[4RE KLR]

Whew, Im back.

Now I hope you enjoyed the piece and some what correctness of spelling over the past few weeks but now we can wake this place back up..

We traveld to Colorado (Pikes Peek was CLOSED!) did everything arond there and decided to move on.

We named the Royal Gorge, "The Royal Gouge" It cost $ 70.00 to see it. We had seen it before but the kids needed to see it so we got the shaft, I am sorry, we saw the bridge.

Off the Yellowstone. If you have never been there it is beautiful. The last time we went (pre kidoes) was one week before the big fires in the mid eighties. The parks has not recovered very well. Hundreds of thousands of acres are still baren as if the fire just happened. NO reforestaion has been implaminted. There was another fire in 2003 that destroed over one hundred and fifty five thousand acres. Not in the same area as the first fire. The roads were closed due to major rock slides from the winter snow melt and existing snow in the mountains. Yes we saw old faithfull do its thing. That is really a site to see if you have not seen it. The Ranger was telling us that since Mt St Helens eruted in 1980 that the regularity of "old Faithfull" had changed. It now does it thing every 92 minites (sp). Before it spewed evey 28 mins. You can look up old faithfull on the web and seeit live from your desk. I will find the link and post it later. The park was still very nice and pieceull. No bears, loads of elk, moose and buffalo.

My daughter ask about why Mt St Helens could change the way Old faithfull was "regular". I had no idea the real answer so we decided to find out.

Off we went to Mt St Helens. Yea I know it is a long way from Yellowstone. But what the heck. We were having a blast and the drive was not a bad drive so we took off. Mt St Helens is located in beatuful country. We spent the whole day on the mountain. WOW. That was a BIG ERUPTION. When the land slide stared it was the largest landslide in the history of the world. The lake that was close by,I can't think of the name now. The floor of the lake rose 300' above the surface of the old lake. So it rose almost 400' up. The debries was traveling 390 miles and hour for 17 miles from the mountain. Trees with a diamiter of over twenty feet were shreded into toothpiks in seconds.

We decided to come down the Oregon coastline and see all the lighthouses. Carrie, my wife loves lighthouses so we went on some lighhouse tours. very interesting way of life for those folks.

We came down the caostline into Redwood natl forest. Now that is a beautiful place. The coast on one side and thousand year ols redwood trees on the other.

Down into Yosimte natl forest. The mountains in Yosimte are very nervracking to drive in. We spent alot of time looking at the wonderfull views. It is amazing how big the trees are. We had seen nothing yet.

Sequia Natl forest is by far the most beautiful place we visited. The trees are several thousand years old and are over 150' around at the trunks. Some are almost 275 feet tall. We saw all the really large trees and the largest living thing on earth, a tree. It literally takes your breath away to stand in front of it. Two hundred feet off the ground it is still over one hundred feet in diamiter. It has branches larger than most trees in Texas. What a site to behold.

from there we headed home. Went though Las Vgas, Roswell, Carlsbad Caverns,Grand Canyon and just saw the country side.

It was a wonderfull trip. All told 5,885 miles on the old truck. No problems at all. Killed one bird, (it was his fault I swear), and about seven hundred million bugs. We had to wash the truck three times while on the road.

Yes we saw Mt Rushmore and alot of other things. I can't put them all in here it would take two weeks to read it all. We had fun, I enjoyed the kids and now it's back to reality. The grass is two feet tall inthe yard so that is todays plan.

I'll post some pictures later in my gallery. We have some really neat pictures of my f250 in a tree.


Kristen:
Talkie bird...... I resemble that remark!

BTW: I thied to spell check and fix some typoes but when I do it types over the next letter. So I can't fix the spelling, sorry.