Thanksgiving and Christmas With Family

We spent several weeks in Falcon, Colorado with family.  We spent Thanksgiving with our son’s in-laws and then had an early Christmas with all our kids and grandkids.  It was nice to see everyone again.  The weather was spring like and then we had snow storms.  We had lots of heat being pumped into the motorhome and stayed nice and warm.  As soon as we had a window in the weather we headed for Salt Lake City for Christmas with our son and his beautiful family.  We had to drive south out of Colorado Springs to Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, and then north to Salt Lake City.  The weather along I80 (Wyoming) and I70 (Vail) was snow snow snow for days and we felt it was safer to go south, even though it doubled our mileage.  That’s what’s nice about being retired, you can be very flexible in where you go.  We will spend 10 days here in Salt Lake City before heading south on 26 December.  Our plan is to spend a week in Mesa, AZ and visit our good friends (Carnes’) there.  From Mesa we’ll be heading further south to Port Aransas, TX for a couple weeks on the beach.  From Port Aransas we’ll head over to Galveston for 7 days on the beach as well.  Leaving Galveston we’ll make our way over to Orange Beach, AL. for 30 days (Feb) where we’ll hook up with our friends from Michigan (Bachelor’s).  We met the Bachelor’s in Galveston last year and made plans to meet up again this year.  Beautiful beaches all along the coast there.  From Orange Beach we’ll make a short trip down to Cedar Key, FL. for 30 days (Mar) where again we’ll meet up with the Bachelor’s.  Time for some golfing and good fishing.  We’re pretty excited to get down where it’s a little warmer.  We are enjoying our travels and every days is a new adventure.  Attached are some pictures from our travels during October – December.  Enjoy.  

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all.   Love comes your way from the drifting Dwelle’s.

Bruce with his family in Minnesota while the motorhome was being worked on. 

Bruce's brother Glenn training some new pups for pheasant hunting.
Really happy to have been there during their training.

My sister-in-law Bonnie took me on a kayaking adventure down the Zumbro River.
Had a great time.

Bruce's brother got this bear and had it stuffed.

Bruce's dad.  Love this man very much.

Daughter Jennifer (middle) and two of the best daughter-in-laws.

Lily, Macie, Bryce, and Carter sharing their musical talents.

Son Jared and his beautiful bride Rebecca

Spending a little time with my wonderful mother-in-law

Early Christmas dinner with family.

Macie is our gymnast.  Very good too.

Lily is our musician.  Plays the flute.  Very good too.

Son Adam with his little man, Rowan

Darth Vader at a balloon fest in Colorado Springs

Love this pictures of our son Jared & Becca and Jesse & Jennifer

Another great picture of our daughter and her wonderful husband.

Zoe (left) miss her lots.  Trent is top dog now.  Cats have no say.

While we're on the road, the kids look after their grandma.
Great kids they are.

Rowan likes his poo-pa's hat.

Arrived in Salt Lake City with 8" snow on the ground.

It was very pretty, but give me the sun any time.

Santa came to house to see the grandsons.
They were good boys.

We even got to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what we wanted for Christmas.

Lawson got his purple belt in Karate.
Very proud of this little guy.

Don't mess with this little guy.

On to Colorado

We were going to leave today for Colorado Springs, but the weather did not cooperate.  There's this white stuff called snow going east through Wyoming and through Colorado.  Tomorrow we will head south to Flagstaff, AZ. and over to Albequerque, NM. and then up to Colorado.  Forecast sounds pretty good that route.  We had a wonderful time here in Salt Lake City visiting our son and his family.  We had an early Thanksgiving dinner with Marlo's dad's family and wonderful people.  It was great seeing our three little grandsons.  Logan is now 8 months old and growing like a weed.  Our plan is to have an early Christmas with the kids in Colorado before coming back to Salt Lake to have an early Christmas with Eric and family.  We'll then head to Florida on the 17th of December for a few months.  So looking forward to the warm weather and the beaches.  Time for some golf and kayaking again.  Will keep the blog updated as we get good internet service.  To all we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving and a Merry Merry Christmas.

Momma has an electric blanket, but cats do help keep her warm too.

