After a one-niter at Liebra SRA ( a beautiful but deserted park) in southern Indiana, a visit with my cousins in Indiana and Denny's brother in southern Michigan, we are :
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!

THE STATS
69 days
7,762 miles
13 states
4 National Parks 
7 National Monuments
81 geo-caches 

THE GOOD AND THE BAD
Favorite state:Utah
Least favorite: New Mexico
Only 3 days of rain in 10 weeks!
We lost our last horse and one of our cats while we were gone😢😢

We've still got quite a few states to visit in the RV!

Looks like we need to do some summer traveling!

Lake of the Ozarks Park in Missouri is a gorgeous park on another dammed up river. Unfortunately, for some reason it is waaaay down. I don’t know if it is climate change or too much water being drained off for irrigation. From the status of all the states we have been in, I’d say drought and climate change is real. We have experienced above average temperatures and very little rain for almost the whole trip. Great for those of us on vacation but not so good for the farmers!

Those are not beaches, that is groomed former lake bottom!

The park was lovely and nearly deserted. We even had a campsite right on the lake!  

Night view from inside our RV.

On to Illinois, where we stayed at Eldon Hazlet State Park, another beautiful park on yet another dammed up river. This one was even more beautiful, and even more deserted! I kind of like camping off season where we have the whole park to ourselves!

This would be a great park for a family or friends reunion with proper planning (i.e. enough in advance to get adjacent cottages). There are 20 lakefront cottages for rent, each sleeping 4.  So cute and reasonably priced! 

You can see a sliver of the lake at the right of the picture.

See how deserted it is?

I bet this park is very busy in the summer. In addition to the huge lake, it even has a swimming pool!

We saw Dorothy with Toto, the tin man, the scarecrow and the cowardly lion the other day. We must be in Kansas!  

We have started our slow journey home. Although this has been a wonderful trip, I need to go home and hug my cats. In addition to losing our horse, one of our cats died suddenly and unexpectedly last week of unknown causes.

We still have a few sights to see along the way, of course! Kansas has nice state parks, mostly on lakes made from dammed up rivers. As in many of the states we've been in, dammed up rivers are the only lakes they have. We forget how lucky we are to have so many natural lakes in Michigan! I imagine Kansas parks must get a lot of visitors in the summer because most of the rest of Kansas looks like this:

We were the only ones in this campground even though it was 70+ degrees during the day. We did see a few fishermen sitting on the dam in the afternoon, though.

lakeside campsite

I can only imagine that there must have been a lawsuit at some time that inspired this sign. I doubt Kansans are that dumb! Denny and I saw the lake right away.😛

There have been no comments this year on our blog. I’m wondering if the comments don’t show up, don’t work or if nobody is reading it. Please let me know. Thanks!

After a quick stop to stand on a corner in Winslow Arizona,

 we went to a state park with Indian ruins but all we found were some pottery shards and quicksand!

Another obligatory photo op presented itself at Cadillac ranch. 

The paint is so thick on these cars that you can’t even tell they are Cadillacs anymore!

Next, we had a couple of exciting days. We found another gem of a park, Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Texas. It has the second largest canyon in the United States (after the Grand Canyon). Unfortunately, since it was spring break in Texas, there were no campsites available. The park suggested a private RV park right outside the gate where we ended up staying. At 2 am we awoke to flashing lights and sirens. We looked out the window to see the park office on fire and flames shooting into the sky! The police were cruising the RV park lanes and at one point we heard a loudspeaker. We saw several cars and motorcycles leave but figured the authorities would let us know if they wanted us to evacuate. Denny got dressed and walked outside but said he didn’t see many people other than firemen even though many campers lights were on. When the building was nearly gone and the fire had died down, we went back to sleep expecting to lose our electric at any moment but we never did. Denny said he heard other people return at 5 am. When we got up we were talking to some neighbors and I asked if they had left and he told me there was a mandatory evacuation that they had announced on a loudspeaker. I can’t believe they didn’t go door to door! We may have been the only ones who didn’t hear it and stayed! The office was a total loss but thankfully no one was injured.

The following day we hiked to the bottom of the canyon and back up. Denny wouldn’t hike the Grand Canyon with me so I settled for second best😁 

And, we hiked to the “Big Cave”

 and to the "Cowboy Dugout".

Apparently, Denny is too tall to be a cowboy!

That night we moved on to Amarillo since our park was now closed!

Flagstaff was pretty, but colder than Cedar, when we were there. We did go for a walk in a nearby park and were lucky enough to see several Kaibab squirrels. Unfortunately, Denny had decided not to bring his camera. At first, we thought the squirrel was a rabbit because the Kaibab squirrel has long tufted ears. And, he only exists in one spot in the world, in an area 20x40 miles on the Kaibab plateau. The web says they are very shy so I guess we were lucky to see them!
Searching for warmth, we moved south to Sedona. The red rock area is beautiful. We had a lovely Mexican lunch in downtown Sedona and bought a couple of t-shirts. The downtown area is very touristy and contains mostly eateries and shops. Since we are not shoppers, we headed a bit north to Slide Rock state park. I had always wanted to see this natural area and it didn't disappoint. The park has an area where you can slide down the smooth sandstone in the river. Unfortunately, the river was freezing so we didn't get to see anyone slide.

The following day, I dragged Denny on an 8 mile hike in the desert. Way too long to be out in the hot sun! We had expected some shade and less mountainous terrain so were hot and tired when we returned.
Continuing our archaeological journey, we visited Tuzigoot National Monument. The Sinegua Indians built these underground homes in a hill. The homes were entered from the top. For some reason, we excavated them so they are now seen from above.

Next up, Montezuma's Castle, so-named because when it was first discovered it was believed to have been built by the Aztecs. But, it too was built by the Sinegua, a peace loving farming people. This group of Sinegua, lived in mountainside homes and farmed the nearby lands.

Montezuma's Castle

Moving on to V bar V ranch, we were able to view petroglyphs from the Sinegua people. There was a docent on site who explained how the times when the sun hit the drawings told them when to plant, and the time of year. Very interesting and smart!

The staircase looking petroglyph was the planting calendar.

As we were moving east toward New Mexico, we happened upon another National Monument called Walnut Canyon which was never even on our radar. But, we had time so we decided to stop and have lunch there. We were glad we did because it was gorgeous! Another marvel by the Sinegua people, a huge complex of cliff dwellings. We were able to walk down to a stone island and enter some of the dwellings. Of course, this involved a huge amount of steps and being quite near the cliff sides but it was worth it. Even the climb back up! They lived on several different levels. Each level had many homes connected, sort of like brownstones!

Two levels visible.

Standing on the cliff edge.

Multiple levels of homes visible. They actually lived on five different levels!

Ignore the very white legs, the purpose of this picture was to show how short these people must have been.

One of the few places that Denny didn't have to duck.

A row of homes (note the doorways) on the mountain island. The path, of course, was paved by the NPS.

The mountain island, if you enlarge this picture you can see the paved paths around it and stairways and railings.

By the way, for all of you readers over 62, the Senior National Park Pass has always been $10. But, according to the park ranger, because of budget cuts to the National Parks recently, they will be going up to $80 soon. So, if you don't have yours, you better get it soon!