There and Back Again

Last week I traveled by car to Utah, stopping in Tennessee, Missouri, and Colorado on the way. I celebrated the university graduations of Jeff and Ashlyn. I spent 4 pleasant days driving with Johnathan, then left him in Provo to start at BYU. I reconnected with people I treasure. I knitted. I iphone-photographed. It was a good time. It was a bittersweet thing to realize that I could have spent weeks on the road if I'd been able to take time to visit all the folks I love in the cities we passed along the way. I sure wish I could have.

I love travel, and I especially enjoyed seeing the country from the vantage point of the open road. I could see the land change gradually under our wheels: Eastern and southern hills lush with trees, to midwestern plains to high desert and Rocky Mountains. It was splendid to see the gorgeousness that is this continent I call home. There is so much here to explore and I intend to spend more time doing it as time goes on.

I left my trusty macbook air with Johnathan to be his college computer. While I save up for a new one, I'll have my fabu iMac to keep me humming for all my photoediting and major, high-powered computing, and now I'm getting used to using our very basic family iPad as my portable link to the world. As such, it has some fun advantages. I'm now blogging in the cloud using photos that have been automatically stored online by my devices. I'm using an app called Blogsy and I think once I get used to it, I'll love it. I also use a bluetooth keyboard for the iPad, so it feels rather laptop-ish when I'm using it for email, blogging and taking notes. I do like that because I'm a lifelong touch-typist and cannot STAND the virtual keyboard of the iPad. Sorry. Yuck. Fortunately, for everything else, I love the touch screen and all the fun apps that I've grown to appreciate on my phone. I'm technologically blessed, there's no way around it.

So there you go. It's great, truly, to be home, but I will remember the delightful times of this trip for a long time. Here are some photos all in one place for my own record-keeping.