Apparently our absence has not gone unnoticed… Each morning we were awakened by our doorbell camera alerting us to the deer strolling across our deck eating the wild cherries dropped by the massive tree that towers over our home!

We were treated to a glorious sunrise on our first morning of the journey home! We’re still on east coast time so we got on the road early!

I may have created a monster… Little T Rex was crying so much that I let him ride up front with me. He is more that a lap full – to say the least!

He finally settled down resting his upper body on the console, where he’s decided he is our co-pilot!

The next day we tried to keep him in the back seat. Utter.Complete.Failure!!! Pupster crawled over behind Chris in the passenger seat. Initially he slipped his paw over Chris’s right shoulder…

Then he opted to go behind Chris’s head and plop both arms over Chris’s left shoulder!

(I was now laughing so hard I was crying!) Chris admitted defeat and the very clever pupster crawled over his shoulders & into his lap!

Western Colorado looks nothing like I thought Colorado should look… I mean – this is more badlands than lush Rocky mountain!

Brief detour for decaf & hot chocolate took us down Jurassic Way past the Dinosaur Journey!

Now this is more like it! Following the Colorado river and heading into the Rockies!

Aaaand just like that, we leave the Rockies and are back to the high desert buttes and sage brush grasslands in eastern Colorado.

The rest of the trip back was the total blur of a death march. We were so exhausted that we simply drove and slept. Chris decided we will NEVER do another death march trip again! Thank goodness because the pupster and we were miserable.

On the bright side we spied every state on the west half of the country except Hawaii! And all except Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware and Louisiana in the east. 45 states in all!