{"id":24192,"date":"2017-08-25T01:21:31","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T01:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=24192"},"modified":"2017-08-25T01:21:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T01:21:31","slug":"happy-trails-part-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=24192","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trails, Part 35"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Retirement-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-24193\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Retirement-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Retirement-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Retirement-1.jpg 627w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our retirement journey is now getting ready to depart in another direction altogether.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re heading west. All the way west &#8212; to the Pacific Coast states. I figure we&#8217;ll be about 80 or so miles from Pacific Ocean. It&#8217;s still pretty close to the Big Blue, right?<\/p>\n<p>This test will give our Dodge Ram pickup its sternest test to date. Big Jake has done well already on our jaunts eastward. Our beastly 3\/4-ton truck hauled our fifth wheel with little strain through the Appalachian Mountains, along the Shenandoah Valley, through West Virginia, through the Ozarks.<\/p>\n<p>We have supreme confidence in our truck&#8217;s ability to do the job it is about to do.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll be crossing the Rocky Mountains. We&#8217;ll travel near the edge of Death Valley. We&#8217;ll climb into the Sierra Nevada Range. We&#8217;ll trek north and cross the southern edge of the Cascade Range and then drive through the <em>heart<\/em> of the Cascades on our way back home.<\/p>\n<p>Then we get to do it all over again on our return to the Texas Panhandle. Through Utah and crossing the Rockies yet again.<\/p>\n<p>Our outings are becoming more frequent. Indeed, soon &#8212; perhaps even <em>quite<\/em> soon &#8212; we intend to empty our house in Amarillo and then move into our RV full time.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s when the fun really begins. We&#8217;ll need to maintain our base of operations in Amarillo for a time as we await the sale of our house. We need to keep an eye on an elderly family member as well.<\/p>\n<p>We have a number of &#8220;bucket list&#8221; destinations in store. We plan to drive the breadth of Canada. We&#8217;ll likely go from west to east, starting in Vancouver and ending up in the Maritime Provinces along the Atlantic Ocean. I&#8217;ll keep you advised on how those plans come together.<\/p>\n<p>Until then &#8230; the next big adventure is on tap.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our retirement journey is now getting ready to depart in another direction altogether. We&#8217;re heading west. All the way west &#8212; to the Pacific Coast states. I figure we&#8217;ll be about 80 or so miles from Pacific Ocean. It&#8217;s still pretty close to the Big Blue, right? This test will give our Dodge Ram pickup &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=24192\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy Trails, Part 35<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[876,3920,5551,4058],"class_list":["post-24192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-national-news","tag-cascade-range","tag-retirement","tag-rocky-mountains","tag-rv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24194,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24192\/revisions\/24194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}