Day 14 - 19 and home.

Good morning.
Day 14 took us from Dwight Ill. , just a little south of 80-90 on highway 55 to 72 over to Hannibal Mo where we stopped for lunch and a quick visit. And of course, forgot to take any pics. Then we landed in Chillicothe MO for the night.  The next day (15) was Goodland Kansas, just near the Colorado border. About an hour and a half from Chillicothe, and just past Kansas City, I realized I didn't have my hearing aid. Then I remembered instead of taking it out in the evening and putting it with my billfold and money, I had gone to bed with it and at one point remembered and took it out and set it on the night stand.  The next morning I obviously did not notice it on the night stand when we packed up and left. I called the hotel and housekeeping had found it and it was at the front desk. I asked if they could mail it to my house since we were already 1 1/2 hours away and didn't want to go back if possible.  I offered to send a check to reimburse them for the cost. The person I spoke to said they could. I wondered the rest of the way home if they really would. Well, when we got home there was a card from the post office that they had a package for me and sure enough, it was my hearing aid. And it was packed inside 2 pieces of  plastic suspended in a plastic bag. Absolutely no way it could have been damaged. I was so happy to get it back in excellent condition, I wrote him a check for $50 over the amount of shipping and mailed it out.
Okay, on day 16, we left Goodland and to avoid Denver, we cut over to Colorado Springs on state road 24. That wasn't the best plan as there was road construction and it was just a 2 lane road. The 72 mile segment to Colorado Springs took us 2 1/2 hours! But fortunately we had scheduled an 8 hour total segment, so we still arrived in Santa Fe by 4:30 thanks also to the time change.
We spent 2 nights in Santa Fe (day 17) so we had an entire day to enjoy the city. It was very busy as they were having an enormous art fair!

It covered blocks and blocks of the old section of the city. We did a lot of looking but didn't buy a thing! It was beautiful weather, the same we'd had for the entire trip so far, but quite humid. We had lunch on a balcony overlooking the square.

We had some type of nacho dish but with Frito's. It was yummy!

Back at the hotel, I started up my laptop to check e-mails and such and after it loaded windows, it froze........
I couldn't surf, I couldn't check e-mails, and I couldn't do anything beyond the main screen. Everything was locked. I couldn't access  documents, no system files, and even my antivirus was disabled! I must have gotten something bad when I was checking Santa Fe sights that morning. I tried everything I could think of but nothing worked. The only hope I would have was back home using my desktop for research. So I had no puter the rest of the trip.   :-(
But we had just a couple of days left on our trip, so I survived.  :-)
Day18 took us to Laughlin NV. But not very quickly......

More road construction. Must have been backed up for miles as slow as the traffic moved. I don't know why it was so slow. We were down to one lane, but even then, it was very slow.
Anyway, we finally made it to Laughlin....Here's a pic from our window.....

The Colorado river is over on the left.
Was a nice stay in a free room.   :-)
Since we've stayed here in the past, they e-mail me offers all the time. Either discounted rooms or free rooms. That's why we decided to stop here instead of driving the last 2 hours to Vegas. It was already a nearly 9 hour drive thanks to construction. And this way we'd get home nice and early in the day.
So, to recap..... 19 days. 5270 miles, 12 different hotels, one lost hearing aid and a dead laptop.  But nice visits with many people, good weather the entire trip, and made it home safe.    :-)