At the beginning of my planning, Jose and Christine would fly directly Atlanta-Brussel around 6pm. So we would have a couple of hours to show them downtown Atlanta and specifically the Centennial Olympic park (we lived in 1996 in Atlanta). But their flight schedule changed and their flight to JFK was 3 hours earlier. And on top of it all: it rained and the sky was grey. So we just took a leisurely breakfast and some swimming.

Just the two of us, driving back home to Charlotte, NC. (We could not even see the Atlanta skyline, as the clouds were hanging so low.)

Christine and Jose took the shuttle to the airport. Truly sign this magnificent trip is finished and time to look backwards to those 32 days!

Dany drove the whole trip, a total of 7,700 miles or 12,300km; averaging 385km per day. He did a superb job and everybody felt always very safe, even along some rims …. luckily no car accidents, no car breakdowns (Toyota Sienna did a good job) and no traffic jams (except the 50min driving back to Las Vegas).

Besides driving in a car, we did a boat trip and a helicopter trip and an air balloon experience.

We crossed 16 states, visited 17 national parks and 3 Navajo tribal parks, explored 10 cities. All in these 32 days.

We saw Grant and his family, the family Thyler (Willaert’s descendants) and a dairy farm in North Texas in full operation. And we saw Mexico behind the wall and were stopped by border control.

Of the 32 days, we had 28 blue sky days. We had sweaty days and sweaters day and we have seen snow. Rita, who only did 16 days, never saw a drop of rain. We had a dust storm. And we were very fortunately to see the Milkway.

This trip would not be such a succes without this fantastic company of our friends and family. We laughed a lot, truly a lot! The Claeys-clan (Dany and his sister Arlette and her husband Daniel and me) and the Willaert-clan (Jose and his wife Christine and his sister Rita) got along very well. I started the planning of this canyon trip in 2012 and thanks to this group I was able to do what I always had on my bucket list. Thanks to all of you!😘😘

The last leg for Jose and Christine, as tomorrow they fly out of Atlanta back to Belgium.

After Louisiana, we crossed the state of Mississippi and then into Alabama. Here also we stopped at the visitor center.

For lunch we had to give Christine and Jose again the Waffle House experience 😜 ( first time was in 2008).

And yes, like you see, we have the rain, every minute of our drive, sometimes the cats and dog raining.

We arrived by 6:30pm (Easter time) in Atlanta, final destination. Christine and Jose did 4,920 miles with us in three weeks (almost 8,000km!!).

First we did a walk to the French Quarters and stopped at Jackson square with view on the St.Louis cathedral.

Of course we had to visit Cafe Du Monde, but the line was way too long so we tasted our NOLA beignets in Cafe Beignet, the other corner of Jackson square. They were yummy!

And then ready to explore little part of the Mississippi River on the Nantchez River steamboat.

We saw a lady playing the orgel with steam pipes. You could hear it all over the French quarters.

New Orleans is East of the River, is 100-240 feet deep, NO is 100 miles inland from the ocean, 10th largest port of the world, surrounded by bayous, Cajun food. We could visit the Engine Room (steam driven paddle boat) and we tasted the Mississippi cocktail 😜

In the afternoon we had a 3-hour private tour of New Orleans. Our guide was fantastic and we saw areas we wouldn’t have seen and we also learned a lot about NOLA. We learned about Canal Street, that on one side was for the French and on the other side was for the Americans and that the streets change names at Canal Street.

He showed us the Hard Rock Hotel building which collapsed 3 weeks ago and still 2 people are missing.

Our guide took us to the Warehouse District, where all the floats for Mardi Gras and everywhere else, like Macy’s Parade, are made

We were in Garden District, where huge houses are and where we saw houses of Sandra Bullock, Nicholas Cage, John Goodman, Bejonce, and many more.

We visited Basin St. Station, where we saw on a map how and which areas were flooded after Katrina. This was a huge train station and only the luggage area is converted to a museum

We drove trough Ward 9, the area totally flooded when a barge broke a levee(dyke). Some areas were flooded 12 feet in 6 hours. Today, 14 years later, several houses are still boarded, several open spots. We also saw the houses Brad Pitt helped rebuilding.

