[Cdt-l] Home again, home again……….

[Jim and/or Ginny Owen]

Sorta.  
 
Our previous update was from Wyoming – and it took 4 weeks, and several thousand 
miles of driving through 11 states to get back to Maryland.  
 
After wandering the west side of Glacier National Park, we headed south and checked out 
the Henry’s Lake route of the CDT.  We’ll hike that route next time we do the CDT – not 
that we think it’s better, but just because we haven’t done it yet.  
 
Then we went back to the Grand Tetons hoping to get better photos than we got in 2007 
and then did a 3-day backpack into the Bechler River area of Yellowstone.  Beautiful area 
with some great waterfalls, but the wildlife was a little sparse – probably because of the 
sheer number of people in the area.  It wasn’t nearly as “deserted” as we’d been led to 
believe.  
 
After the Bechler, we wandered through Yellowstone for several days – photographing 
wildlife, re-visiting familiar places – and eating ribs at the Roosevelt/Tower restaurant.  
GOOD ribs.  Worth the trip.  
 
We visited a Medicine Wheel in northern Wyoming (one of hundreds, if not thousands 
scattered throughout the West), then the petroglyph sites that we’d missed in the spring 
because of rain and snow.   
 
And then went back to Wind Cave, Custer State Park and the Badlands NM in South 
Dakota – more hiking, more wildlife, more beautiful photos.  
 
We drifted east, mostly on back roads rather than the Interstate system, through South 
Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and north into Pennsylvania.  
We finally managed to visit some of the “Mound Builder” sites in some of 
those states that we missed last year – particularly Cahokia Mounds in St. Louis.     
 
Since Ginny had never seen Niagara Falls, that was our next destination – we caught the 
Falls on a beautiful Fall day (pun intended) and got more photos than we could use in 
three lifetimes.  Then we stopped for a day at Letchworth State Park in New York to look 
for more waterfalls. Thank you, Bluetrail – it was as good as you promised.  
 
Ginny had never been to Watkins Glen, either – again with the waterfalls - so that was a 
mandatory stop on the way south.  
 
For those who don’t understand – we simply weren’t ready to “go home” yet.  So we 
were procrastinating.  We even stopped at Corning and spent some time in the Corning 
Glass Museum – fascinating stuff – at least for some of us.  And then we stayed to visit 
the Rockwell Museum of Western Art. (Nice, but the one in Cody was better.)
 
 
Next stop was Blackwell, Pennsylvania, where we spent a day clearing “our” section of 
the Mid-State Trail.  We hadn’t seen that section in over 2 years – it was good (and 
tiring) to get back to it.  
 
Finally, we spent several days wandering through Pennsylvania looking for possible 
places to live in the future.  How far in the future?  Who knows – but there are several 
possibilities. Pennsylvania is just one of them.  We are quite sure though that our 
permanent home, when it’s time, won’t be Maryland.  Maryland has too many people, too 
much traffic, too much politics, too much pollution --- too much. 
 
Yes, we are in Maryland – we finally ran out of excuses to not come back here. We’re in 
a tiny one bedroom apartment that’ll be our “home” until Jim can hike again.  The knee 
replacement will be done next Monday (Nov 17th).  We’re getting conflicting stories as to 
how long it’ll be before he can actually hike any distance.  But then Jim has his own 
ideas about that.  We’ll see.  
 
While Jim is recovering, we’ll be working on updating the website.  Keep an eye out in 
the next month or two.  There will be a new – much more detailed – 2008 journal with 
photos, plus an expansion of the ruins and rock art photo pages that we started last year. 
And Bun-bun has a few ideas – doesn’t he always? 
 
This’ll be our last “update” for 2008.  And we likely won’t get to very many Christmas cards 
this year – so we’ll wish everyone an early Merry Christmas.  And we hope your 2009 
will be as good as the last three years have been for us.  
 
Walk softly,
Jim & Ginnyhttp://www.spiriteaglehome.com/
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