Roger's Summary

ROGER’S SUMMARY
It is hard to believe the trip is almost over – it was too short. It would have been better to have a few more months, but the money has been gone a long time ago so I’d better get back to work. It is a summer I would not want to give up. I would have to agree with the other’s assessment of the favorite places, and the ones we could have missed such as Branson, MO. The natural beauty was the best. Another month to do the exact same thing with more time to hike and explore would have great, and another month or two to go to Alaska – well I do have some things lined up for after retirement now – the next opportunity I will have to do something like this. It was anticipated for many years and now it is over. I was going to do a list of statistics, but since Travis stole that idea I will simply add to his list.

Number of family arguments: one, two, three, four – well lets not count those
Number of arguments I lost: zero (there is one benefit of doing the web updates and having the last word)
Number of great family times: too many to count (it is nice that those were many, many time greater than the first item on the list)
Length my memories will last: until death or loss of mental capabilities (some would say that is not that far away)
Number of family votes: that would be hard to count, there were many.
Number of TIE family votes: Many (Often the count was a tie and many times when a vote was counted it was zero to zero. Sometimes we were too laid back! For the first vote if one didn’t want to vote they didn’t have to, but the rule was if there was a tie we voted again and that time everybody had to vote. If the vote ended up a tie again then the person “running the vote” could decide how to break it. They could break it anyway they wanted to and some creative methods were devised. The problem was a tie was often purposely made by some members of the family to see how it would be decided. That caused some when running a vote to make everybody close their eyes.)
Number of nights spent in a Wal-Mart parking lot: didn’t count but a frequent stop. (It is amazing how many people use them, since Wal-Mart encourages it. We never camped alone and there were up to 20 campers parked with us sometimes. Sometimes there were even signs posted saying “no overnight camping by order of city ordinance” that they were forced to put up, but it didn’t stop anybody from using it and it was never enforced)
Number of nights we got kicked out of “camping location”: one (we got booted out one time in Vancouver, BC in a grocery store parking lot. I wasn’t surprised since there were signs there saying a 3 hour limit was strictly enforced, but that was the only time. I expected more of those. We went down the street to a Costco parking lot and spent the rest of the night. We slept in store parking lots, motel parking lots, residential streets, or other remote pull-offs right along roads. We got campgrounds when we wanted to stay a few days or use the facilities, but apart from the times we were down for truck maintenance we used very few campgrounds. The ones we did use were normally in National Parks. One can save a lot of money by being completely self-contained.
Number of rainy days: we couldn’t remember any until the last week or two. The weather was great, but very dry in the west.
Things we wasted money on and did not use: TV, except for the times Travis and I were dealing with maintenance on the truck and the others were stuck at the campground. CB radio, hardly ever used and a waste of money. Walkie Talkies.
Things we didn’t use or do as much as we thought we would: games, bikes, VCR – we only saw two movies, (not having the expected rainy days was part of the reason), campgrounds, campfires, eating out, extra tourist-trap activities, listening to books on tape (we have one from home we didn’t even listen to – the time driving was filled with other things), reading (me only)
Things we did or used more than we thought we would: Inverter we installed to keep computers charged while driving, laptop computers, WIFI, MAINTENANCE!!!
Things I will remember: great discussions, fun times
Things we wished we would have done more of: games, hiking, biking – (the time was just too short to get it all in)

All summer Nicole has been telling me what I said at the beginning of the trip about her being more of a home-body was not true. She has convinced me – she did not get homesick, and I guess she is not a homebody. She was not ready to go back anymore than anybody else – so I take that back.

The trip is over – Boo Hoo – now back to the grind.