9-19-19 Home Sweet Home!

Just before departure this morning, I, Lindy, took out a second on the house and made another Schat’s Bakkerÿ run for freshly-baked loaves of world-famous sheep herder bread, pecan pullaways and bread pudding.  We are on the white flag lap.  Our homing beacons are screaming.  Seems like forever ago that we pigged out on oysters and alligator tails, toured the White House and waded in the headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi. 

Tallying up a few things: 

• Total days on the trip come to one day shy of 14 weeks.  No Lewis and Clark, granted, but an extravaganza by our standards!  We clocked ~8,500 miles on Noobee, who by the way did a great job.  Side-trips in the Jeepster tack on ~3,500 more. 
• We added 8 more capitals to our log, bringing us up to 49 capitol buildings bagged plus the federal capitol building.  We have one to go:  Honolulu.  The capitol buildings hobby didn’t necessarily require Bee and Noobee, some in the northeast and Juneau, for example.  Honolulu would be a tough one for Noobee unless we install oarlocks and a rudder. 
• Twenty-two kinds of seafood met their demise, if you include alligator, but we are not sure if that’s a “seafood.”  (We had an opportunity to cook up frog legs but that is a bridge too far.  How do the frogs get around if you do that?  Frogs might not be “seafood,” either, so that’s another reason to leave the poor little bastards alone.  Besides, they’re cute.  Alligators, on the other hand, deserve what they get.) 
• If you count my brother George’s yard and Number 1 son Rick’s yard, we parked the beast at 37 different parks from sea to shining sea.  We were threading the needle, to be sure, but Noobee was a champ.
• I gained 3 pounds.  Damn!
• I crossed off two more bucket list items but there are still so many and it keeps growing.  Worthy challenges and lots more ships to swim out to!

The final stretch skirts the north edge of Death Valley and south to the driveway at 1640.  We arrive loaded down with treasures, fond memories of great times with family and friends and incredible golden highlights to recall for years to come.  We are grateful for all the good luck we had in making this trip a success.  It’s weird being home.  The house is so BIG!  And I’m still not sure of something:  Are we now on vacation or did we just get home from vacation?  Ain’t life grand?!  Thank you for traveling with us, everyone!  Maybe we will meet up with many more of you sometimes on our version of the “Expedition of Discovery,” you just never know.  God-speed to you all and farewell for now with love from Lucky Lindy and Roberto!