Dagny's final thoughts on her sabbatical

When dad went to his new law firm 17 years ago they were all going to do a sabbatical every 10 years. His law firm eventually decided to move it to every 5 years because if it was 10 years we would only get to do it once. On May 30th we finished packing and got into the motor home to leave. The first day was mostly a travel day.

When we are on the road a  travel day looks mostly like sitting at the table in the RV and playing board games, cards, eating, or sleeping in the  back. Most of our drives were about 2 to 3 hours long. When we were driving we would normally stop to stretch our legs and take pictures then we would get back on the road.

When we get to where we are going we normally stay at KOA campgrounds that have a pool and a playground. When we are not staying in KOAs we have to find other things to do like hiking and biking. The campgrounds were usually really big and next to railroads. When we were stopping at a campground it normally meant that we would spend a few days there and go see something. Campgrounds all had a shower house where we would take showers and brush our teeth because our bathroom was not very big.  Mom said she had her worst shower in Moab. She said the water pressure was terrible.

On the road we see lots of national parks which we get into for free because Maggie has her fourth grade park pass (www.everykidinapark.gov). Our first national park was Yellowstone. It had lots of mud pots and geysers. Our next national park we went to was Glacier national park and we rode from our site to the other side of the lake (27 miles). This day I had an awful cold so the bike ride was difficult. Then we went to Alaska and visited Denali national park. Denali doesn't let you take your car in so we took a bus ride to Kantishna. Yosemite was the next national park. Yosemite had a huge fire and it was too smokey so we left early. The next national park was the Grand Canyon. It was cool to see it because it was colorful and we got to see sunrise and sunset. The next national park was Zion and we did a great hike called The Narrows. We got to hike through water in a river the whole time. The next national park was Bryce Canyon which happened to fall on my birthday. We did a birthday hike from Sunset to Sunrise Point and it was really fun. The last national park was Arches. We did a short hike to Delicate Arch and had a UTV tour that afternoon.

On the road we saw lots of wildlife in the national parks. We saw deer, buffalo, eagles, bears, moose, wolves, crabs, starfish, fish, sea urchins, seals, sea lions, jellyfish, horses, and finally big horn sheep. My favorites were the moose, wolves and mountain goats. They were my favorites because they are hard to spot and they are not common. We got to get real close and get good pictures.  The buffalo hears were cute because of the babies and grazing parents.

My favorite place on the trip was Alaska. We flew out from Seattle on day 19 and on day 20 we checked into our first hotel in Sitka called the Longliner.  We went on a beautiful hike and then went tide pooling. Tide pooling was amazing! There were a bunch of star fish, crabs, baby fish, and baby eels. We went to the Sitka Sound Science Center which was so awesome because we got to touch all the star fish and sea cucumbers in their tanks. We also got to touch sea urchins and sea enemanies.  We went on a boat tour that took us to a bird sanctuary and we saw all kinds of birds on the island and about 16 whales. Alaska has 50% of the bald eagle population in the world so seeing them became regular. To top it all off, we saw a bunch of glaciers in the Prince William Sound.

During the sabbatical we visited 7 different churches. We tried to visit lots of different churches from different denominations and we didn't visit the same denomination twice. The one that was most different from Presbyterian was the Catholic church in Huntington Beach. The funniest one was by the pool at KOA in Tahoe. The minister used a trash can as his pulpit.

In conclusion,  our trip was spectacular and I hope I get another chance to do another sabbatical before I go off to college.  It was really great to spend so much time with my family and wake up every day to something new. When we hit I-70 I started to cry because I didn't want to come home. We are about 70 miles from home and things are starting to look a bit familiar. I think it is going to be weird to drive through the neighborhood knowing the sabbatical is over.  I feel so fortunate to be able to do this for as long as we did.  I will be looking forward to this again for the next 5 years.

Dagny