It Truly is About the People -Part 1 The Trip itself

I finally decided to write about our summer trip, but have also decided it needs to be broken up a bit to make it palatable. Part 1 is the trip to the destination of Washington State and the people we visited along the way. Part 2 will be the trip home and the people we visited and part 3 will be about the people themselves.

This past summer Diane and I took a two week car trip. We like seeing the country, I truly hate flying because now I get TSA'd every time at the airport, but that is a story that doesn't matter. We love seeing the country.

If we had been flying over the country we could have looked down on the fields of grain but instead, because we were driving, we were able to see this cross made of wheat at the Cathedral of the Plains in Kansas.

Our first night of travel we went from Dallas to Salina KS and spent the night. We talked with several people in my network but none were in Salina. We could have easily had a meal and a roof if we had diverted out destination some. So the next morning as we traveled along I-70 we saw the twin towers of the Cathedral rise along the landscape. Then the cool thing of car travel was a simple "let's go look."  This article written about the Church in 1972 tells a beautiful story about the Cathedral.

A few hours later we were on our way and heading toward Colorado. Talking (AKA tweeting) with people along the way when I wasn't driving of course, we tried to visit with people along the way. In some cases we were successful and in others schedules didn't work out. In Colorado as we skirted Denver, it was hard to tell what was smoke and what were clouds and it went on for miles. It was sad to think about all that was being destroyed.

In Wyoming we were surprised to see that interstates could actually be shut down due to snow. For us Texans, that was hard to imagine, so much snow that you block an interstate highway. Our problem in Texas is not being allowed to drive as fast as we want on the interstate. Signs such as this one added humor to the trip.

Through the northeast edge of Colorado near Estes Park which brought back memories and discussions of ISTE10 and the Estes Park family(You know who you are). Then into Wyoming and on to Utah.We made it to Utah in time to watch some high school baseball with Kelly Dumont and his family as his son was on the team. They won that game and went on to bigger and better things afterward.

From Utah we traveled through Idaho, Oregon and Washington to our home base so to speak courtesy of Julia Fallon. Julia was leaving for ISTE12 the next day and had offered us a place to stay while she was gone. Thus our home base in Washington State had been established.

While based in WA. we went to Yamhill and had lunch with Luann Lee, we went to Portland and had pizza at "derLauer house" with Tim Lauer, we spent an evening with Jennifer Dalby and her lovely family. Truly about the people and the experiences. Part 2 soon.

So much to learn and so little time.