The Edge [of all] Journeys

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN POSTED A WEEK AND A HALF AGO… from my phone… which conspired against me and left it as a draft….grrr….. but anyway. Here it was (Oct 24th):

Sitting in a double-booked seat that just got sorted out on a plane getting ready to depart Chicago for Vegas and finally get to Denver this afternoon after a 24 hour travel marathon that included a 5 hour bus ride to Winnipeg yesterday and almost 4 hours of sleep last “night”. Nothing like commuting

I wish I could use the time to write the many posts I have composed in my mind over the last few months, but that would involve << just had to put my phone away for take-off >> a tricky bit of memory.

In a much more orderly and chronological fashion those posts would have talked about leaking hot water heaters that could not even be fixed by re-welding seams and hence weeks of self-inflicted cold showers (what fun are other options?); fall overtaking several projects (like building) that never materialized for lack of time and resources; bountiful harvests from Renee’s gardens;  starting up guy nights with a couple awesome buddies for Scripture studies and hang out time; busy busy work work and more work; crazy spontaneous floods of communication on many unexpected fronts; Sky turning into an insatiable walker and climber shortly after; Kids Club; a healthy dose of summer mini adventures; and of course most recently the culmination of the Fall Feasts of YHWH.

We had the blessed privilege of meeting and spending Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles) for 8-9 days with around 100 believers from all over Manitoba. Awesome fellowship, worship, studies, meals, and adventures together like zip lines, playing on the ropes course, hikes to suspension bridges and abandoned homesteads, etc.

And with that concluded last friday we headed back the 7 hour trek to Winnipegosis, had one last family Sabbath together, and dropped me off in Dauphin yesterday to begin my Clvr week in Denver while Renee holds down the fort in the North and stays available for Kids Club.

Well, as far as posts go this is leaving my journaling itch quite unscratched. But it will have to do for now as i’m burning through phone battery here.x2

…nevermind… going to have to risk the battery as this adventure unfolds… flash forward a few hours and I have to pee something fierce and we’re in a holding pattern circling Vegas because we didn’t quite beat the President landing and now we’re on standby in the sky with the fasten seatbelts sign illuminated. Not making this up. It figures that Obama would be here at the same random time as me… for more reasons than you (or I) know.

What else will happen today? When will I finally get to upload this? Pretty turbulent… some people are getting motion sick…

ok finally final descent… will upload from Vegas. And then on to Denver at last.

But super quickly – have to say: I love you and miss you my incredible wife Renee and our wonderful children Bennah, Reayah, Zach, Jaiden, Joy, and Sky!!!

Before we left San Diego I snuck in a helicopter ride (actually the same morning we had to check out of the campground by noon) to shoot video for stock. Hopefully the adventure will more than pay for itself (it better ).

Beautiful San Diego was our home for a month. Among other things, we made it to the southwest corner of CA and walked up to the border with Mexico on the beach, we played in the tidal pools at La Jolla and saw the seals and sea lions, we went to a vineyard / winery about an hour north and enjoyed tasting the wines, we played in the ocean in January and February at several different beaches, we enjoyed having a Trader Joe’s close by again, we had cook-outs with dear friends parked right behind us, we made new friends at the campground who routinely gave us fresh tangelos from their family’s tree, we went for an hour (1-way) ride on the 3-level Coastal Train along the coast up to Ocean City, CA had lunch way out at a restaurant on a massive pier and rode back during sunset, we went for walks around Mission Bay where the campground was, and many other adventures besides – all the while enjoying summer in winter.

This is our parking spot about 30 minutes south of Fresno, CA with a beautiful view to the Sierras. We’re staying on the farm of friends of friends and are so blessed to be able to make new friendships and have another taste of community in a place previously foreign to us.

We had an adventurous trip north that included lots of heavy pulling through mountains and an episode of overheating that forced us to pull over. We even lost our pyro gauge and I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to continue at one point. But we all prayed about it and I realized there really was no option but to throw our trust completely on YHWH and keep going. As soon as the family finished praying, and I came to resolve in my heart and spirit (I was outside under the hood), the pyro gauge came back to life and we pressed on without any other setbacks.

