Wisconsin

Today sarah and i are in wisconsin. We are at america's largest water park in Wisconsin Dells. We stayed last night at a cheap motel around town. We are really excited for the day at the park. Sarah's back is feeling better but still little sore. So I am a little more excited than she is. We will take it easy don't worry. After this we're headed up niagara falls tonight hopefully we'll make it there by morning. We are definatly gonna have to do some driving tonight. I am at the park in the parking lot right now looking at a giraffe it's magical. I think someday i would like to own a giraffe.

Seattle

Sarah, Becca, and I had a great time in Seattle. We stayed with My (ricks) cousin charlie, his lovely wife Mellisa and their adorable young boy Jack. We really enjoyed catching up with Missy and chuck. The girls of course were going crazy over the baby. There house is beautiful and was a very comfortable night sleep. We got to see chuck looking all handsome in his flight suit...
Thanks again for housing us everyone!






Our second night in Seattle was spent in the city with friends of the Webb's. Julie and her mother Dotty and her husband Matt. We were able to see a lot of the sites. Space needle, pike market (where they throw the fish), and a few other sites around the city.
We had a nice dinner with them... See Pics for visual evidence.
This picture of Sarah, Becca, Myself, and Julie is when we were video chatting with the webbs. Never had done that before.. Pretty fun.

Don't worry we will be putting up more picture from Seattle and the rest of the stops.

Excitement in Wyoming

Hello all! This is Weeb from my cousin's house in WY. We arrived here yesterday just in time to take a walk across some of their property before dark.

It is beautiful here! Sukey and her husband Rod have a wonderful many hundred acre ranch with a herd of 200 head of beef cattle, 5 dogs, and about a dozen horses.

We got up at 6 this morning to go on a trail ride across the property before it got too hot here (one of the things Becca and I were MOST excited about for this trip.)

Unfortunately things didn't go as planned... Sukey had warned us that her and her husband hadn't been riding much recently and that the horses might be "fresh". So we put Rick on the quietest horse and Becca and I were prepared to deal with fresh horses... or so I thought.

We were mounting up right outside the barn and I was sitting on my horse waiting when he suddenly started bucking and I was SO close to saving myself but went off the side and landed on my lower back slamming my head into the hard ground.

I can't give a first hand description of what happened next because I was knocked out... but apparently Rick jumped off his horse to get to me and Becca called 911 because I was unconscious and making scary noises. An ambulance came and I don't remember anything until I was half-way to the hospital (although apparently I was awake and talking before that, just disoriented).

I've had both a CT of my head and x-rays of my lumbar spine because I have a pretty good bump/scrape there, and everything looks fine! I'm going to be pretty sore for a couple of days... but it could have been a lot worse!

It was a pretty exciting day! And not a total waste... SInce I passed out on the couch when we got back from the hospital Rick got to go on a "man afternoon" with my cousin's husband and they are off shooting prairie dogs (sure sounds like something he will love!)

Love to all! We'll see you in a little over a week!

P.S. sorry about no pictures! Haven't made it to WalMart yet to get the missing connection cord for our camera! Be patient! They will come!

Red Wood

This is a picture of one of the massive stumps that scattered the forest. The redwoods were bigger than I imagined.

The Oregon Coast

Sarah, becca, and I camped along the coast of Oregon. The Campsite was about a half mile away from the beach. The beach had some fun jetty that we walked down. It was really cool. The jetty went out at least a quarter mile. Towards the end of the jetty the rocks got bigger and more fun to climb on. But the girls did not enjoy that as much as I did.
We spent the night relaxing and were in bed by ten. We are getting really good at cooking over a open fire. The key is two things.... 1. Flame control so nothing burns. 2. Heat control depending on the dish. We will master outdoor cooking by the end of the trip.

Becca has been having fun. She has helped with the driving, and has been a joy to have around our campsite. She is new to the long drives and likes to read every sign we pass. I hope she gets bored of this quickly. It is kinda dangerous to be reading every bilboard while driving. But luckly she is a very safe driver.

We are all having a great time. MIss you all.
Special shout out to Liz Sawyer.. (Mother) Miss you.

red wood forest

We stayed last night in the redwood forest in northern california. We finally got a chance to use our crock pot cast iron. We made pinto beans. Their word giant slugs that were over 5 inches long. Pictures and details will come soon

A day of hiking

this was about 12,500. feet





Some more pictures from colorado

River fishing

A couple days in the sun on the river. Doing some fishing relaxing and long daydreams.





This is the Taylor river we fished on. I got to drive the boat. Those pictures will come.

Catch-up: Colorado

Hi Guys! Its Weeb from San Francisco!

Before we got here we spent 3 days in Colorado... which was amazing! We spent one afternoon in the sun on Crested Butte ski mountain for a Bluegrass festival. The weather was perfect and the music was so good!

The picture below is the view from Jaclyn and Ryan's house in Colorado! Not too bad!



Ryan is a professional fly-fishing guide on the Gunnison river and he took us out on his boat for 2 float trips! We lost a lot of flies... and the fish weren't really biting... but we had sooo much fun! :o)



We also went on a hike up to a mountain top lake! It was like glacial blue! The weather got really spotty while we were hiking! Very stormy... but it passed us by! Crested Butte is the wildflower capital of Colorado! We saw some really pretty flowers!

San Francisco

Hello all of our loyal followers. This is Rick from Kate Peterson's house in San Fran, Cali. This is day two for Sarah and I to be here. We picked Becca up at the airport this morning.
We have seen some of the sites around the city.. The Golden Gate Bridge, some parks, and Baker's Beach that overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge. Tonight I think we are going out to get sushi which we are all really excited about.

