All those annoying little details

Yesterday we took the kids to school and got them enrolled, then went into Palmer to start on our "to do" list. We didn't get very far! We went to lunch with my cousin Jeff and wife Luci (the kids were soooooo jealous!) and by the time we were done, it was about time to head back into the hills to meet the kids after school. We actually got a lot of good advice from Jeff and Luci and they mapped out for us some places to go to work on our list so while we didn't get a lot crossed off the list yesterday, they set us up with a great plan to work from today. We went back into Palmer and Wasilla today and got auto insurance, registered the car and truck and got pretty new Alaska license plates ;) got Rodney's driver's license, checked to see if Rodney's handguns had arrived (they had not), had lunch, stopped at the post office AND managed to shop a LOT of items off our shopping list! Not bad for one day now that I type it all out! We still need to go to Anchorage later this week for a few other big items but we already have some good leads on where to go for those too so it ought to go fairly quickly. This isn't exactly fun stuff, but it needs to be done in order to manage the household! I haven't been feeling all that great and finally figured out that there is mold in the house we're staying in so I'll sleep in the camper until we can settle in the other house. Still no phone either so email is probably the best way to stay in contact unless we can call while we are running our errands. Sorry this is so scattered! My thoughts are all over the place lately! I am working on a few more posts down the road starting with one on guard rails... I started working on that one in NY!

Windshield panoramas

Can you guess why I called them that? Good thing we've arrived safely! I didn't want to post these until we had arrived safely for my mother's sake! Yes, driving with left hand, clicking with right - I took hundreds of "point and shoot" photos, most of them just clouds, but enough that turned out good enough to make it worth it! No, I didn't take my eyes off the road! This is Kluane Lake (I think) - the one that I said was so blue.



I wasn't driving for this one! LOL! This was in the Yukon - it was so beautiful I insisted we stop!
I just love the fireweed! Actually, there seem to be a number of different types of it - this was purplish, then there is some that is really red.

Remind me to tell ya'll about the motorcycles and this one buffalo with ATTITUDE! These guys were HUGE! I have closer pics, but I loved how this guy just owned the road!



I hope this holds ya'll over until I can post more!

Oh no!! I forgot about pictures!!!

Ack!!! SORRY, everyone!!! I'm so sorry that I forgot all about the pictures!!! Yesterday I spent almost all day talking, and talking, and talking... It was so great to catch up with everyone! Every meal took hours because we just kept on talking! Then today we started unpacking at about 7 am and I just gave up at about 9 pm. Talk about a marathon! At least it is almost all settled, but boy am I ever bushed! Yikes! Then I open my email and see all the responses looking for pictures! I wish you could all see me blush right now! Boy, do I ever feel like a heel! I wish I could say I'd do it right now but I can hardly see straight, much less type straight! Well, maybe I'll give it a shot anyway, since the pictures are mostly picked... I wanted to add a few more first, but maybe I'll just do those another day. We have no phone yet. We aren't the only ones though - a line got cut in camp so a lot of people are without phone. Email is the best contact at the moment though I think people can also get through to the main camp line and leave a message at the front desk. And I DID tell my computer what time it is, and I DID tell it what time zone we are in, but this blog still thinks I'm on Eastern time. Too tired today to try to figure that out! That's all for now!

Unpacking, unpacking, unpacking!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

We’re in Alaska! We are in a village called Tok about 2 hours into Alaska. The roads weren’t as bad as we expected based on what we’d heard but they weren’t all that great either. There wasn’t as much gravel as we expected, but the traveling was still slow due to a lot of dips, bumps and pot holes. Rodney said Oksana was bouncing up and down like popcorn, he said his kidneys were crushed, the back of the trailer bottomed out more than once in the dips and dives, and Ellie didn’t want to get back in the truck after one particularly jarring section. Oksana said that the trailer tires must not be filled with air, they must be filled with prayers! Rodney had initially talked of pressing on until we got to camp, but he caved in pretty quickly after a couple more hours of driving after the high of crossing the border. That went so smoothly it was obscene! We were there less than 5 minutes between two vehicles! I didn’t want to say anything before we got back in the US but we actually had 10x the amount of ammunition with us than we were actually supposed to have. The guy at the Canadian border was VERY gracious! From here we head southwest to get to camp tomorrow.