And then there was Bakersfield! Wow. Enough words cannot be found to describe the Bakersfield miracle. We set out from San Diego with directions in hand and campground recommendations from our tangelo friends who travel between their home in Washington state and San Diego every year for the seasons. Our original plan was to head up along the coast and end up in LA and maybe Malibu to connect with friends of friends there. That door closed for a variety of reasons which ended up pushing us through a more easterly route. YHWH confirmed it was the right direction for us as we pulled into a campground in Bakersfield, CA that had been recommended by our tangelo friends. It was around 7:30pm and the office was closed, but I had called ahead and our site number (112) was waiting for us on the door. We pulled into our site after several attempts (it was quite slanted on one side and leveling a camper is everything), the kids exploded out of the truck crying shrieks of banshee freedom, and I began to set up. Enter stage right: very familiar looking gentlemen. Queue the line: “Hey, didn’t we meet you guys in New Mexico?” Turns our we had not only arrived at the same campground, but had been assigned a site immediately next to dear friends we had made at a campground in New Mexico a month and a half earlier. They travel full-time too and homeschool their 5 boys who instant friends with our kids, and we only overlapped in NM for 1 night. They went northwest to Arizona and we went west to California. We weren’t event going to stay in San Diego for a month but were supposed to go to LA and instead ended up in Bakersfield. They were only supposed to be in Bakersfield for a few days (weeks before we arrived), but ended up stuck there for weeks to work out insurance, plates, and a new van after theirs was crushed by a semi (thankfully no one was hurt). And here we wind up weeks later, without staying in touch, parked next to each other at the same campground. I would call it a freak coincidental act of fate except that I have seen YHWH do things like this throughout my entire life.

Bennah and Reayah made it into their blog post about the amazing encounter, and I wish I had pictures of the whole crowd playing in Bakersfield to post here! Here’s Patsy’s post (scroll down to the entry “It’s All About Perspective”):
http://www.kirace.com/index.php?page=blog&bid=1
And here’s Marty’s post about the accident:
http://www.kidologytogo.com/2011/02/a-grateful-heart-is-a-thankful-heart/

Kidology is the children’s pastor ministry they are involved with during their travels. Amazing! All honor to YHWH!

Another highlight from Bakersfield was the not-quite-lukewarm-hot-tube-date. Renee and I had Bennah and Reayah watch the kids after bed time and managed a quick dip in the hot tub. We had Sky in the car seat and rocked him to sleep beside the water. The only thing was the water… it wasn’t even as hot as I’d make my own bath water. I ended up having to jump into the freezing pool and back just to get it to feel “hot” – even if only for a few seconds. But the night was beautiful and it was nice to have a moment of quality hangout time with my wife. That’s probably the first time Renee has ever shivered in a hot tub. Not kidding.

And here we are planting potatoes on the farm where we’re staying! Fun fun fun!

This was going to be a 10-photo post, but I ended up having to write a lot more than I had originally planned… the hour drags on… and I’ll have to make this part 1. More to come!

