The Midwest and Mountain States
Parts 1 & 2 (2022 Trip)
(Coming in 2024)
Our second “Long Way Home” trip had us covering some 25,000 miles across 21 states, focusing on the Midwest and Mountain States.
We visited over 30 stunning national parks, monuments and historic sites, including Utah’s “Mighty Five.”
We drove over mountain passes and crossed the Continental Divide (multiple times). We drove “the Million Dollar Highway,” a trail with steep hairpins down a canyon, and had a picnic at the point where Thelma and Louise drove off the cliff.
We visited many iconic bucket list sites, from Mount Rushmore, to a chapel in the red rocks, to the spot where President Kennedy was shot.
We saw fun roadside attractions, Prada shoes in the desert, art, and so many towns, from charming little mountain towns, to Old West mining towns, to bigger cities and Chicago.
We walked in the footsteps of Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, Doc Holiday, and the Sundance Kid.
We climbed through the inner and outer domes of a State Capitol building.
We attended an International Balloon Fiesta with 650 hot air balloons and “pigs flew” when I went for a ride on a flying-pig-shaped hot air balloon.
We saw ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, mines, the border wall, amazing cacti, a rodeo, a longhorn cattle drive, natural hot springs, canyons and hoodoos, white sand, coral pink sand, red rocks, and both the geographic center of the USA and of the Lower 48, and we went boating on a disappearing lake. And so much more.
