My husband and I ended up the trip that Dad and I had started.  After coming home to clean out the RV, he and I drove it to Mesa, AZ to turn it in and then stayed on a few days in the Phoenix Metro area to reconnect after having been apart for 6 weeks.  We took historic Route 66 and stopped in Seligman at the SnowCap where we had stopped 30 years ago.  We were sad to hear that the father had passed away, but glad to see that his son was keeping the legacy of this iconic home of the practical joke and community pride that serves its ice cream with laughs and one-liners where every inch is covered with jokes, photos, business cards and memorabilia – it is not to be missed. Then we traveled down Route 17 through Oak Creek and Sedona for classic vistas.  Once in Phoenix, we stayed in a nice hotel, had some nice dinners out, visited with his uncle and aunt and saw some of the sights:  a zoo/aquarium, olive oil plant, classic cars, WigWam Ranch resort, flower farm and candy factory.  He got randomly selected for an intensive and invasive search at the airport which caused some delays, embarrassment and stress at the end, but he went along with the flow and handled it better than I would have.  But, we barely made it on time for our flight and now we are home and planning for Thanksgiving.

As promised, here are some of our trip stats:

Total miles driven in RV or rental vehicles: 8039 (7162 of those were in the RV and except for the last 400, were driven by my Dad – is he awesome, or what?)

Total gallons of gas:  826.377 gallons (averaging $3.55/gallon and 10.28 MPG)

Total number of days in travel: October 4-November 12  – 39 days, and then another 5 days for the return trip to AZ: totalling 44 days (6 weeks and 2 days)

Number of photos taken – Dad took 10 Instamatic cameras worth (270) and I took 1850 which can be viewed on two INTERNET albums (Road Trip 2011 and Ringling Museum 11-4-11) on Snapfish. Total: 2120

Total Cost of spending all this quality time with each other and seeing some friends and relatives along the way while checking off bucket-list items: PRICELESS!

Thanks to those of you who read the blog and shared our trip – we hope that you enjoyed it with your morning coffee or late-night snack.  Now that it is over, I will probably give you some holiday recipes and share some of our family traditions.  If any of you have something special that you do with family and friends, or any good recipes that you want to share, send them to me and I will post them for you.