God was at His finest when he made Jackson, WY

We came through the most breathtaking place I've ever seen today. It is Jackson (Hole) Wyoming. The name of the valley is Jackson Hole but the actual town itself is Jackson. It is absolutely the prettiest place. The only problem was that there is some sort of bike race going on and there are NO rooms in Jackson. No, of course we didn't have reservations. That's the point of our whole trip, right?!!! After getting a bit panicky, we heard about a place called Alpine, not sure if its Wyoming or Idaho or Montana, but they had rooms! So here we are in the midst of real cowboys, moose, black bear and a knotty pine room at the Bull Moose Lodge. It is actually a nice place. We are in the dining room now since no wifi in the rooms. We just had our dinner of chicken fried steak and will now go back to our knotty pine room and get some rest!
This bike race is something else. We saw bicycle riders for miles and miles and miles. I loosely counted over 500 riders. Don't know how they get up these steep steep mountain roads, but they do.
Tomorrow we plan to see Yellowstone for the first time for both of us. We are not far from one of the entrances now. But so as not to repeat our panic of today with no rooms available, we have already gotten a reservation in West Yellowstone Montana for tomorrow night. We plan to go up into Montana and see the Little Big Horn and other sites in Montana.
We are still just absolutely having a ball. We are like a couple kids, it's really fun!
Jim and Gail, this GPS lady is really something. She puts us such at ease and we trust her faithfully to get us where we want to go. She is so cute when we get off the road, she says to make a U turn and go back!! But she "recalculates" and gets us right back on track again. Thanks again so much for loaning it to us, it's great.
Going to post some pictures now and another blog tomorrow.
Bye for now..........Wayne and Colleen

What time is it ??????

Forgot to tell you about the first thing that happened this morning when we woke up. I looked at the clock beside the bed, 6:45. I looked at the time on my cell phone, 7:45. I looked at the time on the laptop, 8:45 !!!!! What the heck time is it???? With all our high tech gadgets, the way we found out what time it was is when Wayne went up to the lobby and got us some of the continental breakfast and he asked the clerk, What time is it???

Sage Brush and Tumbleweeds !!!!

Well, I can't say we had an especially fun day today. Unless you are a person who likes sagebrush and tumbleweeds, you would not enjoy the drive across the Nevada desert to Salt Lake City, Utah. Miles and Miles and MILES of nothing but desert. Nothing taller than 2 feet was seen all day!

It wasn't all that bad really, we talked and talked and was still free and enjoyed ourselves anyway.

Note to Penny at Avis car rental, I don't know what happened to the picture we took of you. I wanted to put it here on the blog but it must have gotten deleted or I didn't do something right with the camera or something because it is just not there......bummer.

Tonight we are in Salt Lake City and going to enjoy a bit of rest. We don't want to wear ourselves out the first week we are gone and we've covered a lot of miles in two days.

Note to Gail: forgot to include in yesterday's post that THOSE BROWNIES YOU SENT WITH US WERE DELICIOUS..... That was so nice of you to do, we really appreciated it.

We also forgot to tell you about a couple we ran into at dinner in Winnemucca last night. I swear if we had let her, this lady would have told us her entire life story! She and I made eye contact and she just walked over to our table and started talking. She told us about her divorce, her depression, and how she had some friends who insisted she go to the Elk's Lodge where she met "him" and pointed over to the table where her husband, clad in his best bib overalls cut off to be shorts, sandals with dark socks, scruffy full gray beard and long hair, sat. She was wearing her best bright blue cotton blouse with plastic cowgirl fringe across the bustline. Anyway, she said he came over to ask her to dance and that was all it took. He took her right over to meet his family and the rest is history. At that point, thankfully, the waitress brought our dinners and so our new friend went back to their table where they had their dinner of chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. Of course, I'm teasing here, they were both very nice people, it was just odd that she told us so much of her life in just a couple minutes!

Today we toured Elko Nevada looking for a ballpark named after an old baseball friend of mine, Jay Kump. Todd, you guys met him went you were there. Mom, you might remember Jay and Charlotte? Anyway, we only had to ask directions twice and we found it, Kump Field. We took some pictures since I have heard all about Kump field (from Jay of course) for so many years and never got to see it. Now I have.

Those were just about the only pictures we took today, it just wasn't one of those picture-taking-kind-of-days. I'm sure tomorrow will be better. We are heading north to Jackson Hole and into Yellowstone after that. From all we have heard, that should be a beautiful area to see.

OK, so come on bloggers, post some comments and let me know how we are doing. Let us know you are out there. We are having so much fun we wish everyone was here with us. Well, maybe not, but you know what I mean!!! LOL

Love to you all and another post tomorrow.........
Wayne and Colleen

Hello Winnemucca !!!

Hey Bloggers !!!

Here we are in beautiful downtown Winnemucca Nevada. Our day started with a delightful lady at Avis Car Rental. Penny, if you are reading this, we really appreciated all your hints, suggestions and mostly your excitement for our trip. It was fun for us to meet you and you started our first day off just right! I plan to email Avis and tell them how nice you were to us. Note to Cameron: Our new friend Penny at Avis gave us an upgrade on our reservation and we are driving a beautiful new Mercury Grand Marquis, blue in color. How cool is that!

