With God's protection--We Made It!

To Seattle and back--4150 miles in 2 weeks. We saw lots of God's beautiful creation.

Here is a brief itinerary--Moving van and Amanda's car on a trailer and a rented Alamo Toyota mini van (great travel van, round trip cheaper than one way) packed with Amanda's pets and all our travel stuff--we had dinner with the newly graduated Customs and Border Protection Officer Ben, his mom and step day, then off to Loveland/Ft Collins to Sun Valley/Ketchum--stayed a couple of nights with Kevin. As we left Ketchum Amanda took Kevin to the Boise airport so he could fly to LA to look at and buy a 2001 Tacoma, he stayed at couch surfing homes along highway 101 and met us in Portland. We arrived in Seattle/Renton, unloaded, did some tourist stuff (wineries, breweries, the locks). Mom and I went on to Portland, did the tourist visit stuff like Tillimook cheese city, Columbia River (very pretty), visited Walla Walla and some wineries and took the scenic route via McCall, Idaho to Boise. The plan was for Kevin to have lasik eye surgery, we would pick him up, stay a night, then visit the doctor the next day and travel on to Ketchum, BUT, the lasik laser was out of whack so the surgery was cancelled. No problem we did the Boise tourist stuff with Kevin as our guide, we had our best meal at Bittercreek Brewery.

To Ketchum we drove the route through Lowman, Idaho City that Kevin's cycling team is riding on Saturday--200 miles very pretty, but lots of mtn passes. We stayed in Ketchum a couple of days, celebrated mom's birthday, took a really nice long hike--saw not a soul--that's Idaho. Had some fun playing Nertz with Kevin and his roommate Fernando. Visited Salt Lake City on our way to stay with Uncle Larry in Grand Junction, visited sister Sharon and Bob and brother Ken and Judy, back to GJ so that Larry could buy the birthday girl dinner. I made out being the tag along on the birthday dinners. Arrived home safe and sound--thanks to Steve, Cindy and Kelsey our dog Sadie had a great time and I don't think she even missed us.

Great trip. but we miss Amanda. Ben and Kevin, already.