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!😘😘
2019canyontrip 