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After a full day at sea, our final stop was in Victoria, Canada at the Butterfly Gardens and world famous Butchart Gardens. It was after dinner, around 7pm when we docked but we had been experiencing very late sunsets all through Alaska. Actually, at 3am it just looked like dusk most nights. Canada of course is farther south but we felt like we would have enough time to enjoy the Gardens.

then on to the main attraction. Please remember, photos never do a place justice or capture the true experience you have in person. Neither Kyle or Rebekah expected the Gardens to be more than “nice” but they both said it was their favorite excursion.

The garden is 55 acres of the 130-acre estate. After the Sunken Garden came the rose garden with varieties I have never seen before and of course in full bloom.

Tomorrow morning, we would disembark the ship and start our long drive back to Ventura to spend Fourth of July with Muffin and Ward. Probably no fireworks because of the high risk of fires in California but I’m sure lots of good food and company.

As it turned out, we were not able to complete the rest of the trip and had to drive straight home because my brother got sick and needed us home. There will be other trips and lots more adventures in our future, I’m sure. In fact, now we have to start planning the graduation trip for Ryan in 2023. This will have its challenges too, because he has enlisted in the Marines and has to leave very soon after graduation.

By noon we were on our way onto our hotel for the next 7 days which just happened to be floating on the water. Kyle had been on a cruise ship before, but this was Rebekah’s first exposure to a cruise and the absolute humongous size of these ships and all that they include. Of course, as is usually the case, it took us several days to get our bearings straight and not get lost every time we tried to go somewhere on the ship.

Our first full day at sea, we arranged a special dinner at the Italian restaurant, Sabatini’s, including a special graduation dessert. When the waiter brought it out, everyone in the restaurant sang and congratulated the graduates. Little did we know this little feature would set them up to be celebrities for the remainder of the cruise. Everywhere we went, people would recognize them as “the graduates” and strike up conversations about their future plans. It also got us a lot of offers from people who wanted to be adopted as grandchildren.

On Monday, the ship docked in Juneau where we had arranged for a raft trip down the Mendenhall Glacier River.

The raft held about 10 people. The four of us sat next to each other with Jim and Kyle on the outside edges because they were the splash zones. As anticipated, a big splash hit on Kyle’s side and poured water into his waders which then meant he sat in water for the rest of the tour.

You can really tell these two children have been conditioned to smile for the camera from an early age. Me, not so much.

About 75 miles west of San Antonio, Texas on I-10, civilization as we know it comes to an end. There are no Rest Areas like you see in Florida or other eastern states, only Picnic Parks with no facilities or Parking Areas again with no facilities. The road does have numerous various animal carcasses in varying degrees of decomposition and a speed limit of 80 mph. We stayed right at 75 mph hoping to get a few extra miles out of our $4.55 per gallon gas and gradually watched the temperature rise to 111 by the time we reached Roswell.

The summer sunset and time change were both in our favor, so we were able to get out and about after checking in to the hotel even though it was 6 pm in San Antonio, it was only 4 pm here. We walked along Main Street to see that Roswell takes the UFO story of 1947 very seriously. Just about every shop in this historic area has aliens or flying saucers as part of its decor.

Even the McDonalds modeled its location after the UFO theme.

Alien faces on the street lights was an interesting touch.

Now it was time for dinner and we found a Mexican Restaurant with patio seating. After all, it had cooled off to 106 degrees and the humidity was only 7%. As you can imagine, we had the entire patio to ourselves.

No trip to Roswell is complete without a visit to the International UFO Museum on Main Street.

After you get passed all the cartoon characterizations of aliens and flying saucers, they present some compelling facts concerning the 1947 crash site coverup by the US Military. This combined with the recent admission by the military of actual sightings and renewed research, there is a lot to consider, including a credible report that there was another crashed “vehicle” containing 16 bodies taken away about 30 years ago and never seen or heard of again.

There is also credible proof of sightings around the globe especially a remote area of western Australia.

My advice………look to the skies and watch.

This was a good looking building that Jim insisted upon putting in blog. It was downtown Roswell and obviously does not go along with the Alien theme

After leaving the Balloon Fiesta, we drove to San Angelo, Texas to visit our oldest Grandson, Kyle, who just started college at Angelo State University.

He has turned out to be a wonderful responsible human being and true compliment to his mom and dad’s parenting skills. We had a great time touring the campus, visiting the local sights (although there are not many) meeting and spending time with his roommate and watching them practice their shooting. They are both involved in the Shooting Club and flip back and forth between number one and two on the team.