Speaking of Ellie, the dogs have traveled better than expected. Granted, our expectations were pretty low. Any time before this trip Ellie has always thrown up any time we took her in the car. We give her Bonine (a 24 hr medicine like Dramamine) and that seems to do the trick as far as the throwing up goes. It doesn’t stop the whining and climbing all over Rodney, but at least she’s not throwing up on him! Eider LOVES to ride! He’s a born traveler! Half the time he’s sound asleep on his back with his legs sticking straight up in the air on the road. Dufus!

We went through some beautiful country again today. That upper part of the Yukon is GORGEOUS! Kluane Lake was stunningly blue! I’ll have to see if I got some pictures. At one point Andrei said, “We’re like in the middle of nowhere!” Like we hadn’t been for days already! It is nice and cool up here. I actually wore a fleece for a few minutes yesterday and a few hours today! Yeah!!!!! I’m still on the prednisone though so I’m probably running a little warmer than even I usually run. Sergei commented at one point, “This is nice. I haven’t sweated yet today!” I’m not sure I agree though. At one point there was a horrible smell in the car and it turned out that Sergei had taken off his shoes. I thought something had died in there! Ah well! Rodney gets him and his stink tomorrow! Tomorrow is the end of the trail! Yeah!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

We’re here! We arrived at about 12:30 Alaska time. What a blessing to be out of a car! Now it is time to unpack, unpack, unpack! The closer we got to Victory, the more agitated Andrei became. Just after we got here, he asked for some medication to help with his anxiety. Moments later we ran into Liz Weaver, a gal from the Bath, NY area who is up here with a work crew for 2 weeks. Andrei knows her from Bible Quizzing in NY! He was SO excited to see her that it really helped dispel his anxiety! They chatted for quite a while. Had we not been delayed in our journey, Liz would not have been here yet. God’s timing is ALWAYS perfect!

After lunch we went back to unpack and Rod VanDaam brought two of his kids (Robert and Tasha) by to meet the kids. That also helped the kids a lot to meet other kids that they will be going to school with. The kids had a number of opportunities through the afternoon/evening to meet some of the other kids in the area. It seems to have been a great introduction to Victory. It has been a busy day of greetings and unloading! Sorry for no pictures yet! I PROMISE I will do it tomorrow! Today’s scenery, especially coming into the Matsu valley was even more stunning than before! Simply amazing! I’m about ready to drop though so I’m going to try to keep this short. One more note though before I sign off. We were thinking we’d need to go shopping tomorrow but the fridge was FULL! So were the shelves! I think we’ll be able to relax a little bit tomorrow and just try to find ourselves!

Yes, we're still alive!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

We left my sister Annette’s house after her husband Harry insisted on cooking us breakfast (technically second breakfast). He also sent us with sandwiches for lunch AND leftovers from dinner the night before! We did NOT go hungry at their house by any stretch of the imagination. Harry’s cooking is the stuff of poetry! Seriously, it is that good. Rodney and I have only a half dozen or less “memorable eating experiences” in our lives. Harry’s cooking ranks right up there with fresh lobster in Nova Scotia, San Carlos Bay (hole in the wall) in Phoenix, AZ, my Uncle Henk’s cooking and the tiny French restaurant we ran across years ago after camping in Ontario Provincial Park. I kept telling them that if they kept feeding us like that we might not want to leave! I’m still drooling over the food just thinking about it!

Anyway, we did manage to drag ourselves away (with much pain on the part of the kids) and we started off on the second half of the journey. We drove first toward Calgary through driving rain over roads that I wasn’t too keen on driving. In Bassano where my sister lives we had walked over these wet roads that were as slick as could be! They are paved with a gravel that is like tiny smooth river rocks. They are also as slick as river rock when they get wet. I kept thinking of that as we drove along through the heavy rain! The rain finally cleared away as we got near Calgary but the traffic didn’t! Once the heavy rain stopped, the heavy traffic started and stuck with us pretty much all the way to Edmonton.

We stopped along that route in Carstairs to visit a missionary that our church has supported for years. I’ve followed Dan and Deanna Woodard’s ministry for years, met them a few times and kept in touch via email and Facebook more recently. Dan is such an interesting person and always such a joy to talk to! He’s one of those people that just radiates the joy of Christ. It was such a joy to be able to stop in and meet them in person, especially since there was a group from Castile, NY there that week putting a new roof on their house. That roof was such an amazing story in and of itself! Dan had been concerned about the roof for some time and our church had considered going out to help work on it but ended up getting pulled off to another trip. A number of us really had a burden about Dan’s roof and still wanted to help somehow. Meanwhile, we were planning this trip. We had decided that we would try to stop for a day or half a day and at least get Dan and his boys started on the job. As we were making those plans, the group from Castile decided to go up and do it. Just days before they arrived, Carstairs was hit by a freak hail storm that damaged most of the roofs in town as well as siding on many of the houses. Had that roof gone on any sooner, it would have been ruined. God’s timing was impeccable!

