Feels so good!

"There's no place like home"!  We had a wonderful time and have so much appreciation for all the work that Kathleen and Geo did, the tour was an unqualified success IMHO!  Thank you again Geo and Kathleen!

It was so much fun to spend time with all of you, what a great group of people to travel with!

We got home about 5:30 MDT having spent the night in Ely, Nv.  I thought we might have to spend more time there too, it was 27F there this morning and Shawnee B.A. was going to have none of it.  She would not start, she had been getting progressively harder to start each morning which I attributed to the altitude and cold but this morning I was really glad I had a good battery!  After multiple attempts to start I decided to richen the mixture on the carbs and at this point I noticed that when I pulled out the choke the levers didn't move, it finally dawned on me to check the choke linkage and I found that the cable housing had slipped in the mount.  I tried unsuccessfully to tighten the mounting bracket but finally had Jan start the car while I held the cable with pliers, sound familiar Terry?  Started right up and we got under way from Ely, an hour or two later than we wanted but....

Our very dirty little Shawnee B. A., and this morning  she lived up to her middle name.

We decided to have a late lunch in Twin Falls and then finished our journey home arriving happy to be home but saddened having come across an accident on the freeway just out of Twin where I'm quite sure there was a fatality just moments before we got there.  The SUV looked like it had been put in a giant dryer and spun.  Very sad.

When I got home the first thing I did was get all the stuff out of the car so that I could dry her out and begin the search for the leak.

We had a great time on the tour, enjoyed (as Drew and Mary would say) Y'all's company!

Till next year....

Cheers,

LLynn

PS:  David your blog is incredible, thanks For doing it!  Lynn

Headed Home

We had a wonderful time on this years tour and although Geo and Kathleen would deny it, they did a tremendous amount of work to make it come off flawlessly!  The weather didn't always cooperate but everyone made the best of it.   We had some hardy soles, in particular Jeff and Bethanne in their topless XK 150, they would win the Hardiest of the hardy given their fearless disposition in the face of adversity driving through rain and snow with their car-Amazing, my hat is off to you two!

I don't have many pictures today, we left Winslow, Az after a really good breakfast!  Needless to say they are famous for their cuisine and breakfasts in particular.

Our room at the Possada, very comfortable 

The historic La Possada, well worth a visit.

Preparing for departure, Drew and Mary were headed back to Texas.

Heading back into Nevada near the Hoover Dam.

Beautiful skies, we had clear weather from ere on, drove through Las Vegas with the top down in fact.  The morning wasn't quite so good with a pretty good rain between Flagstaff and Kingman, Az.
We stopped at  Ma and Pa's Hot Rod Cafe where we ate with Michael Jenkins on the downward leg of our trip.  Pretty fair Burgers, then on to Ely, Nv where we arrived at 8pm local time and feeling a bit rung through the ringer.  Tomorrow we should be back home if all goes well. Hoping all of our fellow 'leakers' are home or having uneventful journeys home!
Cheers,
Lynn

 

Day 5 GCol, parting is such sweet sorrow.

Well, all good things must come to an end.  Rats!  What a great tour, the only mechanical issue was David hitting a large rock and blowing out a tire and damaging a wheel.  While not insignificant it didn't slow him and Debbie down for very long.  David whipped out his light weight floor jack and was back on the road in 30 min.!

The tour started in Chinle and finished in Winslow, Az at the "La Possada" inn, a hotel built in the heydays of passenger rail service.  If any of you folks watch PBS I think that American Experience had an episode on the Harvey Girls that were recruited from across the United States to staff these hotels that were set up to create destinations for rail passengers.

Since Jan has already crawled into bed I'll have to make short work of tonight's blog, needless to say we had a great tour but are looking forwards to returning home!

Lot's of open range, we came around a corner to find this critter lapping up water from the indentations in the middle of the road yesterday, Bethanne sent me this photo.

Today we took a 'Jeep' tour of Canyon De Chelly, our tour guide, Colleen was an excellent guide and really opened my eyes to the wonder of this incredible canyon.

Colleen, telling us about her ancestors

After the 'Jeep' tour we headed out to Winslow, Az with Drew and Mary in the lead.

Our destination for the last night!

One really dirty E Type in Winslow

"There's a girl my lord, driving a flat board Ford slowing down to take a look at me"....

The last happy hour....

La Possada

A view of us down in Canyon De Chelly taken by LLoyd

Well that's it for tonight, had a great time at dinner but probably celebrated to much.  Tomorrow breakfast (famous here!) then head home probably via  Lost Wages.

Cheers,

Lynn

Day 4 GCol Torrey to Chinle, Az

We got off to a nice start to the day but decided to put the hood (top-US) up and that was a very good decision as the weather was a bit stormy for most of the day.  Shawnee B. A> needed a bilge pump to drain out all the water that kept coming in on the drivers side foot well.  Might have an idea as the water was incredible muddy so I think it's coming in from underneath the car.  When the rain stops I may go out and see if there if one of the 'bungs' in the floor pan has come out.  Today's journey also involved some pretty rough road coming down the Moki Dugway short cut.  So rough that I have heard a rumor that one of the cars destroyed a wheel.  Their was one point where I was pretty worried we might have taken out our oil pan.   We had done the Moki on the very first Oil leak but the gravel road was in much better condition and we were going up instead of down.

Starting point this morning, very nice little place to stay and the food was very good!

Clouds building up

Getting darker

Dumping on us

We stopped at "Bridges National Park" for a break and the weather let up for a few min.

From L to R: Jan, LLyod, Michael, David (F18 driver on JL) and David's uncle David

View with LLyod to the side

Glamor shot by David

One of the Bridges

Heading into monument Valley, we were going to take a detour here and explore the valley but the weather was marginal and the cars were lined up a couple of blocks to get in.

All in all, a good day, will have dinner here at the Holliday Inn tonight and looking forwards to it as we didn't get lunch today-doubt I'll melt away but hoping that they have some good Mexican food.
That's all for today, stay tuned for further exciting adventures ;-)
Cheers,
Lynn

Day 3 GCol, A wee bit late...

Greetings and salutations,
Tonight I'll have to do two blogs as we had no internet connectivity last night on day 3.  This was probably our prettiest day and we had the 'hood' down the whole day.  Was it chilly? YES, but Jan was a trooper!

The parking lot in Zion, we stayed at the lodge and it was really nice, so nice in fact that we decided to donate Jan's Tempurpedic Pillow (we left it there:-(

Driving back out of the park

It started getting cooler

...and Cooler

...and cooler yet

Finally sunshine

We did a little hiking with Drew and Mary in Bryce 

Our destination on day three was the "Broken Spur Inn" in Torrey, Utah.  Very nice dinner at the Inn and the accommodations.

That's all folks
Lynn