The Shooting Club where they practice has a pet deer that hangs out there named Pickles. Although he didn’t show up while we were there, Kyle sent me a picture.

On Sunday after church, we said goodbye to Kyle

and back on the road to see the rest of his family in Spring, Texas. We are so lucky to have two wonderful son-in-laws and the added bonus of both being good cooks. Kerry had fresh fried catfish waiting for us when we got there, complete with hush puppies, Cole slaw and fried green beans.

While in Spring, #2 Grandson talked Jim and I into buying the latest fad in shoes, Hey Dudes. This is probably the first time in our lifetimes we have been at the front end of a fad!

The past six weeks has been a wonderful adventure filled with sights from our fabulous country, visiting friends and family and enjoying this blessed life that God has given us. Someday, when we are no longer able to travel we will look back at our Blog Books and get to relive all these wonderful times all over again.

After we left Moab, we drove to Farmington, New Mexico with nothing particular in mind other than a place to stay before we could get a room in Albuquerque. It worked out well because we did some laundry, got caught up on the blog and just generally relaxed. We had no idea how much we would need it.

On Monday we arrived in Albuquerque and decided to check out how to get to the Fiesta field and the museum where we had scheduled a special event. All the people we spoke to said you need to leave your hotel early; like 3:45 a.m. early. The long lines of traffic getting into the field, the waiting lines to pay for parking, and even finding a good spot to watch after you got into the park made this crazy suggestion sound like good advice. After all, this event draws over 750,000 spectators to Albuquerque each year and somewhere between 800 and 1,000 balloonists. We were also advised to buy some inexpensive chairs because when you arrive that early you can’t stand until the first event starts at 6 a.m.

Dutifully we were sitting on the field, early with temperatures in the low to mid 50s and damp ground under our chairs. It didn’t matter that we each had four layers of clothes on, it was still cold and damp. The instructions were to go anywhere you like and if you are in the way, the balloonists will tell you to move. So we just picked a spot, got some hot coffee and donut holes and waited.

One by one the Dawn Patrol balloons started to come to life not too far from where we had set down our chairs. After these 7 balloons were inflated, they lifted off into the dim sky right over our heads and then circled the field.

Suddenly the field came alive with balloons all around us unfolding, filling with air, and testing flamers. In every direction there were balloons to see including a Smokey the Bear about 10 feet from our chairs. Then around 7:15 they all started to lift off in waves coming from every direction. The Coke balloon lifted off with the American flag flying at its base in the barely sunlit sky while the Star Spangled Banner was performed. Not sure if it was a wave a patriotism or just a chill but I know I reacted.

These are some of the balloons we saw:

After about 300 or so balloons were in he sky they began a competition to test maneuvering skill requiring the pilot to drop what appeared to be a beanbag with a long tail onto two targets in the field as they flew over. There was an X and a triangle. A few of the more experienced pilots got pretty close to the ground while others seemed to be way too high. Then after dropping their beanbag, they would land down field which was also fun to watch. There people on the ground that have to grab the ropes to try to stop it, which I’m sure is harder than it looked. These balloons were really traveling fast even though they didn’t look it.

Tomorrow is another early day, but not as early. The crowd is not as large as usual because of Covid and neither is the number of balloonists, which was great with us. But as Jim said several times today, more than two balloons seems like a lot to us.

Today was our day to visit the last of the scheduled National Parks, Canyonland.

Arches National Park is 60 square miles large and Canyonland National Park is 600 square miles but that didn’t mean we were going to do 10 times more hiking. There are only 4 trails marked as “easy” and one of those, according to the Ranger, is lots of steep steps. The scenery is totally different, though, with lots of canyon views that were awesome and reminded us both of the Grand Canyon. Bear in mind the camera never captures what the eye can see, here are some pictures.

In the evening, we went on a boat cruise onto the Colorado River for a light show reflected on the canyon walls with narration and music.

We learned a few interesting facts about the area like Utah gets its name as a spinoff of the Ute people that lived in the area. Also Moab maintained a small population until the 1950s when the largest uranium mine in the world was discovered here. Once the demand was diminished, it went back to its former sleepy town until the 1980s when the Arches National Monument was converted to a National Park and now brings 1.5 million visitors to town each year.

We also learned that it takes about 10,000 years for one of those arches to develop and how to recognize the early formative years of one developing. Now when we drive around we point out baby arches developing.

This was the last Park on the schedule and we are now headed south again to Albuquerque for the 50th Anniversary of the Balloon Festival.

Update Note: If any of these canyon pictures look like something you’ve seen before, its because the famous final scene in the movie Thelma and Louise was filmed going off one of the cliffs right here in Moab.