Sizzling Sunrise

Sizzling Sunrise
As the Valley awakens to a bright new morning...

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Adventure Tour

I finally re-established my link to my own Blog (LOL) so I think perhaps I should post an update. My side-kick Claudette and I began a "Tent Camping" tour of our great country on Dec. 11th 2010 from Kalispell, MT.

We left there with the hopes of spending the winter months touring, photographing and writing about the nice warm southern regions. When we left Montana it was 17 degrees F and about 30" of snow still on the ground. We made our way south to I-90, turned west to I-5, headed south for sunny California and what did we find? Foul weather followed us everywhere we went! We got to eastern Washington and hit a blizzard near the Columbia river all the way to Snoqualime pass then heavy rain all the way through Oregon and into Paso Robles, CA. We stopped to visit friends there and got one day of non-rainy weather out of 3 days spent there. Shortly after we left, they got hit with torrential rains causing bad mudslides and havoc. We never saw any sunshine until we hit I-8 east and got to El Centro, CA. Needless to say, tent camping was not even remotely possible yet. When we finally got to southern Arizona, we made camp and caught some beautiful photo images of sunset & sunrises. We stayed for 3 days there before the weather turned very frigid and also wet again. Onward we continued... New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, back to Texas, on to Louisana, Mississippi, Alabama, and finally Florida.

Well now, one would think that Florida (even in January) would be warm, sunny, wonderful... but NO, not this year! We got to an area just north of Tampa called Holiday, and the weather was freezing at night and not much warmer during the day. Yes, there was torrential rains too. We began to think we were "weather cursed" for sure. By this time, our travel funds were tapped-out since we could not tent camp and cook our own meals - things got way too expensive, gas was going up by the day and the crummy weather just kept on comming! We decided it was time to go spend some quality visitation time with Claudette's family in Kentucky & Indiana. Many of her relatives are elderly and in poor health ~ now would be an opportune time to visit and allow ourselves some recoup time as well.

Now along this journey, the weather pretty much dictated when and where we went; timing was everything! We left Florida just as it started to finally warm-up a bit, headed for Kentucky. It was an interesting and pretty drive but we didn't have the time or funds to see as much along the way as we would have liked to see. We went north on I-75 from Florida, through Georgia, Tennessee and into Kentucky to Harrodsburg. Naturally, the very next morning after we arrived - snow! Yes, we had now come full circle back to winter weather.

From that point on we have had to outrun snow storms, one after the other! With our funds running extremely low, I chose to return to Oklahoma where I know the area and lots of people. I needed to find some work/a paycheck in order to continue our journey. We got to Pryor, OK just in time for the worst blizzard in state history. We were actually accused of bringing it with us (LOL). Since being here in Oklahoma we have been buried by not one but two major blizzards. I give up... Come spring, we are headed back to Montana via I-40 across to California and back up the west coast. I am determined to see the beautiful coastlines that we had to miss because of rain and fog the first time around! With any luck, things will improve soon.

There ya have it folks - that's what I've been up to for the past two months. I've seen some amazing things, learned a great deal of our history and also learned to be more patient and enjoy life as it is handed to me. Has winter taught you anything new?