been updating blog, about to leave Ecuador

Thats all I have time for now. We are off to sleep in our last night in Quito. We are staying in a guest room at the Samaritian's Purse office where Phillip worked. Tomorrow morning we fly to Miami, then LA, then Tahiti. We have a 24 hour stopover in Tahiti then it is on to Auckland, New Zealand. We will then have 5 weeks to explore and enjoy New Zealand. (The picture is of Tommy practicing harmonica in the hammock on the front porch of our hostal room at the beach)

at the beach in Ecuador

Kristin and I found this odd fish laying dead on the beach as we took a walk along the beautiful national park beach we visited earlier this week on the coast of Ecuador. The beach was just a 15 minute moto-taxi ride from the little town where we spent two nights, Puerto-Lopez, "the capital of heaven", as some 'official' graffiti read.

10 Weeks Out West in a VW Van

From T and K Out W...

Kristin and I have been home for sometime from our journey across the country and back that we took this fall. For those of you that do not know, I have taken an offical leave of absence from The NC Solar Center/NC State University. So, when we return from all of our travels I will return to work at the Solar Center. Kristin sadly left her friends and patients at Doctor's Vision Center as a vision therapist. She is not yet sure of her plans when we return.

The picture above is from a sunrise at the northern end of Glacier National park. It was one of the most spactactular moments of the whole trip. Their was a very very beutiful sunrise on one side of the road and then a huge bright double rainbow appeared on the other side of the road. We have a great huge panaramic photo that we stiched together from about 12 photos that shows the entire double rainbow with the van below, but we forgot to upload it and the handful of other stiched panaramics to our Picasa page before we left. We will get them up once we get back and fire up our computer.

The trip started in late September. See the prior post for a better verson of our first week or so. We picked the van up from the shop just in time to load it and Kristin's car up with the last few things in our house before we had to be out. We dropped those things off, dropped off Kristin's car in Burlington and were on the road. We were headed for Glacier National Park first, well with some planned stops in South Dakota, and a long unplanned stop in Misourri (transmission died).

In South Dakota we saw hundreds of buffalo, ate at a must-eat-at restarunt, Alpine Inn, saw the rock carvings of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, and toured some intriqing caves. From here we headed northwest to Glacier National Park. We saw our first snow of the trip as we approached. It was amazing, from a distance of a couple of miles there appeared to be a wall of snow. Before 'the wall' there was no snow at all, almost felt sunny, at the wall it was coming down hard and the ground was bright white. As we approached the wall it became a little more translucent. In fact it took about 30 seconds to go from dry to nearly an inch of coverage. We camped just a few miles from 'the wall' in Buffalo, MT just a coulpe of miles from the park. There are several photos of us in the snow at this campsite.


The next morning we head into the park. The roads are clear but there is up to four inches of snow on the ground and it is very windy (see recent video post for example). We tour the south and east side of the park before driving around the bottom of the park to get to the west side. About 10 miles of the single road, Going-To-The-Sun Road, through the middle of the park was closed for scheduled 10-year maintance, but would have been closed very soon, if not by then, due to snow.
The west side of the park was much less windy than the east, which was releaving. We did several hikes while in the park, including a 13 mile round trip hike to Sperry Chalet, the second half of which had us hiking through snow nearly up to our knees. By this time in the fall most of the park was closed for the winter, all the lodges, some of the roads, all the park shops, and about half of the campgrounds were closed. The other campgrounds were in 'privative' mode, no running water and only pit toliets. We did see people throughout the park, on trails, and in the campgrounds, but they were few and far between. The highlight of our time in Glacier, besides all the amazing views, was three or maybe four moose walking through our campsite. It was just starting to get dark and we were cooking dinner in the bus when Kristin saw them. They were just meandering along about 10 feet in front of the bus. We got to see them for just a few seconds before they got spooked and took off. Then we had fun tracking them through the snow and mud through the campsite.

From Glacier we headed through Idaho to meet our friends Ben and Elizabeth (House) Brodhead in Seattle, Washington. We were with them when we set up this blog and made our first post many months ago.....

more to come as we have time to write it up...

Some detailed journaling from the start of out west trip

Kristin did a great job of writing up some detailed journal entries of our first week or so on the road (which was late September 2007). We found out what a task this is and how hard and intimidating it can be to catch up with detailed journaling once you get behind. We have not written any more detailed entries, and I think posting this here is our way of throwing in our hat and admitting that the rest of the out west journal will not be written in detail. A post to follow soon will include a rougher overview of our western journeys.




Thursday Sept. 27 – Tommy and I woke up and worked on last minute details until the bus was ready to be picked up. We tied our mattress down to the roof of the Malibu in order to take it to storage, dropped off our cable box, and headed over to pick up the bus around 11. We had to hurry in order to get Alberta to the house, so we could pack up the rest of our stuff to take to Hall’s and be out of the house by noon. We got to Hall’s and unloaded the bus, then transferred all our trip gear from Sally to Alberta. We then headed out to Burlington, stopping to get lunch at Burger King and using one of our last Raleigh coupons. We got to Burlington and quickly hand wrote an itinerary for my parents. We had started typing one up that morning, but were unable to finish or email it due to our power being shut off. We waived good-bye to ole Sally as Tommy and I headed out of town in Alberta. We drove to Charleston, WV where we requested that our GPS, Rose, take us to the closest Walmart. Once at Walmart, we inquired where we were allowed to park for the night. We prepared for sleep, even though with the curtains closed, it was very reminiscent of daytime! About 2 or 3 in the morning we woke to a truck flying around the parking lot, dragging a guy around on a piece of metal, like a sled. They seemed to be having a great time and did not seem to tire of this activity. Needless to say, we did not get much sleep that night.


