Hubby and I completed the 2014 Summer Sojourn and are now back at home. Being gone from home for 4 months, summer passed in a whirlwind for Hubby and me. I’m glad I kept a journal of our travels because otherwise, I might forget something. We saw so many places that it’s almost a blur. All across the west, we visited 11 national parks or national monuments and 3 state parks. I love visiting those places because in them, there are amazing scenery and historic sites. How lucky we are that someone had the vision to preserve them for us to see and enjoy!
We did a lot of things, like hiking, biking, shopping, swimming, and visiting people and museums of every kind. I love museums and visited as many as I could. We met a lot of many people and we got to be with family which was sweetest of all.
So here we are, now at home, and in the season of yellow leaves and baseball playoffs. Time slips by so quickly.
Our Taj-Matrailer has worked out very well this summer, keeping us warm and dry on rainy and snowy nights and sheltering us from the Wyoming winds. Several times Hubby remarked that he was glad he was in the pop-up trailer and not in a tent. I was glad for that too. The heated mattresses were really nice this past week when we stayed near Moran Junction just outside Teton National Park and the first snows of the season were coming down on the mountains around us. Our experience at Teton was the same as our earlier experience at Glacier National Park: so cloudy we couldn’t see the mountains. The Tetons made a slight appearance toward sunset when we drove by Jenny Lake, but otherwise, we never saw them.
We drove through snow on Teton Pass. We stopped at the top for a little bit to enjoy the scenery and people-watch. Lots of people stopped to throw snowballs and take photos. We reached sunny skies the farther west into Idaho that we went. By the time we got to Boise, it was sunny and nice again.
I arrived at our house ahead of Hubby so I could get the garage door open for him. When I walked in the house, I felt elated. I was home! Tears of joy ran down my cheeks because I was in my house, with my stuff. Stuff. There’s that word again. As I said in a previous post, I thought it would be easy to give up my stuff, but after a summer of living in other people’s houses, using other people’s bathrooms, sleeping in other people’s beds, and such, it feels so good to be back with my own things. Maybe it’s not so much that I missed my stuff, but I missed the ability to shape my own environment the way I like it. We arrange our living quarters to suit us. That’s what it makes it home. And I’m glad to be back in mine for a little while.