Starting 4 years on the road at Arches National Park

Happy anniversary to us!!! We celebrated the start of our 4th year on the road and still have a lot to see of this beautiful Country of ours. Jackie retired April 30, 2008 and the next day we departed on our journey. So stand by for some statistics before we share more pictures of our latest adventure. As most of you know, we switched from a Big Sky Montana 5th wheel to an Allegro Bus in October of last year.

In 3 years we have spent at least one night in 25 states
We pulled the Big Sky 21,002 miles
We drove the Allegro 5,175 miles
Sight seeing we drove the truck 38,074 miles
And sight seeing in the jeep 7,502 miles
Total miles driven 71,753 or an average of 23,918 miles per year

We visited 170 campsites, averaged 154 miles between sites and stayed an average of 6.44 days at each site.
Shortest stay was one night and longest was camp hosting at Arches National Park for 2 months last year.

We posted 211 Blog’s and had 28,340 hits.

And for the final statistic, we took (saved) an average of 95 pictures at each stop for a grand total of 16,211 pictures. So with that we hope you enjoy some of the first pictures starting year four of our travels.
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Well, here we are back camp-hosting at Devils Garden Campground at Arches National Park for the months of May and June, but will try a share totally different pictures that when here last year.  We don't plan on taking any pictures in the snow as we did last year.

We arrived and spent a few days visiting with our friends Robbie and Alice, and when they moved out of the host site on May 1 we started work and moved into site 35 the same day.  Thanks Robbie for all the firewood you saved for Jackie.

This gives you an idea of the size of our site and the view we have.  We have water, sewer and Park solar power.  A large concrete pad to plant the rig and Jeep on.  And a nice fire pit for campfires in the evening, a must for Jackie (although not when it's really windy, which is has been quite a few nights).  (Can you see Jackie hanging clothes on the rack Dick built for the ladder?)

Day one we took off back country hiking with Alice to try and locate Magic Mystery Bridge and on the way we visited Broken Arch.

Headed down a wash following Alice's GPS coordinates.  She and Robbie have tried 2 or 3 times to find this bridge and failed.  Could it have anything to do with bad coordinates?

Alice ahead with hands on hips, should have been a sign but we kept on going.  We never did find the bridge but we hope to get back out there another time when Dick's knees are feeling better and we have the proper location.  Thanks Alice--we had a ball.

Back in camp for the evening sunset onto the sandstone fins throughout this beautiful park.

We had company come and visit for about a week and did several hikes with Mike and Gwen.  Mike got this shot of Dick in Skyline Arch.  What the picture fails to show is the heavy wind blowing through the arch and the 300' drop off on the other side.

Dick and Mike headed off to Tapestry Arch on a short hike and got Mike to pose to show the size.

On another day all four of us headed off to the windows section of the park.  If you click on the picture you can see the people inside of Double Arch.  Another warm sunny day for a great but short hike.

And one last hike before our friends have to leave, we took them to Park Avenue and hiked the one mile down through a wash with the magnificent fins on both sides as the sun was about to set.

Half way through Park Avenue we continued to see this unbelievable scenery.

And where did this large flowering plant come from in the middle of nothing but rock?

One last shot as we head out of the wash and back to the car.

On the way back to camp we stopped and took a shot looking back at the evening shadows.

 And finally the evening sun setting behind Klondike Bluffs and then back to camp for a nice fire and firepies.

To be continued...