him where was a good place to have breakfast and with his toothless grin he said "True Lies"......of course Wayne asked him to repeat it a couple times before we could understand it. Seems that True Lies is a bar but according to Mr. Wood, serves great food. Ok, we're game. It's 9:00 in El Dorado Kansas and neither of us have had any alcohol for 7 years now, but we will go to a bar for breakfast!!!! Turns out it was a great decision. Our new friend Robert not only gave us directions, he said to follow him and he drove us right there. He parked, we thought he was going in for a bite to eat too, but after getting us inside and directing Wayne to the men's room (urinals on the left, stalls on the right side of the room), he said his goodbyes and left! He only went inside to help us get started with our breakfast experience! Coming back from the "left bathroom", Wayne tells me about a sign hanging on the wall...."if you need to take a crap, use the North bathroom"...........those were the words, with apologies for the graphics here.
Our friend Robert was right, the best biscuits and gravy you could ever ask for and the price was certainly right. I noticed the ladies were wearing t-shirts from the business, so I asked what I had to do to get one of the t shirts and she said $10 will do! So we walked out of "True Lies" with a great breakfast, 2 t-shirts, a $10 tip for the lady who went through the closet looking for our shirts and the whole charge was $40.27!!! How cool is that?! The breakfast alone at home would have been that much.
Off we go to other landmarks for Wayne such as the two houses on First street where Wayne's grandparents and his mom lived before moving to the big house on Topeka St. and his Aunt Edith and Uncle Edgar lived after moving from the Templeton farm outside of town. We located the hospital where Wayne was born, the church where his parent's were married and got pictures of both. We gave our GPS lady the address of Aunt Bess. She got us there perfectly and we rang the bell. Wayne was delighted to see Aunt Bess answer the door, he recognized her immediately. She wasn't sure who he was of course but when he told her a smile came instantly. She invited us in to her beautiful home where she lives with her sister Dot. A home care nurse was just completing her daily check of the sisters and made her exit. Not long after that the guy from meals on wheels brought their noon meal which both ladies informed us was "probably not very good anyway"......we were concerned that they wanted to talk and not eat. We didn't want their meal to get cold, but that didn't seem to bother them. Aunt Bess took us on a tour through the house and showed us the bedroom that Wayne and Jim stayed in when they visited long ago. She and Wayne reminisced about lots of past history, including the time Wayne tromped around in the tall grass at the farm and got a bad infestation of chiggers! She said that was quite the talk of the family for a long time. She remembered how Wayne would come up to the big house at the farm and play Monopoly with her girls when they were all children. She explained that the farm is now owned by the Taylors and we should go out there and they would be happy to show us around.

Aunt Bess is quite an accomplished artist and has lots of her paintings hanging in her home. She asked Wayne to select one that he would like to have. She took it right down off the wall and gave it to him! I told her it would have a place of honor in our home.

After saying our goodbyes to Bess and Dot, we drove out to the old Templeton farm. Wayne remembered the old days as we drove down the long gravel driveway to the main house. He pointed out where Edit and Edgar's house was before it burned down. The main house, John and Bess' house sat stately and beautiful after all these years. Wayne rang the doorbell but got no answer. We pulled down away from the house a bit and Wayne got out and walked down to the site where the other house used to be. I stayed behind and noticed a gentleman coming from the house. Mr. Taylor apologized and said he was upstairs in the bathroom and couldn't get down to the door before we walked away! He was delighted to see us and began to tell Wayne all about the farm today. Mr. Taylor is 87 years old and he and his wife still live there on the farm. Two of their 6 sons work with them on the farm. Mrs. Taylor came back home after a few minutes and we all had a very nice chat. They invited us inside and Wayne was just amazed, it was so much fun for me to see all the excitement in his eyes and see him reminisce with everyone about his childhood.
We got lots of pictures of course and then left the farm to continue our day and went to a small town called Burns just up the road a ways. Grandad and Grandma are buried in Burns. We located the cemetary and walked through, looking for the Watson markers. We did find them and Wayne was able to say hello once again to his grandparents.
All in all, it was a very wonderful day for Wayne and brought back so many warm and wonderful memories of his family and his early years of coming to Kansas during the summers.
We also located the Freeland farm, some family friends. Wayne remembered many visits to that farm as well.
After leaving the area, we drove to Wichita and found a nice Clarion to stay. We asked about the laundry facilities since we were to the point where we HAD to wash some clothes. We had been putting it off for days and now had to do it. The girl at the desk said there was no detergent and they were out. The only place closeby was a WalMart, we really didn't want to do that. A nice young man came by and said he had some in his car! When he went to get it, I asked who he was. The girls said "our general manager"......wow, the boss came walking back in with liquid Tide and said to use what we needed and leave it at the desk! How sweet are these people in the midwest. I'm telling you, things have just been falling into place for us like that.