Less fun was some of the road kill we saw. Today’s was more disturbing than unusual – a Pyrenees and a horse. Not sure why we don’t expect to see that sort of thing, but we don’t.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

We left Whitecourt, Alberta and drove through more amazing scenery. The area gets remote quickly once you leave Edmonton aside from the anomaly of Grand Prairie with it’s 50,000 people. The gas prices started creeping higher and higher the further out we got. British Columbia has TONS of forests and trees through the area we drove and lots more mountainous roads. Oh yeah, STEEP and CURVY! Yikes! Intense driving! We ended up at Pink Mountain, about 140 miles past Dawson Creek, British Columbia, the official start of the Alaskan Highway.

Monday, August 17, 2009.

Today’s drive was AMAZING! It was probably the most amazing scenery I’ve EVER seen in my life! And we thought we’d seen beautiful before! EVERY turn or hill revealed another amazing vista more beautiful than the last. Today’s drive was through the Rockies. We saw moose, caribou, BUFFALO (honest to goodness, real life buffalo) and Stone Sheep. We’ve also seen antelope, mule deer and white tail deer, just not today. The buffalo like to sleep on the road at night. I’ll bet that’s exciting! Those things are MONSTERS! We had gone through one section where they said there were a lot of them and we didn’t see one. We got to another section like that and I said I’d really like to see some, not up close and personal like with a car, but close enough for pictures. Did I ever get that prayer answered! We saw a whole herd right beside the road (not in it). It was AMAZING! We didn’t make it that far mile-wise, but we sure had a full day! We were on the road by 8 am out of Pink Mountain, British Columbia and finally made it to Liard River, BC by about 5 pm. It was intense driving the entire day, much of it over winding gravel roads with some intense up and down grades. And we thought it was bad on Sunday! Every day brings more beauty and worse roads! LOL! It didn’t help that at the bottom of “Suicide Hill” they had us STOP for construction. Who’s bright idea was that? The brakes on the trailer were SMOKING after that one! There wasn’t a moment of relaxation at the wheel all day. We camped at Liard River Hotsprings Provincial Park which as the name indicates, is situated on a hot spring. We went up to the spring to soak and relax after the long day of driving. Ummmmm!!! Delightful! I had to stay on the cooler side of the spring, but my skin loved the spring water (just not too much of the heat).

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Well, we finally have internet again! Yeah! We made it to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. It was another beautiful drive today with much better roads than yesterday. We made pretty good time today, putting on about 400 miles in 9 hours. In the camp last night there was a bear trap close to our campsite. Oksana and Andrei slept in a tent and Oksana didn’t sleep at all worrying about that bear. Then they got wet too because they didn’t stake out the tent. It was a crabby morning to say the least! We’re drying out now though and everyone is in better spirits knowing that the end of the trip is in sight. We expect to get to camp in about 2 more days. We might even get to Alaska tomorrow depending on the roads. The road is supposed to be gravel and poor a couple hours north of here. We’ll find out tomorrow. We’re all pretty tired at this point. It will be very good to get to camp! I'll try to get some pictures up later, but a shower takes higher priority!

Pictures!

Oksana with Jadin's geckos Trains were everywhere

Antelope in Alberta, Canada
The road from Havre, Montana to Canada
Road work delay in Montana
Badlands in North Dakota
Hay bales in North Dakota
Andrei and Oksana watching videos on the computer
Sorry for the reverse order! I forgot how this worked and it took me a bunch of tries to get it together today!

Ready for the next leg!

This time with my sister has been AWESOME! We definitely needed it! We've been able to eat AWESOME meals, clean up, do laundry, eat, reorganize, spread out, get some sleep, eat, etc. Annette, Harry and Jadin have gone all out (as usual) to keep us well fed. Sergei is pretty sure he is in heaven. All the kids say this is their favorite part of the trip so far. The house we are staying in has a pool table in the basement so they've been having a BLAST playing pool, having raucous tournaments, usually Rodney and Oksana vs Sergei and Andrei. R&O beat S&A 5 times before S&A won and you should have heard them celebrate when they finally did win! You'd have thought they had beaten them every time! That pool table has gotten quite a work out. Their cousin Jadin has done a great job of entertaining the kids too. They all went out to the dam yesterday to check that out and they've been playing games, checking out his chameleon and crested geckos and just hanging out watching videos.

