We have begun this leg of our adventure in waves – waves of organization, waves of leaving, waves of good-byes, and alternating waves of excitement and melancholy. After more than a solid six months of planning and preparation, Colburn, the kids, and Fig all left Reno in late July to drive east and see his family. Our truck, now nicknamed Olaf, has everything we will use over the next year – a four person roof-top tent, camping gear, two jerry cans,Read more
Posts filed in: Getting Ready
A New Chapter, A New Adventure
It’s been two years since we returned to the US and posted about our adventures. We settled back in to our old life – our old house, the kids at their old school, my old work – and yet everything was different, not in a tangible way, but more like a rub in your shoe that you can only feel after many miles. It was a subtle but constant irritation. A whole year passed waiting for the feeling to eitherRead more
The Unknown
As I stood at the sink of the hut doing the breakfast dishes on our last day of trekking, I asked the woman standing next to me, a Danish mother of an 8 month old baby, what their plans were for the day. Expecting to hear, “heading out”, “going to see the lake” or something similarly safe, I was moderately surprised when she replied, “Heading to MacKenzie”, a trekking hut some 12 kilometers over a moderately steep alpine pass away. Read more
Too Much Stuff
Oh my gosh – I am so relieved that we actually made it out of Reno. There were a few times over the last week that I didn’t actually think it would happen. But, in the end, preparations always take exactly as long as you have, so this was no exception. Literally, I was packing away the last boxes when the cleaners showed up and the house was only unoccupied for one night. After two weeks of packing and movingRead more
The “Official” Launch
With a little over 2 weeks to go until we hit the road, one of my main priorities was to “officially” launch the blog. The posts that I have done to date (only 4 of them) have been so that I could learn how to use the tools and to begin to think of ways to organize the content. Now, with just a few more days to go, it’s time to get moving and go live! We’re in theRead more
The First Good Bye
Last weekend we said our first good bye – and it was much more emotional to than I would have expected. Ever since our mom died a few years ago, my sister and I have arranged to enjoy some family camping time on the Sonoma Coast at least twice each year. Typically we meet for Thanksgiving and Mother’s Day, but this year we had to alter our plans as Auntie Mar (the ultimate kid-magnet) and Uncle Roland (a close secondRead more
Wounded – intentionally
To give you an idea of my penchant for procrastination, I have had a pretty painful foot for a couple years now, but waited until 12 weeks before we leave to have it fixed. Crazy, right? Now, it might now be as bad as it sounds – I actually have a reason for waiting. Here’s the story – I saw the surgeon in November and we thought about doing it then, but it would have meant missing the majority ofRead more
Getting Ready – 17 weeks and counting
The intensity of preparations has been ramping up over the past few weeks. Being the ever-prepared “Plannie McPlanerson” (a name, by the way, that we have hijacked from a family from Colorado who did a similar trip a few years ago – she liked to plan too!) that I am, I set out a schedule of things we needed to accomplish before we left – rent houses, get visas, get school books, etc. – as weekly assignments so that weRead more
Getting Ready – The First Days
Well, the holidays have come and gone and we are now 5 months from our departure date. We had put off moving on any actual preparations for our trip until after the New Year, so now it is time to really begin getting ready. There are passports to be updated, visas to be procured, immunizations to be administered, houses to rent, gear to be purchased, school-work to be organized, and a myriad of other little details to be handled –Read more
The Shindells - Four to Go 