Rio Travelers: ON THE ROAD WEST

This is our last update till we start our tour. We are heading to St George Utah today so we will be going to work and meeting new friends.

We are fortunate that we were able to visit our daughter Kristine and her family and spend some quality time with them. We also visited some other friends on our way west. One stop we made was San Antonio to make a visit to the River Walk. Having been there before we thought we would stroll the walk and have dinner. Strolling very little because it was sooooooooooo hot but did have a nice dinner. One problem we had when leaving Canada was that we had expended all our wine which wasn't much because you are very limited on the quantity you can bring across the border. So that gave an excuse to stop at some wineries. It seems that now every state has wineries some better than others. We happen to enjoy wine from Messina Hof winery in Bryan, Texas. However we were not traveling that direction. I did want to stop in Fredericksburg to see the Admiral Nimitz and World War II museum. It just so happens that Messina Hoff has a tasting room there so we were able to get some more of their product. In addition we visited a few more wineries and were able to fill our wine rack.

Slowly making our way West we finally got to a stop that Betty wanted to make in Winslow Arizona.

The reason for the stop was a Route 66 Roadside Attraction dedicated to the Eagles' song "Take it Easy". The statue is of Jackson Browne who wrote the song - so here I am "standong on the corner in Winslow, Arizona. I guess I can take that off my bucket list.

In addition, we stayed in an RV park near the world's largest preserved meteor crater. It is more than a mile across and 550 feet deep and is quite amazing. The meteor hit the earth about 50,000 years ago. It is hard to fathom what would happen if one that size hit earth now. Actually it is kind of scary.

We now are in Las Vegas departing in a few hours for St Georg,e Utah. We made a visit to the Venetian Casino Hotel and made our $20 donation. It is just amazing the number of huge casinos and the number of people. We cannot imagine the amount of money lost to support all this.

Next update will be during our Western National parks tour.