Cross-Country -- August thru November 2004
	On August 25, 2004, we left Santa Rosa for an extended trip in our 26-foot long motor-home. We promised to spend Labor Day weekend with family in Bloomington, Indiana, so this meant a fairly quick trip for the first 10 days, travelling mostly on the interstates. Here are some pictures from our trip thus far. (Click on any photo to see a larger version; Use your Back button to return to this page.)
	We spent our first night with family in Reno, Nevada. Our first "Find" was Lamoille Canyon, an oasis only a few miles off I-80, that locals call Nevada's Yosemite. We camped Thursday evening at an elevation of 8000 feet, in a glacier-carved high valley that was totally unlike the dry desert we'd been driving through all day. The sunsets that evening were breath-taking.
		Friday we stopped on the Great Salt Desert, where Jackie collected salt for her grandson, Nick. A much more dramatic mineral extraction happens southwest of Salt Lake City, at Kennecott Copper's open pit mine. The hole is 2-1/2 miles in diameter and 3/4 mile deep -- one of two man-made objects visible to the astronauts.
	Saturday and Sunday took us across Wyoming and Nebraska, with stops in Rock Springs, Laramie, the Cabela's factory store. We finally left I-80 around Lincoln, Nebraska on Monday and turned southeast, where we found a lovely riverside camp in a park in Nebraska City, Looking for a nice morning walk on Tuesday, we discovered another "Find", the Squaw Creek Wildlife Refuge in the northwest corner of Missouri. We saw a bald eagle, blue herons, egrets, geese, and more. We ended the day with a visit to the wonderful Truman Museum in Independence, before setting up at a county campground on Blue Springs Lake, inside the Kansas City limits
	Click here for more highlights from Summer 2004. Click here to return to Noel and Jackie's home page.