We'll be on the road tomorrow morning with one stop in Carstairs (above Calgary) to visit another friend and then hoping to camp northeast of Edmonton tomorrow night. I don't know how much internet access we'll have up there. We also can't seem to pick up our cell phone voice mails either so appologies to those who are leaving them! We aren't trying to ignore you! Email is more reliable at this point, or it has been at any rate. We're not too sure about that from here on out. We'll try to update this whenever we are able. We've got a book called the Milepost that tells all the gas stations, camping places, dumping stations, and other services along the route we will be taking. It seems to be an excellent reference manual (updated yearly) to the trip. ;) This last half should take 5 or 6 days, we expect, barring any problems. Thanks so much for all your prayers!

Half way!!!

Yeah! We arrived at my sister's house outside of Calgary at about 1:30 this afternoon. Our border crossing went smoothly despite a couple of hairy moments. They were generous though and allowed us to go through with very little hassle. More another day, but I'm too bushed to really get into it now. We're all very tired. Last night's campground was very tight and the temperatures yesterday wore us out in addition to the long days of driving we've had. This is a welcome oasis. The kids already got a taste of Uncle Harry's awesome cooking. We were all hungry enough to do it justice and we were NOT disappointed! Harry is a PHENOMENAL cook! Not sure how much internet access we'll have once we leave here, but we do have it here at my sister's house. They also have a furnished rental house that is empty at the moment so we'll be living in luxury while we're here! We should be well fed and well rested in no time! Can't waste precious moments together with my sister though so I'll save the thoughts for later.

Havre, MT

So much for a shorter day today. It ended up being another long one. Not quite as bad as yesterday, but still 10 hrs. We went almost straight up from Dickinson along part of the badlands and caught the northern route into Montana. The scenery though ND and MT this morning was even more amazing than what we saw yesterday. Unbelievable! I think this is the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life! Not that I'd want to live there! It looks to be pretty harsh country, especially the parts we traveled through mid-day. The temperatures hit 100 and the wind whipped through there like crazy. I can't even imagine what that would be like in the winter. We got stuck in road construction for an hour which made the day even longer than it should have been. That drive though was AMAZING! It felt like driving along the top of the world. When you'd come up on top of a hill it looked like you could see the ends of the earth. Take out the fences and few roads and buildings and it looked like I imagine parts of heaven.

I can't say as much for our mid-day drive. There were parts that were really flat, dry and desolate. There was even cactus growing where we stopped for lunch. You don't expect that in Montana. I'd love to come back some day and explore these western states some more. Probably not in the summer or winter though! LOL! Fortunately the temperatures are supposed to moderate tonight and tomorrow. I don't know if I could handle another day like today. Tomorrow REALLY should be shorter though. It looks like we've got about 180 miles to go to my sister's house outside Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Yes, tomorrow is our crossing day. I suspect we'll be crossing fairly early in the morning.

I'll save other thoughts for another day. I'm absolutely bushed and feel like I could drop off to sleep right here. My fingers aren't being cooperative either so I keep on having to go back and retype. I hope this post makes sense. I can't wait to have a day or so to rest with my sister! The kids are looking forward to meeting their Uncle Harry. They've heard plenty of stories of his cooking! We ought to ROLL out of there if he still cooks like he did last time I was there!

Dickinson, ND

Loooooooooong day today! We pretty much covered Minnesota and North Dakota in a 12 hr brutal push. As my parents warned, most camp grounds out west are near the rail road tracks, probably because most towns are right near the rail road tracks. The train went through before 6 am so we were up and on the road by 7, pushing through until after 7 pm, though it may be a different time zone here, so technically it may only have been 6 here. I'm all confused. Nothing new there! It doesn't help that we got turned around AGAIN today due to poor directions from the kid at the campground we stayed at last night. The problem is that with the truck and camper, if you get turned around it can take a half hour or longer to get straight. You can't just turn that thing around on a dime. As a matter of fact, it often takes a trip around the block to get straight, and we don't have maps of every little spot where we get going the wrong way. Alice (our stupid gps) isn't always helpful in getting out of trouble either. She only wants to give you the current turn, not a map of the whole area so you can figure out the better way yourself. She also doesn't always have the correct streets which doesn't help either. We hit at least 3 streets today that she wanted us to turn on, but there was no street there! The kids have been after me for ages to get a gps and they're seeing now that it isn't the ultimate solution they thought it was. Give me a map and mapquest any day!