After getting our car we went back to the apartment and began loading the 257 bags and suitcases we had packed. Well, actually it wasn't that many, but seemed like it when we started trouping downstairs with all of it.

We got over to Jim and Gail's in Lincoln around 10:15 or so and got to see Gail's mother Pat too. Gail fixed us a nice lunch and we had a great start to our vacation. They all wished us well and we left a little past noon.

Then, hold on to your hats for those that know me, you won't believe what we did next. We drove to Reno, pulled off on Virginia St. as usual, drove to the first gas station we saw, got gas and some snacks for the road and DROVE RIGHT ON OUT OF TOWN. That's right, we drove right through without darkening the door of even one casino!!! Hard to believe, I know, but true.

We drove through endless desert and finally arrived at Winnemucca where we will stay tonight. We had a nice dinner and are back in our room and a bit pooped for our first day.

Wayne got the pictures I took today downloaded from the camera, now I'm going to see if I can upload them to this blog. It's a little different on this laptop than on my computer at home so here goes!

More tomorrow.........thanks for reading.

2 More Days !!!!!

We are sure getting close now. Wayne is driving David to Sacramento today and I am going to do some preliminary packing. We are doing last minute laundry tomorrow, then it's to the road with us!

This morning I sent out a big email to a lot of friends and relatives with a link to this blog. I sure hope I can make this enjoyable for everyone.

I have to run a couple errands this morning but will wait until the fog clears and it gets a bit warmer. The weather here is just one of the most glorious things we love about San Francisco. It's really a great place to live, even with the high cost of living here.

Wayne and I want to meet lots of people on our trip and see lots of things and take tons of pictures. This is a trip of a lifetime for me, I've wanted to do this for so long. Just the freedom of it is wonderful.

Six More Days !!!!

OK, now it's getting down to the last few days and we have unearthed our suitcases from the bowels of the walk in closets that you can't walk into anymore. We have designated the love seat in the living room to be the spot to take things that we don't want to forget to take. You laugh??? What, you laugh at that??? Well, just let me say this, you will ALL be old someday.

Anyway, we have our suitcases, some miscellaneous canvas bags, etc. laid out and are starting to put things in there as we think of it. We have bought batteries for the cameras, gone to the bank for some extra cash, bought a brand new 2008 Road Atlas and just are getting more excited as each day dawns. The road atlas is really cool. It's large, spiral bound and has lots of great stuff in it. We thought that would be easier than dealing with individual maps of all the states we are in.

Jim and Gail loaned us a great GPS so that we can find our way around and hopefully not get lost! It was so nice of them to let us use it because if we had paid for one through the car rental, it was over $10 per day. Wow, would have cost a bunch. It didn't make sense for us to buy one either since we don't own a car and don't drive that often! So they really did us a big favor, thanks guys!

I hope everyone as subscribed to our blog with the email thing so you can keep up with us. Please post a comment from time to time also so that we know you are there.

10 More Days !!!

We discovered a camera that we forgot we had. It is a really nice Olympus C3000 digital camera. Now that is only good news because I can have my own camera on our trip. Why, do you ask, do I need my own camera? Well it's because I like to take waaaaaay more pictures than Wayne does and this way we can both have a camera (our other one is a Nikon) and I can freely snap away while Wayne stays more selective in his shots. There is an extra memory card too so that's really cool.

Today I managed to figure out how to make it possible for everyone to subscribe to our blog and get new postings via email. Lisa helped me by showing me how she did it, thanks Lis ! I hope I did it right. Mom, I will put your email address in myself so you don't have to do. I sure hope it works.

14 More Days!!

Well, we are getting more excited everyday. I have sent an email to all the kids and to Mom to let them know about this blog. I have to figure out how to send any new blog posts via email to everyone like on Lisa's blog. I don't know if this one does that. It's really cool when Lisa posts on her blog, I get an email of it. I'm still learning about all this so maybe I can still yet figure it out.

Nothing new on the trip today. Jim and Gail have invited us to stop at their house in Lincoln on the way out for lunch. They actually invited us to spend the first night at their house, but it's only an hour away and we wanted to eat up more road the first day. I think our first night will be in Reno but who knows?

16 Days and Counting!

Wayne and I live in San Francisco and are planning the trip of a lifetime for us. In 16 days we are leaving our little apartment, getting into our rental car and taking off across this beautiful country of ours with absolutely no itinerary or no restricting schedules at all. We are just heading east and going where we want to go and seeing what we want to see.

We do have one destination planned. We are going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to see Wayne's daughter Nicole. We will be there from the 16th to the 21st of September. Other than that, we have no plans.

I guess our first night will probably be in Reno as it is about a 6 hour drive. That's probably enough for the first day. We are getting so excited about our trip, just like a couple kids planning their first trip to Disneyland!

Our plan is to post in this blog each day as we travel so that those that want to can track our path. Also, we want to have a record of our trip for ourselves later on.

Only 16 more days !!!