Home

We're home. After eleven days on the road, over 2,500 miles, and a month in hotels, we're home. What a beautiful word that is!

Our journey west was not too bad, considering that we were driving two vehicles across the country in the middle of January. Our first day was our longest, and we crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains in light snow with warnings of an approaching winter storm!

The first of our "vacation" destinations was the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum in Kentucky. I'd long wanted to visit, and the entire family thoroughly enjoyed our time there! Seeing Noah's Ark life-sized was breathtaking, and the creative exhibits inside show how Noah and his family may have cared for the animals.

Pablo and I both remarked how refreshing it was to be in a place where we didn't have to defend our belief that God created the world in six days. Modern science regards such a belief as downright ridiculous, and it is lovely to be surrounded by like-minded people who don't regard your faith as stupid (or even "dangerous!").

After being snowed in for a day in Illinois (thank goodness we were taking hotel reservations one or two days at a time!), we headed west again. Crossing the plains of Kansas, the Rockies loomed ahead as we approached Denver. We stayed an extra day in Denver to catch our breath (we rented a two-bedroom AirBnB there so we'd have a little space to spread out), and visited a few local attractions -- the Denver Botanic Garden was beautiful in spite of the winter weather, and had lovely tropical displays indoors.

We'd read about Buddha's Hand oranges in Botany last year, and finally got to see some!

We also saw the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which had stunning displays of gems and minerals, as well as expansive dioramas of animals from all over the world. Not to mention a few mummies! Their fossil exhibits, of course, were rife with evolutionary perspectives and dating methods, and were a stark contrast to the Creation Museum.

Crossing the Rockies proved a bit terrifying -- at one point I was using windshield cleaning fluid every thirty to sixty seconds, just to see through the muddy slush that was constantly sprayed onto my windshield -- but we slipped through just before another winter storm hit. The views were stunning, and we saw dozens of skiers and even a few intrepid climbers preparing to ascend a frozen waterfall!

After Colorado came Utah, and suddenly the roads were almost deserted. Arches National Park was just a slight detour, so we stayed a night in Moab (feeling very Biblical) and spent a few hours the next morning exploring the park. It was free to enter, due to the government shutdown, and having the park almost entirely to ourselves made up for the chilly weather. Oh, the views! I didn't realize how beautiful Utah is.

If you like rocks, you should definitely visit Arches! *wink* It's our hope to take advantage of the numerous national parks out west over the next few years, so we were pleased to check one off the list straight away.

I was not prepared for the sheer size of the arches -- they looked small from a distance, but up close they are massive. Turret Arch, below, is 65 ft high! I found it quite dizzying to look up, especially with Scout's strapped-on bulk throwing off my balance.

Sadly, we couldn't explore as much as we would have liked due due to time, icy paths, and the limitations of four little ones ill-equipped for snow (we were making a cross-country move, after all, not taking a vacation). But what we saw was an incredible testament to the majesty of our Creator. What colors!

Eventually, we ended up on Hwy 50, the "loneliest road in America," and continue our journey. In Reno, Pablo humored me by taking us to the National Automobile Museum. Apparently the casino business is lucrative, because the hundreds of vehicles on display are just a fraction of Bill Harrah's original collection. How you could ever truly appreciate 1,400 cars is beyond me, but to each his own!

The spectacular ride below is a 1921 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, covered in copper. It cost the equivalent of $200,00 when new, and surely turned heads when it rolled down the street; even in the low museum lighting, it was dazzling!

All things, good or bad, come to an end. Having reached our destination, we settled in to the questionable comfort of a hotel room (albeit a spacious room with plenty of storage and a kitchenette) for several more weeks while we sorted out housing. But we were at our destination, and that reality was enough. We found a temporary housing situation that suited us very well, but just before we moved in, military housing became available in an unexpected way. Having been told it would take eight months to a year to get in, it was quite the shock. We have no interest in buying another home, and the military housing is quite nice. The sudden availability enabled us to move right in to our first housing choice, instead of moving from a rental house part-way through our tour. What a blessing!

Our belongings finally arrived, and the unpacking began. There are only a few boxes left (though also very few pictures on the wall! In time...), and it's feeling like home here already. The views are beautiful -- I can see a pasture full of cows and snow-capped mountains out my back windows. I haven't lived in a rural community in many years, and the laid-back pace is very appealing after several years on the East coast. We have all of our immediate needs available locally, and a bigger city for "diversions" not too far off.

I'll be sharing more about our new home in the coming days, but for now, we are home, and that's enough for us!