The End

So, now we are back home. We had a relaxing time in Lebanon (not The Lebanon) with Kristas mother, her husband and their new dog. It was nice to spend a day away from the car again before the final leg home. The drive through Kansas to Illinois was fine, I maintain that Kansas is not as boring as Oklahoma. Funny thing, probably a half dozen of the towns we drove past in Kansas were childhood homes of astronauts. I suspect that once you gain enough momentum as a child to break out of the heart of Kansas it's difficult to stop you and you end up breaking gravity too.

There were a lot of roadside attractions listed on signs by the interstate. We didn't stop at any of them, I'm a little sad now though that we drove right past Prairie Dog Town. I doubt we'll be travelling back that way, I'll never get to see that live six-legged steer.

We had to drive through St Louis to get to Lebanon. It was a little stressful. We hit the city during rush hour, there was a lot of road construction and the dog was desperate to go potty (did I mention that she had diarrhea?) I was terrified that she was going to drop a runny mess in the car but there was nowhere to stop. We made it to a McDonalds parking area just in time, she let go right next to the car.

After our day of rest it was time to get home. Let me just tell you that without any doubt the drive from St Louis to Milwaukee is the most boring 300 miles we have done all trip. It's flat and uninteresting the entire way. We clicked over 5,000 miles just as we re-entered Wisconsin.



We managed a little shy of 27 miles per gallon (for English readers the gallon here is a little smaller) which I suppose is pretty good. We had been keeping up a pretty good speed through most of the country.

Max altitude we reached was a little over nine and a half thousand feet somewhere in Wyoming, though I forget where exactly. Lowest was about 300 feet somewhere in Illinois.

Highest temp was saw was 96F somewhere on the road in Utah, lowest was about 36F in Wyoming and was the same time we saw snow. Those are day time temps.

I think we went to 10 different states, though we possibly didn't even stop the car rolling in Idaho.

It rained only a couple of days, once on our way to the Badlands and then again in Arizona.

Would we do it again? Yes, probably though not exactly the same way. It'd be nice to leave the Midwest by aeroplane and rent a car somewhere else.

We definitely will go back to Yellowstone sometime, I think we barely scratched the surface of things to see there. We'd like to go back to Colorado Springs also, we saw just enough there to pique my interest. We wouldn't stay again at the Clarion Hotel there on Bijou Rd though. I've heard good things about Santa Fe but we weren't there long enough to become interested. The Grand Canyon, I think I would go back there only if I had enough money to do some activities, maybe a helicopter ride, or an ATV trek, or a mule ride down the canyon, otherwise it's just standing and looking at a big hole.

My favourite driving day, it was probably the first half of the drive from Jackson Hole to Beaver. It was just a fun drive through lots of small towns, there were a couple of high passes and the road was almost empty. The drive from Beaver to the Grand Canyon was good too, mostly through desert on mostly empty roads. Finally the drive through Sedona and Jerome in Arizona on route 89A, I'd very much like to ride that on my motorcycle.

The car was fine. As I said before it was a little underpowered going over those huge hills, but we wouldn't have to worry about that here in Wisconsin. Would I buy one? No, I don't think I would. It was a Subaru so it does have all-wheel drive that would be useful here in the winter. Other than the AWD though it does seem to be a little overpriced.

And that really is about the end of this blog. Laundreary to be done today and then back to work tomorrow. Thanks for following along,
Gareth and Krista