Our stop at Lake Powell on way to Colorado

A look of Lake Powell from our front windo.  Beautiful day.

Sunrise on Lake Powell

The only other RV in our campground.  Pretty quiet.

Sunrise at Lake Powell

Another beautiful shot of Lake Powell from Motorhome

Grand Canyon

We spent 7 days at the Grand Canyon and it’s been a wonderful stop in our travels.  The Grand Canyon is the most breathtaking place we’ve seen to date in our travels.  I don’t know if there is anything that could top it.  We’ve seen the canyon in the rain, in snow, low clouds, and in bright sunshine.  You can stand in the same location for just 5 minutes and see a whole new view of the canyon in that short time.  The movement of the sun and the clouds give you many different looks at the canyon.  We didn’t get to hike down the canyon, but it is on our bucket list.  Also on our bucket list are a rafting trip through the canyon on the Colorado River and taking a mule ride to the bottom of the canyon.  We stayed at the RV Village right in the center of Grand Canyon Village and it was at very nice place to make our home base.  We had the pleasure of having Roberta’s sister, Susan, join us during our stay here and she enjoyed each day as much as we did.  We took hundreds of pictures to share.  We will be back.  Our travels will take us back to Salt Lake City for Thanksgiving with our son and his family and then it's on to Colorado Springs for Christmas.  Enjoy our travel blog.

Bruce, Roberta, and Susan enjoying the Grand Canyon

On the edge

Got a little snow one morning.  Soon to go south for the winter.

Nice rainbow

Beautiful day in the Grand Canyon.  A little cool.

Susan and Roberta.  Who's older?

Go Broncos from the Grand Canyon

Not afraid of heights.  One more step back.....

Enjoying lunch on the rim

Love the plant life.  Makes great pictures.

Hurricane,Utah - Sand Hollow State Park

Just a few more days here at Sand Hollow State Park before heading to the Grand Canyon.  Just a few more days here at Sand Hollow State Park before heading to the Grand Canyon.  The weather continues to be in the 70’s and it’s been great.  We took another kayaking trip on the lake, but this one was right before sunset so we could watch the sun set and then a little later to watch the full moon rise up.  It was a beautiful "hunter's moon".  We also made another trip up to Zion National Park hoping to be able to see the other half of the park, but they had the road closed off to private vehicles.   Even the shuttle busses weren't running.  Disappointed at that.  So we ended up taking a long hike up one of the other canyons.  It was a very nice hike.  Last Tuesday and Wednesday we rented an OHV (Off Highway Vehicle), Polaris Razor 1000, for a couple days and did some off-roading in the Utah dessert and the hills around St. George and into Arizona.  We saw a number of petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks during our exploration.  Really cool stuff.  We had a blast.  Didn’t realized how much we missed having our ATVs.  We even took a trip to the local Polaris dealer and got info on some OHVs.  We know we won’t be getting anything anytime soon, but it was fun looking.  Today we went to the St. George Temple and attended a session.  What a beautiful temple.  It was a wonderful afternoon.   Here are some pictures of our travels to date.

Kaying before sunset 

Trent and his first kayaking trip

Looking for rabbits everywhere he goes.

Kayaking buddy

Neat rock formations around the lake

Waiting for the moon to come up

Beautiful sunset on the lake

Bruce and Trent at sunset

Back at the motorhome with moon in background

Found this old fort on our ATV ride.  Pretty neat stuff.

The two dinosaurs that left the tracks pictured below

Baby dilophosaurus track

Adult megapnosaurus track

Petroglyphs

Here is a rock I'd take home if I could.  Wouldn't fit in motorhome.

More petroglyphs

Roberta is in heaven

Picture of the OHV we rented with sun setting in background.

Sun setting while we were out on top of the sand dunes

The sand dunes were a very red sand.

More red dunes.  ATVing on the dunes was awesome.

Volcano mountains in the background

Roberta wanted this rock too.

And this one.

Enjoying our petroglyph hunt

Really enjoying our petroglyph hunting

Hiking up a canyon in Zion

Easy walking right up the wash.  Always alert to flash flooding.

Having lunch on the rocks.