Home at last!

© 2011 Lydia Hinshaw

  ORMOND BEACH, FL --  This time we were gone five months and three days.

  Sunday afternoon we rolled into our driveway again after our fifth summer away from Florida. (For me it's six summers, as I jumped off the career train a year before Prince Charming.)

 Summer, 2011 didn't turn out quite as we expected, but it turned into a rousing success anyway.  We arrived at Yellowstone with high hopes on May 10, but were disappointed in our tour-guide jobs, mostly because the 1975-vintage buses were so uncomfortable to drive.

 We were supposed to spend four months in Yellowstone, but made a difficult decision to leave after seven weeks.  It turned out to be a great call.  Within a week, we found jobs that involved less work, more pay and better equipment in Glacier National Park, which is one of my favorite places on earth anyway.  I almost felt as if I'd won the lottery.

 So we spent July and August driving up and down Going to the Sun Road, one of the most scenic in North America.  We lived in our van, in a campground where we made some wonderful new friends.

 There were times when it wasn't fun.  Our diet, limited by the amount of food we could store, got tiresome.  When it's cold and rainy, it is no fun to have to walk 50 yards uphill to the bathroom.  Fortunately, we didn't have much bad weather.

 Since the Glacier shuttle closed down Labor Day weekend, we've made a month-long loop through Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, one state after another and one family visit after another, east to North Carolina and then south to Florida.

 I don't think I will want to ride in a car much for a while.  The good news is that here at home, I don't have to.