Excape From Death Valley!

We spent three days in Death Valley NP hiking in the canyons. Bill rode his mountain bike on the "20 Mule Team " Trail. The temperature hit ninty-three degrees in the daytime and was in the seventies at night. We visited the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 283 feet below sea level.
We are writing this from Bakersfield, CA.
Here are some pics.

Desert Wild Flowers

The park rangers at Joshua Tree told us that the wild flowers were unusually plentiful this year. Most years they hardly bloom at all. It is an incredible beautiful scene to see the stark rocks and sand of the desert accented with brilliant beautiful bloom of the cacti, agavi and other plants that live such a harsh existence.

We're in California!

We just spent five days in Joshua Tree National Park. This remote desert park has no water (and certainly no phone or internet). We had a great time hiking the trails and looking at the desert wild flowers which were in a rare full bloom.

I am writing this parked in the back of a convenience store (borrowing their wi-fi) in the rather bleak town of Twenty-nine Palms, CA. We are going to reprovision food, water and diesel and head up to the Mojave Preserve which is even more remote and wild than Joshua Tree. After that we plan to continue to Death Valley and then to Sequoia NP. After that we will go straight to the Pacific coast and perhaps stay in more civilized locations. I'll try to update when I can. Here's some pics.

ON OUR WAY 2008!

We left Raleigh Wednesday, March 12th and drove across North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and we are now in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We are travelling fast to get out to southern California where our "real" trip will begin. We have been through the southwest before and would love to spend more time here, but that will have to wait for another trip west. Bill is writing this from inside the truck camper at an "RV" park. We have internet access and cable tv and right now Debbie is doing yoga to a DVD - so we are really roughing it. Here's a photo of Thursday night's camp at Chickasaw State Park Tennessee. And the top photo is the sunset at Foss State Park in Oklahoma. Tomorrow, we plan to camp near the Homolovi Indian ruins in Arizona and then make it to Lake Havasu the next night. We plan to start our "real" trip in Joshua Tree National Park. We expect to spend at least three or four days hiking and camping.

We will try to update this blog whenever we have access to the internet. Sometimes we find wifi at an interstate rest stop, but the most reliable is to pull into the parking lot of a motel. Anyway, Bill misses everyone at TKD and we look forward to hearing from our friends and family. If you do not have our phone numbers or email address, just post a message to this blog.

2007 Trip West Detailed View

This is a more detailed look at our route throught the southwestern U.S. last year. The yellow labels represent everyplace that we camped overnight.

Our 2007 Trip Out West

This is an experiment to see how posting MS Streets and Trips maps look. This is the route we did last year.

Daughter Kate in Japan

Here's our daughter Kate with her friend Hiromi enjoying "Girl's Day" in Japan where she is stationed as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Kate has her own apartment and is learning to speak Japanese. On New Year's Day she and her friend Dan climbed to the top of Mt. Fuji. Kate is a Naval Academy graduate and recently completed her masters in mechanical engineering at MIT.