Friday, September 28- We woke up and headed out of town. It was a long day of driving, but a beautiful day for it. We stopped in St. Louis for a run downtown and around the arch. This was quite refreshing and needed after sitting for hours. Sun set and we drove a little over an hour to Graham Cave State Park. As we pulled into our campsite, Alberta started to act up and would not go into reverse. After a few minutes, Alberta seemed to be feeling and acting fine, so we hoped all was well. We ate some cereal for dinner, then went to sleep.


Saturday September 29- The morning was filled with sunshine as I headed to take a hot shower! Right across the way from us in the campground was another couple our age in a nearly idential VW van. They were from NC/Georgia and were in the process of moving out to Portland for a new job. After becoming acquinted
with them and enjoying some hot showers, we set out on the road...sort of. The van was acting funny, but we rolled on, for a mile or so. We were still in the state park and faced with a steep hill that we couldn't make it up. In fact, it appeared that our whole transmission was shot. Just a minutes later, after some head scratching, our new friends came by and looked it over with us. We started her up again and was able to make our way gently up the hill to a small, flat, parking area. We used the GPS and our phone to find an auto garage open on Saturday. It took close to a dozen calls, but we found a Midas that was open and could see us. Midas was a 45 minute drive away, in Columbia, but at least this was 45 mintues in the right direction.
We dropped off the van with them and walked away for a lunch. We came back to have the bad news confirmed. The tranny was shot and would have to be replaced, it was late Saturday afternoon and no one in town would be able to even look at it until Monday. We thought through our options and decided to try to hobble with the van about 10 miles north of town to a state park for a quiet, peacefull, weekend of camping. We made it there around dinner time Saturday night by being real gentle on Alberta. Very luckly we got the last open campsite in the park. The host said she was amazed there was still a spot so late. It was a beatiful day and the park had been full every weekend day in the spring, summer, and fall for several years. We smiled to ourselves for our good luck and setup camp in a reallativly quiet corner of the park. See, the park is an Off Road Vehicle (ORV) state park, it has over 70 miles of four wheeler trails, but not a single hiking trail. But, they can't ride after dark so we get a good nights rest.


Sunday September 30- With the buzz of ORV’s in the air, Tommy and I woke up and ate breakfast. After working on a budget for the next 8 months for our trip, we decided to go for a run. It was a gorgeous day, but quite hot. We took a long run on the main road of the park, since all the trails were devoted for motorcross. After running, Tommy and I walked down to a lake to go fishing, which did not last long since it began to rain and become dark. Tommy and I quickly made dinner and closed up the bus as a huge storm came through. High winds, intense thunder and lightning, as well as torrential downpour kept us in the bus playing ‘Farkle’(a dice game for those of you who do not know).


Monday October 1 – Waking up early, we took showers and set to work on getting Alberta some therapy for her transmission blues. Walt’s VW repair told us to bring Alberta on in to be looked at. With books to read in hand, Tommy and I sat down on an old VW seat for 2 in the lobby and waited to hear the diagnosis. Walt informed us that Alberta needed a new transmission, which he just so happened to have sitting around. Walt had bought a wrecked bus about 5 years ago and kept the transmission to sell if the occasion came about. This new-to-us transmission is a 1991 with only 68K miles on it. Thrilled with this bitter-sweet news, we walked a couple miles downtown to get lunch and check email at the public library. After walking back several hours later, Alberta was ready to go and we rocketed out of town around 5:30, reaching 75 mph quickly on the interstate! This was surly a new van! We drove until Sioux City, South Dakota, where we sought out a Walmart to sleep. With the weather cold and rainy, we wearily went to sleep. This time we were smarter and used extra sheets to block out the bright lights and keep us more insulated from the cold! We, along side one other car, slept like angels.


Tuesday October 2 – Pumped about our new speed and agility, we headed out in route for Rapid City, South Dakota. The drive to Rapid City would have been quite boring except for the incredibly high winds! Each stop Tommy and I made, we would have to stretch our arms out from clenching the steering wheel so hard! Tommy and I also grew exponentially excited about the amazing Corn Palace that we saw signs for every few miles over the course of a couple hundred miles! We could not imagine the coolness of this place, with its ‘amazing earcitecture’ and being ‘the wolrd’s only corn palace’! As the corn palace came into view, our hearts sunk a little. This “corn palace” WAS a large building with corn on it, but it was a brick building with halves of different colored corncobs nailed to the sides in certain areas to form pictures. While still somewhat impressive, Tommy and I thought this building, this palace, would all be made of corn! Inside was a large gym, where concerts and events take place, but overall, the corn palace received 2 thumbs down. Several more hours of driving brought us to Wall Drugstore, where we spent some time looking around. We never found their free ice water, 10 cent pop, or 5 cent coffee, but it was still a fun stop. We headed on and were getting very pumped up for our dinner at the ALPINE INN!! Tommy had learned of this place from a coworker and we were told that this restaurant was a must! We arrived about 8 and after 30 minutes, were seated for our first dinner out on our trip. We were asked whether we wanted the 6oz (the small) or the 9oz (the large) for you see, this is your only choice here at the Alpine Inn! So our meal started with a wedge of iceberg lettuce and homemade ranch dressing. Then the main course – filet mignon wrapped with bacon, a baked potato with sour cream, and a piece of Texas toast. This was a seriously good meal! We finished off with a wonderful medoly of chocolate moosse and brownie. With a good feeling of success, we left to find somewhere to camp. We entered Custer State Park to find that most of the campgrounds were closed for the season, and the ones open were way across the park. We began to drive through the park on very slow and windy roads, when we decided it was too dark and too far to drive these roads. We turned around and took the highway the long way around to the other side of the park and made our way to Game Lodge Campground, where we stayed for the night