Asheville, NC, to Home!

We left Asheville this morning around 8:00.  We got a surprise wake-up call this morning from Joshua calling from Australia!  It was so good to talk to him, even if just briefly. He said it was so beautiful there.  I think that's a little too far for a road trip.  Maybe one day we'll get to go there, by plane! lol

Our last morning to pack up the van.  Our system worked really well this summer.  We were very organized and all the checking in and out of the hotels wasn't so bad.  

The ride home was mostly uneventful except for a semi-truck braking suddenly and swerving to miss a "plastic bucket"!  Then it almost hit the car and trailer that had pulled over to the side of the road to retrieve the bucket!    Needless to say, the brake on my side of the van failed again.  I'm so thankful that Paul's brake was working!!  We didn't see much of the mountains because of all the fog.  The sun finally broke through, but by then we were mostly out of the mountains.

When we got home we had a wonderful welcoming committee to greet us.

  Two of our children, their spouses and our littlest grandson were here to meet us and to take pictures of us coming in. 

Then two more of our children, their spouses, and their children came over, too.  My daughters cooked a wonderful dinner and we all had a good time eating it.  Then, after the kitchen was cleaned up, everyone went outside to play.

North Carolina is very hot and humid in the summer, and it hasn't changed since we've been gone.  I thought about the 115 degree heat at my son's house in Arizona.  I don't remember sweating there like I did while we were outside playing.

I'm in my 'nest' now, writing the last travel blog of this trip. 

   We saw so many of God's beautiful creations.  We traveled 12,361.4 miles.  

The odometer only shows the 2,361.4 miles because once it clicked over to 10,000 miles, it started over again.   Of course, we didn't know it wouldn't count higher than 10,000 miles; we've never been that far in one trip before.
 Our wonderful savior answered all our prayers for safety and protection and blessed us with many adventures along the way.  We're thankful our daughters got to travel all the way across country with us for nine days.  We're thankful to meet old and new friends.  We're thankful to all of you for praying for our safe travels.  We're thankful to be home again.  There's no place like home.