July escaped completely undocumented, even though we had a great big Garlic Adventure to Ohio and back to PA. Tonight I am typing this on battery power while we sleep several degrees off kilter in this welcome center / rest stop parking lot in NE Penn just shy of NY state. I don’t think we’re suppose to be here overnight, but when I went inside to find someone to ask, the only one around was a nice janitor lady and she said no one will bother us. I told her the story about how Joy dropped my phone in a cup of water and now the screen doesn’t work. She had asked what that little thing around my wrist was. I explained that it was a little LED flashlight that I use to read my phone’s screen whenever I need to. We wouldn’t have even stopped here but the Wal-Mart in town has been overtaken by township ordinances that state in scary big signs “no overnight camping.” I almost wanted to challenge that by setting up anyway and if anyone came I would have debated the semantics of overnight camping versus just parking… camping involves so much more it seems to me and it’s not like we would have tried to have a fire and roast marshmellows or anything. And, while the lady at customer service was apologetic and emphatic that it was not them (Wal-Mart) but the township and suggested that they were open 24 hours and hey we just might be shopping all night long, we figured we better not risk it and check out the welcome center instead since she also thought it might permit overnight. By the time we got here (just down the road) and everyone went to the bathroom and I called ahead to the next Wal-Mart an hour down the interstate to make sure they weren’t in local ordinance party-pooper land too, it was going to be quite late by the time we got there and sprawled out. So, we made a family decision split along pretty even lines to do the adventurous thing and subject ourselves to some guerrilla-style sleeping arrangements since I wanted to at least keep a low profile which means no slide-out and no leveling and Bennah had to climb over the bikes to get in bed, the other two boys are sleeping on the dinette (which turns into a bed of course… well of sorts anyway) and the girls are sharing the fold-down couch. And only the two little guys can squeeze through the bathroom door so everyone else has to use the porta-john that we normally keep in the truck so that we don’t have to stop at facilities every 15 minutes.

We’re on our way north and east.

I have many good excuses as to why things have died down quite a bit on the site here… and I want to publish this more boldly and dedicate an entire post to it – and I will likely write a lot more on the subject some other time (if I can make the time for it) – but:

The end of our world as we’ve known it
is closer than we think.

Let that sink in for a minute.

What does it mean? My world? Your world? Everyone’s world? You’ve probably felt the general vibe out there that not everything is as it should be. Sure there are lots of things going on in the news that seem like they’re all somehow connected, but surely everything will go on as it always has. Everything will be alright… right?

If you – right now – wherever you are, whatever you are doing that is getting interrupted by reading this is – pause for a moment; ponder the possibility that this fall – October, maybe later – could be a cataclysmic fulcrum point in America’s history that changes her (and the world) forever; let this possibility sink into your mind and then prepare; prepare by praying; prepare by thinking – what would you do if EVERYTHING changed? if you could not work? if you could not get to your family? if you could not use your cell phone? if there was no electricity? where would you go? what would you do? how? why? start weighing your options, but realize the only option is to trust your Creator whom you might not know as well as you’d like… if you pause for a moment and contemplate what I am saying… you will be more prepared to handle what will be coming in due time than the vast majority who will be caught completely by surprise.

Is this doomsday talk / conspiracy theory / doom and gloom? Depends on your perspective. Heavenly judgment on wickedness and oppression is justice and deliverance to the humble and righteous. Analytically speaking, America’s economic survival is impossible. Spiritually speaking, men of God have been having dreams and visions of America’s destruction for decades. And I’m not talking about televangelist type “men of God” – I’m talking about the kind of men (and women) who suffer persecution for their faith in Messiah in other countries, the kind who come to America as missionaries because of how lost our nation has become, the kind would (and do) walk for months on foot just to acquire a single copy of the Bible.

Could I be wrong about this fall? Certainly. But whether it unravels this fall or later, I am presently convinced that 2 of the next most massive world events are going to be: the collapse of America and war in the Middle East with Israel in the center.

Do I have any inside knowledge? No.

But I will share with you a dream my 7 year old daughter had a few days ago. My jaw dropped when she began telling me about it. She was at the pool with a couple friends. The water started to slowly drain out of the pool, but it was happening fast enough that she noticed it. She said it was very weird. Her friends noticed it too, but what was so bizarre was that no one else seemed to even notice or care. They just kept right on playing, even as they sank deeper and deeper with the level of the water. She and her friends got out as quickly as they could and kept watching. Soon, all the water was gone and everyone else was stuck at the bottom of the pool. She had the impression of very grave danger in the dream. As she was telling me about it, she had no idea how significant it was.

But the first thing I thought of was: “…as it was in the days of Noah…”

Don’t let anything I tell you – or anything that anyone else tells you – become the basis for what you do. Ask your heavenly Father what you should do. And if you don’t know Him very well, well, that’s probably a great place to start. If you don’t know Him at all you need His Son.

