I wanted to let everyone know that we arrived home safely late this afternoon. We will now regroup and turn our attention to the family matters that are before us.

We have traveled somewhere around 14,000 miles in 50 days, much of it through some very rough roads and circumstances. At least ten of those days, we weren’t moving for one reason or another.

Mike has driven every single bit of this — even through illness and grief. He deserves a medal for real for that alone, but in addition, he did a great job of taking care of me through some very trying circumstances.

As I mentioned, my adult children had to make the difficult decision to remove life support for their dad on July 18. We were close to 5,000 miles away from them at the time with signal that was unavailable more than available.

Many of you already know what the second family emergency was that brought the blog to a close. For those who don’t, on August 4, my son-in-law unexpectedly passed away. He was 47 years old. We were on our way home at the time we received the news but were still 3,500 miles away and largely unable to communicate regularly due to lack of signal.

I can assure you — it is the most helpless feeling for your “kids” to need you so desperately, and you can’t really do anything for them because you are so far away and mostly unreachable — all while you are navigating your own grief and trying to travel as far as you can each day while staying safe.

So we began the difficult task of getting home as safely and quickly as possible. We were really looking forward to planned visits along the way with friends and a granddaughter, but we cancelled those plans for the most part.

One of our friends, whom Mike has known since way before he knew me, lives around an hour and a half from our overnight stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming — and he drove up from Colorado to share a meal and some special time with us. We will forever be thankful for that time with our friend, Mark. I wish we had taken at least one picture of us together, but my head hasn’t exactly been screwed on right for a few weeks.

We also felt that we absolutely had to stop and see our granddaughter, Jade. Life can be crazy sometimes, and we haven’t seen her in seven or eight years. She was a child the last time we saw her. She is an adult now. She needed us as much as we needed her on this return trip. She lost her grandfather and step-father in a little under three weeks and is reeling as much as we are.

We spent two nights and a day with her and her boyfriend, Adem. It was so good. So many emotions and feelings were shared. We laughed. We cried. We laughed and cried at the same time. We told stories about her grandfather and her step-dad. We reconnected big time and began to heal this part of our family tree.

Did I say how needed this was?!

Jade, Adem, and I went to an art museum in Norman, Oklahoma. It was so refreshing for me to see how absolutely much Jade and Adem enjoyed this. I loved hearing them talk about what aspects of the artwork moved them and why.

It was a day for exotic animal events at the museum. We each got our own animal headbands. It was a fun time that took us away from all the sadness for a while. I will forever treasure it. We even got to hold a large boa constrictor and pet a baby wallaby.

Anyway, now we will begin to figure out what is next on many family fronts, and we will all begin to find our new normals. Not an easy feat, but that is our mission.

Again, thank you for your support. Keep us in your thoughts and hearts. I will still do a post down the road with overall thoughts about the trip.

For now, take care of yourselves.