We were in Musician Village. Music instruments found in the flooded water are now hung on poles.

The house in which Fatz Domino recorded his music is now a laundromat, still memorabilia were hanging there.

We took pictures of Fatz Domino’s house, so Jose c could show could show it to Bobby Setter.

Our guide also drove through Botanical Garden and City Park. At that time we were in overflow and ready to go to our hotel.

In the evening we walked through the French Quarters again looking for a good restaurant. We finally decided on the Tableau, extremely good! The oysters were to die for ( we added with a pipette some soyasaus)

We witnessed also the typical musical parades, one was just for the music (escorted by a police on motocycle with a big cigar), one parade was for a wedding. Fun fun!!

This is 2 days later and what do I still remember of this long driving day?

As this was Sunday, breakfast only started at 7am and therefore we only could leave at 8am. According to our trip tik AAA book it was 8hours driving. Anyway we were around 7pm in New Orleans.

The men in the front talked constantly and the women in the back, had siesta time. So I don’t remember a lot about this trip. We drove through Houston and Dany had hard time just to follow I-10E over all the spaghetti junctions. We passed mile post 881 in Texas and crossed at least in Louisiana.

I did remember this visitor center when I was here in 1998 with my mom and youngest sister, only now completely remodeled. I had an encounter with an alligator, which I thought initially that he was fake ….

And we continued on I-10 East and crossing swamps.

We arrived with sunset in New Orleans.

It was Voodoo weekend in NO and it was busy busy and noisy noisy 🙉

We did walked Bourbon street (only 2 blocks from our hotel) and were able to sit at an oyster-bar. But one evening in Bourbon street is enough!

This was a city exploring day😃 in the morning we still needed our jackets.

First on our program was the famous Alamo. Now we understand the importance of the Alamo for the Texans, the battle they lost against the Mexican,

Texas was first under Mexico (Spanish colonist) and father Friar helped the indigenous people. Around 1836 fighting against the President of Mexico as he wanted centralization iso federalism and Sam Houston won the battle. Texas was then independent for 9 years and later became a state of the USA. In 1846 Mexico did not recognize this annexation and attacked US forces and President Polk (he was from Charlotte NC) declared the war against Mexico, which took almost 2 years. 12 years later we had the Civil War between North and South. Those who remember the movie North and South, remember the 2 friends, one from the South and the other from the North? They were good friends as they fought together in this Mexican War to save Texas from Mexico.

But in the Alamo battle 200 civilian fought and died. Only 1 woman with her children and 1 slave was saved to tell the story how México won this battle.

After the Alamo we did a little walk.

We also visited La Villita, the old downtown where the first settlers lived. Now an artsy area. But we had mariachi music and it was lively and everywhere little booths as it was Dia de los Muertos, remembering people who passed away. And many women and girls beautiful dressed.

After a good lunch along the River Walk, we continued our walk on the River Walk and of course we also took the electric boat.

This was Arneson River Theater, where Sandra Bullock was the actress for the movie Congeniality . Sits 800 people and 24 ducks😜

Late afternoon we still did a swim in the pool on the 11th floor. And watching there the sunset.

We ended the day with a pizza, while people watching as it was very busy with Halloween weekend

Today supposed to be a very boring day, just driving 433miles (700km) and all through Texas, where there is not much to see…

Our first excitement was that Dany overslept🙉 Just because the hotel was truly on the border of Mountain and Central Daylight time. In the front of hotel is still Mountain time and in the back, where he did go for his cigarette, was Central Time zone. So his smartphone was set on Central Time and therefore also his alarm. But during the night phone jumped back to Pacific and we woke up at 7:42am local time😁😁🤪🤪

I still did go for a swim; it was such nice warm soft water – 7 strokes free style, 12 on the back- 7 free style – 12 on the back …. it was so good to be in the water after all that very dry weather.