I will say that the drive today was BEAUTIFUL! I don't think photographs will begin to do justice to all we saw today, though the kids sure tried to wear out the camera with taking photos! I wish we had time to stop and take photos ourselves! One of these days I'd love to take the time to really travel the US and just stop and see all that we'd like to see. That will be after the kids are gone! Oksana and Andrei are traveling fairly well but Sergei is... Well, he's just Sergei.

Back to scenery for a minute. Through Minnesota the lakes, rolling hills and flowers were just stunning. Must be something about the road that the black eyed susans really liked. They lined the road through much of Minnesota, hugging the road side, welcoming, waving, raising their faces to the sun. It was amazing! Parts of the country side were flat as a pancake. I've never seen anything quite like that, though I understand that other parts of the country are even worse! After the hills of NY it was actually quite beautiful to be able to see so far! It was NOTHING compared to North Dakota though! The MILES of farmland on all sides was just breath taking! The kids were snapping pics as fast as they could but I don't think they could begin to capture it! Andrei and Sergei worked for Mr. Dunton at home doing hay but they saw more round bales of hay today than I think they've ever even hauled in square bales at home. Just AWESOME! I've never imagined farming on such a scale. We drove for HOURS through hay fields and pastures with more of the same as far as the eye could see and as the kids said, it was like being up in an airplane you could see so far.

Back to the kids. I have Andrei and Oksana with me in the car. They're doing a pretty good job of keeping themselves entertained between videos and games on Andrei's computer, card games, Apples to Apples, taking pictures and keeping track of license plates (42 states and 5 provinces so far, probably would have been more if I could wake them up BEFORE I saw one fly by and if we hadn't had so much rain the second day). Rodney has Sergei and the dogs. His drive hasn't been quite so pleasant as mine. A friend gave us a whole pile of CDs of sermons which have been EXCELLENT, not to mention timely. Great listening and it makes the day go somewhat quicker. Ok, so NOTHING could have made the last hour of today go quicker! It was just PAINFUL! Well, I am really about ready to crash so I think I'll sign off for tonight. We need to map out tomorrow so I have no idea yet if we'll have internet again or not. We sure appreciate all the prayers, esp as those big trucks go flying by and Rodney is dozing off in the rig! Sergei isn't helping keep him awake!

Duluth, Minnesota

We stopped earlier today just because we were wiped out. Yesterday's travel was very long and stressful and we had a lot of thunderstorms overnight so no one slept well. Well, I slept better than the others, but still not that great. Better to pull off and get to bed early tonight rather than try to push on when we are over tired. The upper peninsula of Michigan and upper Wisconsin were BEAUTIFUL! Sparsely populated, beautiful scenery, pleasant travel. So far Minnesota isn't much fun, but we just went over the border and straight to the campground. We haven't even flushed the anti-freeze out of the camper water system yet so we're working on that as I type. We stopped at a KOA with a bunch of amenities including coming to your site with the honey wagon to clean it out, so we're just running water right now to clear the anti-freeze. Every day we work out a new wrinkle in this camper thing, hoping to have it down pat by the time we hit less traveled areas.

I didn't get to say much about our visit with my uncle yesterday because we were so late. It was an awesome visit. He's such an interesting character and every time I see him, I learn something new about him. He is one of those people who has done so much in life that you'll never learn it all in one sitting. I always thought I got my energy and mathematical mind from my dad, but I guess it comes from both sides (he's my mom's brother). I got him talking a little bit about some of the work he's done in the past including stories of talking with Buzz Aldrin regarding the pictures he took on the moon. My uncle was supposed to measure the stuff in the photos that came back but Buzz wasn't familiar with the camera used or the techniques used for photographic surveying (what my uncle used to do) so they had to use other means to figure out sizes (a boot in one photo, part of the landing gear in another.) I never knew he'd done that. I knew he used to fly a lot doing aerial surveying, but never knew about some of the other little details.

Anyway, I'd best get off to organizing, figuring out where to go from here, preparing for our crossing into Canada, getting Andrei's computer ready for internet access, etc. I'll hope to update again tomorrow, but we'll see what the day brings! Thankfully today was a little more relaxed than yesterday! I do have some pictures but I'm too tired to upload them today. It may have to wait until we get settled in Alaska. This isn't exactly a pleasure trip, though I'm glad we've had the sense to slow down and forget the schedule.

