And the trip begins!

As mentioned in a previous blog, we recently took a road trip to Boston. Barely out of Missouri (about 20 miles into Illinois), an Eagle, feeding on road kill at the side of the road, flew up into the grill of our truck. It was a shock, a hard hit and an emotional experience. I mean, who wants to kill an eagle? The top picture shows the damage to our truck, which will require a new grill and a new bug shield (which we installed right before our Colorado trip). All in all, it should be about the cost of the deductible that we have. We were rather stunned when the bird hit, but did have the sense to call the Conservation Department to report the accident. After spending close to an hour at the scene, the agent called to tell us that we could continue on our way and that he would call us with questions. A few hours down the road, we called him and found out that the bird had expired. I know you may think I am making this up, but the rest of the trip was full of images and reminders of that eagle (John Denver on the radio singing "The Eagle and the Hawk", Eagle Distributers on a truck, the Eagle Inn, and on and on and on). Everywhere we looked there was an eagle!

Anyway, in the bottom picture is our grandchildren seeing us off the night before the trip. As you can see, each one picked out a little plastic character to accompany us on our trip. They enjoyed the book we put together about "BobbleHead" in Colorado, so we are on the hook to do one for this trip too. I will post more photos in the next few days. My computer is slow and it takes a long time to upload the photos.

I will add that after 3000 + miles, 11 days, 6 different hotels, 9 states and 5 gained pounds later, we are glad to be home!