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Stories from the trip

 

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The balloons 

We arrived Sunday night, thought we'd load the truck Monday morning and leave.  Instead we bummed around for most of Monday.  At the grocery store Ryan was admiring some large balloons, X's and O's, leftover from Valentine's Day.  The nice lady in the store gave a couple of big ones to Ryan.  But what was Ryan going to do with these big balloons?  Let them go, of course.   Good thing there wasn't a big electrical blackout in Ohio and New York right after that. 

 

 

 

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The man in the Lincoln Hotel

It was breakfast after the first night.  Dry bagels with sour cream and corn flakes, complimentary in the lobby of the luxurious Day's Inn.  While Carl and I were packing up the Durango Ryan ventured down the hall alone.  While he was greasing up another bagel he met a man.  Neither Carl nor I have ever seen this man, but we believe the man was real.  He returned, and mentioned that he had spoken to someone in the lobby, a man and his family, from New York.  Pretty innocent.  But, there's more.

We drove all the way to Salt Lake City that day, a long day on the road.  We had no idea where we were going to stay.  We weren't even completely sure we'd make it to Salt Lake.  Ryan, in charge of the GPS and Microsoft Streets and Trips, helped us pick an area close to the freeway with a few hotels.  We picked one, very much at random, grabbed take out dinner across the street and ate it in the room. 

The next morning as we were having breakfast in the hotel, Ryan told us that he had just run into the New York man again.  The man recognized Ryan, and asked if he was the boy he had seen yesterday in Lincoln.  That's the story.

 

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Winnemucca

Some of Ryan's mother's father's family is from Winnemucca.  They are in the high tech gold mining business, I think. 

We stopped there for lunch.  Depression rates were available at the Pyrenees Motel.