Upper peninsula Michigan

This will be a short one due to a late night and poor connectivity, but we've gotten as far as the upper peninsula of Michigan after a day's visit with my uncle in Ohio while the Volvo was in the shop. It was great to spend time with he and my aunt. Wish I had time to write more about that, but I guess I'll have to save my thoughts. It was sweet time together. Hoping to be on the road fairly early for a long day. We drove through a lot of heavy rain today and got turned around a couple of times (Mapquest and the GPS conflicted, should have just read a real map) so things took longer than expected. Hope to write again tomorrow, but I'll just say that I'll write when I can because nothing so far has gone as planned!

Tomorrow it is!

Today was long and painful (tossing more) but it really does look like we're ready to go. Rodney test drove the new lighter load with a friend driving behind him. All looks good! Tires are inflated to the proper pressure. Looks like we'll be on the road in the morning! We won't have internet tomorrow night, but should have it Fri night so I'll try to update again then. I feel a lot more prepared this time!

Thursday?

We might possibly be ready to leave by today, but I'm pretty sure we don't care to try it. One thing we learned the other day is NOT to rush and make stupid mistakes, esp when we're so tired to begin with that driving isn't safe. I almost fell asleep a couple times on the road in just an hour the other day! We're shooting to start off Thurs morning as long as everything else goes smoothly. I LOVE Rod VanDaam's attitude when we wrote of the delay, "There is no reason to hurry. We will hold your spot." I was the one who set the travelling time table based on where I wanted us to be and when. I'm learning that my timing isn't necessarily best. Go figure! ;)

We had SO much help over the last few days! We are so fortunate to have so many great friends willing to help out! What a blessing! The outpouring of love and support at church Sunday has continued all week. A friend came and checked and repacked all the wheel bearings in addition to some juggling of tires. I spent all day yesterday re-sorting, tossing, etc. It is actually a rather liberating process. Another friend dropped by WITH BOXES and offered to pack books to ship by media mail. With sorting I think we dropped about 400 lbs! Other friends juggled meals, kids, and other little errands (packing tape). I'm sure I'm missing things from the list. My mind is so shot trying to keep up with it all.

We're definitely sore and tired. I have more bruises on my legs per square inch than would seem humanly possible and I'm pretty sure I sprained my pinky yesterday. Every time I stop moving for a bit my legs cramp up. I can't wait to drive and rest and that says a lot because I don't do well driving! I don 't sit still well! Fortunately we still have phone and internet (I tried to turn it off, but needed to turn in the box to do it, so we still have it!) so I can keep in touch a bit. We're not near the phone much though... Hey, maybe it will reach to the barn. I'll try that.

I can't begin to express how much I appreciate all the prayers and support. There's no way we'd be as far along as we are without it! Andrei is doing fairly well with the stress (a miracle) and my health is holding up surprisingly well (another miracle). We're honestly doing fairly well and keeping pretty good attitudes. Not always every minute, but overall. ;) Well, I'd better get off my behind and get back to work! The computer chair is packed anyway and the cooler I'm sitting on is getting a bit hard! ;)

Definite delay again

Well, we're home again! We were on the road for about an hour. Blew a tire so we came home to lighten our load. I was wearing a t-shirt that says "Not of this world." Guess we need to walk what we say and throw off everything that hinders. I also have a book by Max Lucado called "Traveling Light" that keeps popping up and making us laugh. I doubt we'll be back on the road again today. Hopefully tomorrow. Too much junk on board! Our early ancestors did the same thing as they went west. Despite modern technology we still have the same problems.

Ohio

Appointment with Volvo dealer in Ohio tomorrow 7:30 am.

More delay?

The check engine light came on in the Volvo yesterday so Rodney went first thing this morning to get it checked. Something that controls the fuel mix so it needs to be repaired. Our mechanic doesn't open until 10 am. Working on finding an alternate.

Delay

It's official. We're going to be delayed. Hopefully we'll be on the road on Monday instead of tomorrow, but there's just no way we can be ready with everything by tomorrow. Well, maybe we could do it, but not with our sanity or health intact. ;) Not much else other than the delay and more packing. That trailer is going to be heavy. Yikes!

Oh, and a friend who also has a blog just posted something that really hit home - I commented after her post - uhhhhh, coincidence??

http://sumanafaith.blogspot.com/2009/08/gods-blog-gods-kid-gods-van.html