After returning from Cape Hatteras last fall and spending over a week cutting back trees, trimming bushes. and pulling out weeds, we decided it was time to downsize! And so in November, we bought a townhouse in the Four Oaks section of The Hills in Bedminster and started the process of selling our home in Tewksbury!

We also decided that we wanted to work again as Park Rangers during the summer of 2007 instead of going to Alaska as we had planned! Although we loved Cape Hatteras and enjoyed working there, we wanted to continue moving around, seeing more, and having new adventures; and so we started the process again of applying for positions as Park Rangers (Interpretation) and sent out over 25 applications to parks west of the Mississippi River.

Getting ready to move and "downsizing" was a project! We had lived in Tewksbury for 20 years and during those years Rebecca and Brian had grown up, we had accumulated "stuff" from Mom and Dad Schundler's home and a little more from the Frazee farm when it was sold---and in the end, we were just amazed and embarrassed at how much "stuff" we had accumulated---and most of it had to go!

We gave things to friends and friends of friends; some things ended up at the lakehouse; about five trailers loads went to the VNA Rummage Sale in Far Hills, and we renewed our charge accounts at the Bedminster and Sussex county dumps!

In March, we began hearing back from some of the National Parks, and fortunately, one of the parks that called to see if we were interested was Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado---one of our favorites! Of course, we said yes---and then the frantic process of trying to be completely ready to leave New Jersey in time to be at Mesa Verde by May 13th started. It meant finishing the downsizing and moving, setting up accounts for our new home while making all the arrangements for being away for five months, and trying to finish the framing and roofing of a totally new bathroom at the Grand View cottage (Rebecca and Brian's lake house which is next to ours on Lake Owassa.).

With a lot of hard work, many long days,and some luck everything got done.....a few days later than we had hoped.... but at least everything got done; and finally we left for Colorado on May 2!!

Part of Mammoth Caves National Park

Mammoth Caves in Kentucky

From the very beginning we had hoped that on the way to Colorado we could visit a few states and places we had never seen before. And so we went out I-78 to I-81, and then headed towards West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.

Our stops (overnights) along the way were:

• Hagerstown, MD from where we visited the Antietam National Battlefield and Harpers Ferry National Historic Park
• Sutton, West Virginia (just a stop along the way)
• Bardstown, Kentucky (where we camped at My Old Kentucky Home State Park--and visited the former mansion/plantation of the Rowan family which inspired many of Stephen Foster's songs. (He was a cousin of the Rowans.)
• Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky) which we had never seen but had heard so much about. Last year one of the other Rangers had worked there and this year one of our Rangers has just come from there.
• Brinkley, Arkansas (posed to visit Little Rock where the next day we visited the Clinton Library and the Central High School National Historic Monument)
• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (one of the many BBQ centers of the world)
• Amarillo, Texas (another famous home of BBQ)
• Just north of Albuequerque, New Mexico where we stayed in the Vista Linda campground (a National Forest Service campground) where we were poised to visit Bandelier National Park and Los Alamos and its famous museum of atomic research
• Bloomfield, New Mexico from where we went to Chaco Canyon National Monument and Aztec National Monument (a two night stay)
• Mancos, Colorado and Mesa Verde National Park