Becca is sleepy right now because of here long flight out here... I just keep telling her to stop her complaining.

Kate's house is very nice. It is on the outside part of the city. Man the hills here are steep.

Becca says hi to everyone and a special shout to mama Webb.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for the northern coast of cali, eventually up to Oregon. We will be camping in the Redwood Forest tomorrow night.
We are going to be making pinto beans which I am personally really excited about. They will take several hours to cook and we will be cooking them in our dutch oven. Anything slow cooked with salted pork is alright by me.

The camera is still missing the connection to the computer. But we are working on it.

A beautiful Monday drive

Hi all,
We are currently driving through Utah and will be in Nevada soon. The drive has been sooo scenic today. Absolutely beautiful!

Colorado was amazing... We fit a lot into two days and we are sad to leave. We will post all about it with pictures soon!

Car update: while my car was sitting in jaclyn's driveway a back tire went flat! Of course this wasn't noticed until Sunday afternoon and no shops were open to get it fixed!! The spare is working well and we plan on getting the tire fixed in NV!

It's an adventure!

Love to all

Today was a long but fun day. Sarah and I got up around 5:00 and started out on our 12 hour trip across the lovely state of Oklahoma. The landscape was very pleasant. Beautiful farm land. The road at some points seemed to go in a perfect straight line for up to a dozen miles.

I was really excited to see a number of animals today.
Fox, Mule deer buck and doe, three female elk, a couple pronghorns antelope. We also saw prairie dogs. A couple young ones even ran right out in front of our car. Lucky for them, they both made it across the road safely.
We did hit a tire in the road however. We were on a one lane highway with steady traffic on both sides. And all of a sudden a truck tire comes out from underneath the car in front of us and we had no choice but to go over it. It hit our undercarriage pretty hard so we stopped and checked it out. Everything seemed to be okay. The car is still running well. Everyone should keep there fingers crossed.
The landscape change drastically when we hit New Mexico. There was a lot of red rock hills and mountains. I was keeping a watchful eye for a wild cat.. Like a mountain lion, bobcat. I did not see anything like that though... Maybe in a future state.

Colorado is absolutely beautiful. Our final destination for the day is crested butte. The last 50 miles of our journey was a road that ran along the Gunison river.

I am currently blogging at 9000 feet. We are at the bottom of about 4 different mountains. Bob and Jim you would love this. We are in prime elk country. Sarah and I are here with her friend from Tufts Jaclyn. Tomorrow we are going to a local ski mountain to watch a blue grass festival. We are very excited..
I am now going to make everyone in mass really jealous. The temp is in the 40 degree area at night and 85 during the day due to the elevation. We are going to sleep well tonight. We have a double bed, where for the last two nights we had to sleep in a twin. It was way to small for the two of us.
Miss everyone talk to you soon.

Missouri

Yesterday we drove from Illinois to meet my Dad's friend Everett Brodie. He was able to take us around the farm that my father grew up on and also gave us a guided tour of the town where he and my father went to high-school, Goodman MO. It was very fun. We were supposed to camp on the creek that night however mother nature didn't cooperate and there were thunder storms and flash flood warnings, so we continued on to Oklahoma.




Everett had beef cows and builds tractors that he pulls every Friday night at state fairs and such. Very cool. :o)

illinois camping

Camping in Illinois was a lot of fun. There was no disgusting green blue algae. We were able to finally do some swimming and some fishing. The water was cool and the fish were a plenty. I caught about a dozen or more five pound fish. See the pictures for one of the monsters.
The campsite is right on a lagoon off Carlye Lake. the water is pretty. There was very little bugs which made it easy to cook tacos in our cast iron right over the fire. We have been doing half gas stove half campfire stove.
We are getting very proficient at setting up and down camp. We can break down camp and load the car in about 20 minutes. And set up camp in about the same time. Everything has a place in the car. It is shocking to see the camp set up and think that it all fits in Sarah's small car. (the car by the way has been performing great and is surprisingly spacious).
We are going hiking.. Talk to Y'all soon.

Catch-up: The First Day

Hi All,

We are comfortably at Catie Hennessy's house in Oklahoma and here we have internet and time to catch up on our trip so far! We have had a really good time. On Monday morning we got up promptly and set out on our 9 hour drive from Alder Creek, NY to Ohio. We drove through a lot of vineyard in the finger lakes region of NY and Pennsylvania. A lot of grapes... It was so pretty!



Ohio was fun, and our campsite was very pretty and overlooked Grand Lake. It was really hot... like Mid-90s, which was perfectly fine while we were in the AC filled car. When we got to Grand Lake we were excited about a swim!! Unfortunately there was a Blue-Green Algae bloom at the lake and NO SWIMMING ALLOWED! The water at our beach was the color of MiracleGro... gross. Needless to say we opted for a cold shower. We did take a drive around the lake and a walk up a fun little canal. Over all a good time. :o)

sorry for the delay

We are now in Missouri. We are having a blast and have not had a chance to blog. We will catch up on the last couple days soon. We have had great weather.
Currently we are driving to Bob Webb's old farm where we are camping on a creek.I am hopeful to find a snake. Rattler hopefully.
The view has been great except for Ohio which is just flat endless farm lands. The landscape here in Missouri is beautiful. Except for the hundreds of billboards advertising hole in the ground buildings. Firework stands, caves, jesse James wax museum. Exc.... hundreds of miles in advance.
I had my first white castle Burger and it was worth the 24 year wait... where have u been all my life white castle.

Wow, Steve is really helpful!

Yes, yes he is.