Anyway, we are off today with clean clothes and fond memories remembered in El Dorado. We are headed for Dodge City and then up to Denver. We will make final decisions then on the final leg of our trip and our return home. We are both getting homesick and ready to get back.

When I started this today, I said I had a couple things to correct. Well, the second one is that we have now been in 17 states in total, not 15 as I said yesterday.

Love to all
Wayne and Colleen

4 States in ONE day.........Whew!

Hello again bloggers......yes, yes, I know, I have been a bit lax of late. The truth is we pulled into Frankfort Kentucky and I proceeded to get a bit of a head cold. We needed a "down day" anyway, so we just stayed an extra day and did lots of sleeping. I sneezed and coughed and sneezed and took pills and slept and slept some more. I guess it worked, because today I feel much better.

So, here we are in (of all places) Kingdom City Missouri. No, I haven't seen anyone in long white robes yet, but I will let you know if I do. How did we get here, you ask? Well, we went West on I-64 as suggested to us by someone we met on the train in Cass. We stopped off in Louisville, KY to see Churchill Downs where they run the Kentucky Derby. Boy what a place that was! Neither of us knew it was sooooo big. Then we continued westbound and went through Indiana and Illinois again. Crossing the Mississippi into St. Louis, we saw the gorgeous big Archway. What a sight that is. We also found Busch Stadium where the Cardinals play baseball. We saw the football stadium, but I forgot the name already. What a big place St. Louis is. Wow, it is huge. Some road construction didn't help the already confusing way of getting around. Once again our little lady inside the GPS to the rescue!! She has saved our bacon almost everyday during this road trip.

Wayne really outdid himself today. Since I wasn't feeling my best, he drove all the way today, 420 miles! He's pooped tonight but understandably so.

We also crossed back into the Central time zone from the Eastern time zone. It gets a bit confusing sometimes to keep track of the time, but it really isn't an issue. We stop driving when we get tired, we eat when we get hungry and we sleep until we feel like getting up. So, time really isn't an issue, but I still like to know what time it is! Does all that make any sense?

We will see Kansas City tomorrow. I'm goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come...........well, I digress.

We are heading for El Dorado where Wayne's family is from and where he spent lots of summers as a young whipersnapper. I guess there is still an aunt Bess there who we will stop and see. She is 96, how cool is that?! We are also going to go to the farm where the young Stevenson boys toiled their teenage summers.

I guess this darn head cold is what you would call our first glitch. It's not going to amount to anything, I already feel much better than yesterday.

Note to MOM: Don't worry about me, I'M FINE, I promise! Wayne got me all the meds I need for cough, etc and I'm doing fine.

As of now, we have been in 15 different states and driven over 5100 miles. We are only missing 4 license plates now. We still need Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii and Rhode Island. We have seen all 46 others! Isn't that incredible?!!

Note to Richard: Happy Birthday! Hope you enjoyed your long birthday celebration.

That's it for now lovely people. I will get some pictures for you now and then get some rest for tomorrow. This road trip has been phenominal.

We got up in Kentucky this morning, drove through Illinois and Indiana and tonight we are going to bed in Missouri..........I love our road trip!!!

Love to all
Wayne and Colleen