Finally, the last day of travel-blah blah blah

I'm really tired of posting about our trip...but I must finish the last day of 'scenery' for posterity's sake. I've been racking my brain for anything else I've done to humiliate myself in the past. Seems self-humiliation is a big draw to blog fans and I must keep up my readership! Don't worry, I humiliate myself quite regularly, so I'm sure to have something juicy, very soon!

But back to our trip....

On Tuesday night, we made it to Amarillo, TX as planned. We got there kind of late and we were alllllll tired and grumpy. We needed a good night's sleep! This would be our last hotel stay since we planned to drive all night Wednesday night to arrive in Tally-town early Thursday morning.

Our plan for Wednesday morning was to get up before daylight. After having breakfast at the hotel, we wanted to go about 30 miles east near Groom, TX to see the big Cross I had heard about and seen pictures of via e-mail. My dh and dd weren't nearly as excited as me because they hadn't seen the pictures...they were in for a treat!

The sunrise this morning was beautiful. Plenty of time for contemplating what we were going to see. I'm still not a 'sunrise' person...but I'm beginning to like seeing God's beautiful handiwork each morning. (Little did we know that we would be in the middle of a huge storm within the next 1/2 hour!)

In this picture you can see the cross in the distance. We're still at least 5 miles away. This is really an awesome sight!

We arrive at the Cross complex. Surrounding the cross, are little vignettes of the story of Christ's death, burial and resurrection. The bronze (I think) statues are incredibly detailed and nearly life size. Actually, for the time period, this may have been life size...seems I've read somewhere how much bigger folks are now?

In this picture you can see dd trying to stand up against a terrible, bone-chilling wind. You can see a big storm coming in the distance. We hurried to get as many pictures as we could before the storm hit. My hands were frozen just taking the first few pictures. My sweet dh, dressed like an Eskimo with gloves and all took the camera and tried to hurry the process so we could get back in the truck!
These statues are amazingly detailed. You really should click on this picture to blow it up and look at the detail. The protective covering the soldier has over his jaw is sooo detailed you can even see the little tie at the bottom! His sandals had amazing details, too!


This picture gives new meaning to standing at the 'foot of the cross.'





Here we are in the EMPTY tomb! Praise God! Jesus is alive!!! (We were happy to be out of the chilling wind!)



This website has much better pictures of this wonderful place. http://www.crossministries.net/ Check them out, they are absolutely beautiful!




We're back in the car...glad to be warm again! We're sad that we didn't get to spend more time at the Cross because of the storm...but we're so glad we took the time to stop. This is a good picture of dd, I didn't really need to put this in...but she's just so cute!

After we left Groom, TX, we took a smaller road heading towards Dallas. We really enjoyed seeing some of the real Texas towns. We were also VERY glad to see real trees! Now, its starting to feel more like home and we are pushing hard to really be home in the morning.

Well, we drove allllllll night Wednesday. The rain started about dark and didn't let up until nearly daylight on Thursday morning. We made it to Baton Rouge, LA about 11:30 pm (our time). By this time, dh was starting to get tired. He had been driving since 8 this morning. The rest of the night and early morning hours was spent battling fatigue. We would drive for an hour/stop for an hour and so on. I even got to drive for a couple of hours! By 5:30 am, we were finally back in Florida and VERY happy to see the sunrise about 7am! For some reason, its easier to stay awake in the daylight.

We arrived at our last fuel stop (the Flying J in Midway, FL) about 10 am. After fueling, we hung out in the parking lot for a few minutes looking for out-of-state car tags. Trying to find a few we missed on the trip. Throughout our trip we had been watching tags. We saw tags from 36 states, 1 from Alberta, Canada and 1 from British Columbia, Canada!

This picture shows us with Alfie. We're are READY to be home!




Here is dh with our friend and neighbor, Steve. He was the one who sent us on this crazy adventure and he was soooo excited to see his new car! (We did mention to Steve that we would like to go to Wyoming next time!) We unloaded this precious cargo and headed up the road to our house.

Finally, we're home. We've driven 4,895.2 miles since pulling out of our driveway almost exactly 150 hours ago. That means we averaged about 32.63 miles per hour (even when we were sleeping!! LOL!!) Whew! What an adventure, what fun, what a wonderful time for our family! Now, we're going to take a nice nap...