At 9am it was still -1 Celsius (30F) and we had ice on top of our car!!!!! Dany didn’t take a picture😢

So many windmills (on top of mesas) and such huge solar farms we passed. My conclusion: USA has much more alternative energy than I saw in Europe. In our last hotel there were even 10 parking spaces for Tesla’s. They had the best parkings and we had to run in the windy cold so much further.

Texas is for sure the state of energy. We took a little detour to see the moving oil-rigs (ja-knikker). Pretty interesting. We wondered for some of those rusty ones, for how many years they have been going up and down.

In Ozona “biggest little town of the world” we had lunch at Subway, ordering a foot long healthy sandwich😜

We took a little detour to Sonora (not the caverns) and Rocksprings. That was our conclusion: we have now experienced there is nothing to experience on the roads in Texas…..😜 we did see a couple of ranch ports.

A day of 6 hours drive and losing 2 hours. In Arizona we still saw the large cacti and also lots of orchards of pistachios and walnuts. Crossing the border into New Mexico it suddenly changed and it is truly desert with very little vegetation.

Lunch was in Las Cruces in A Bite of Belgium. It wasn’t very Belgian, but a neat restaurant in a neat town. We had an old fashion American bagel.

We stopped in El Paso as we wanted to see that famous wall. First the Skydrive was on Dany’s agenda. But it was so windy, sand was blowing and the view was almost nothing. So this part of our planning was skipped. Only thing we did was a very short walk over a painted bridge near the baseball stadion.

And then we drove along the wall. First on the CanAm hwy, left we saw Ciudad de Juarez and right El Paso. And then we were driving along the Rio Grande and the Wall

Dany pointed out the La Equis, statue in Juarez we could see from El Paso. The giant X is to symbolize the blood spilled from the brutal Juarez drug wars.

On I-10E, somewhat 30 min before Van Horn, we had the Border Control Inspection. And yah our 2 Belgians friends had to go on the side …. to show their Int’l passport.

Arriving in Van Horn, was “freezing “ cold, anyway very very windy. Anyway my toes in my sandals were freezing cold😜. We just stayed in our hotel in the lobby eating our yoghurt and oranges

Arlette, Daniel and Rita left very very very early to catch the shuttle of 4am. Apparently they still had to run to have their flight of 6:10ss as m due to broken security system.

While they have an 8-hour overlay in JFK, we (= Jose and Christine, my Dany and me) are driving 8hours to Tuscon, AZ. Again warm sunny weather, morning midday and evening😜👍

Along the route, we see the Arizona desert. From far away this desert looks green! Now we see also the big cacti, the famous Saguaro cactus, and the Jumping Chollas and in between here and there little green bushes (tumble weed?).

Lunch was a feast for Dany: at Panera Bread!!😜

In Marana, little bit before Tuscon, Dany noticed another airplane boneyard.

And we passed cotton fields. Always nice to stop.

In Tucson we met Bill and Kate Thayer and their children Peter, Sariah and Deliah and lively granddaughter Catybelle. The Thayers are family (5th degree) of Jose and Rita Willaert.

Our last leg of the canyons loop! An early start so we would have time for Route 66 and maybe again Hoover Dam.

We had a stop and coffee at Williams, AZ Here you could take the train to Grand Canyon National Park.

Our second stop along Route 66 was in Seligman.

Back on I-40 and we had our first traffic jam, due to works and overturned truck; only a delay of 50 min.

Our lunch in Kingsman at Starbucks ….

From Kingsman on, it is for us the second time to do this road, but still the views are captive!

We stopped again at the Hoover Dam and had a nice walk over this immensely structure. They were even comparing it with building the pyramids in Egypt. (1931-1936)

We also stopped at a Lake Mead overlook.

Dinner at a Thai in Las Vegas, our last dinner with the seven of us. Arlette, Daniel and Rita are flying next day very very very early in the morning (4am with shuttle to airport).

The 2 left-over ladies took their chance to watch the show of Cirque du Soleil- Love The Beatles at The Mirages. It was a marvelous spectacle. My favorite was Yesterday! A good looking muscular young man gymnastic dancing.