Rocky Mountain High and points west.........

Moab Utah

I am having some trouble with the BLOG website from Google. So the photos in this posting are out of sequence and I was not able to move them around to make sense. So just endure! I am sorry.Sierra Nevada Mountains on the way to Bishop and Mammoth Lakes, California.

Fairly entertaining door repair at Pete and Michele's home !!!!!!!The boys at work.

Lisa and Tom and Eric with the new Buddhist bell that has an extraordinary sound........

No place quite like it - Mendecino California - The county is the largest producer of "pot"!

This King Seal was on the beach in Cambria, California along with hundreds of others - March is the end of their winter "hibernation". Only the babies and older males were still there. The mothers had left some weeks before.

Oil wells in Nevada - some sight to see.

Las Vegas

Utah desert.

It is hard to imagine that the last BLOG we posted was in January 2010. By that time we were in Aspen having a wonderful time. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Aspen - so much so that we are returning next winter - same house for January , February and March.

In March we packed our skiis and boots and "Yak Trax" away in our storage and left for a trip through the Western USA. Our plan was to see family and friends for the entire month. We did just that. What a trip. We went from Aspen to Minturn to Green River,Utah to Las Vegas to Paso Robles to Carmel to San Jose to the coast of Northern California and Oregon to Seattle, to Bend Oregon, to Dublin ( San Francisco - again) to Southern California, Newport Beach/Costa Mesa to Bishop California, to Mammoth Lakes then across the desert of Nevada to Ely, to Moab Utah, to Grand Junction to Palisades ( a whole peach story to follow) and back to Minturn, Colorado. As you may or may not remember we started driving (around December 15th,2009) from Virginia after we bought a car. When we finally stored the car in Colorado on April 6th we had driven 10,000 miles.

We are now back in France - we arrived about 3 days before the volcano. We have a number of friends who were not so lucky but fortunately they were only delayed about a week. It is both good and not so good being back. We have to work hard again to talk and be understood- it was far too easy in the USA and we must say sometimes it was not a blessing understanding everything you heard. This is also true in France. We often just get the gist of something and that is just fine. After all the hiking, running, swimming and skiing in Aspen we have gained weight both traveling for the month in the car but also returning to France and the bread, cheese and wine. As the French say we are now on a "regime." We (that is the royal "we") are getting the boat ready to cruise. We hope to leave the Port of Roanne next week (May 10th or so) and we will return around the beginning of November. Sounds like a long way away - stay tuned for Postings from the canals. Hopefully I will be able to produce a more coherent BLOG by then. Not sure what the problem is with the photos. Any ideas???????