It’s hard to believe that in two weeks we will have been at this for a year already. Amazing!

We are settling in here at our friend’s in Pennsylvania where we started out last year around this time after a wonderful but all too short 2-stop journey up from Georgia. We camped at the fantastic Newport News Park for a few days and missed our dear brother and sister and family who used to live just a few short miles from there.

We had a wonderful time with our dear friends Ben and Elizabeth – hanging out at the campground on Saturday and then at their place on Sunday. Joy really took to their little girl who is only 2 days older. Now, every little girl Joy sees is “Aa-bee, Aa-bee!”

I had a business meeting on Monday with the very talented and creative folks at Ethicom (who are also long time family friends), and afterwards I brought the whole family over to their office for what was supposed to be a short visit (not wanting to impose). Well, it turned into quite a much larger adventure than that and by the time we left a couple hours later the kids all had their own offices, Bennah was working for $10 a day, they had produced their own “magazines” with a little help from a copier, and they each had a new writing/sketch book and an umbrella. They were talking about their new offices the rest of the day.

Keith from Ethicom put it so well (and I hope he doesn’t mind being quoted here): “It was a pure delight to have your little family come and spend a few moments showing us what true creativity really is. We need to be reminded that the Lord teaches us about Himself through the lives of little children and to always look at life through their eyes.”

The delight was ours! And the reminder was so valuable to Renee and I as parents. We can easily get caught up in the duties of raising children and sometimes forget the simple delights. We often look at things with our adult perspective and only see the extra work that a child’s whims might entail. But if we return to our own child-like vision still buried down deep underneath all the grown-up responsibilities and “mature” perspectives we’ve collected over the years, we can quickly tap into an endless wellspring of simple joy. To all our dear parent friends out there: chase the whims of your children with them through their creative and carefree eyes and you will discover the delight of remembering that anything is possible!

From there we headed up to our old stompin’ grounds near DC. It was a lot of fun watching the kids’ reaction to the familiar sites. They were beside themselves with amazement. Bennah kept exclaiming: “I just traveled back in time!” It was surreal in a beautiful way.

On Wednesday I dropped in on my old buddies at the White House and had a wonderful time catching up a little with them and hitting my Chipotle for lunch. Yes, it is my Chipotle. I used to make the pilgrimage at least once a week while I worked there. So many things have changed and so many things haven’t changed. Several people asked me throughout the day: “So, do you miss it?” Do I miss working at the White House? I told them all the same thing – I loved working there, and I would love working there again, but I do not miss it; not one bit

Our youngest son Jaiden asks us almost every single day no matter where we are: “can we ride the metro train sometime?” Our universal answer is, “yes – sometime.” So, Thursday was finally sometime and we rode the metro into DC and invaded the National Museum of Natural History. The little ones tired out in pretty short order, but Bennah and I made an extended exploration while Renee took the others for snacks in the Fossil Cafe.

The Pohick Bay Campground in Virginia near our old home was so nice – we wanted to stay longer, but Friday came and it was time to leave. We had a very pleasant journey up to PA and are now enjoying the farm, the kids have their friends again whom they’ve been looking forward to seeing for months, and we are getting ready for Passover.

I’m still incredibly busy with business and have added even more new projects to the list. I much prefer drinking through a fire-hose I suppose. Episode #5 is now live! I need to catch up on 3 months of photos to my SmugMug galleries. Spring is coming and YHWH’s blessings abound!

I have to tell you about the last place we stayed at. I booked it for a couple nights because it was near Orlando and it had great rates (two things I thought might be mutually exclusive when I first started looking around). I booked it over the phone, site unseen, from a little picnic area where we had stopped for a break on Key Largo as we worked our way back to the mainland. When we pulled into this place the next day I was reminded that, well, you never really know what you’re going to get I guess.

It was the kind of place that makes you want to grab your video camera and start shooting a documentary because there are a million insane stories among the inhabitants along with dramatically mundane and rundown visuals, and it’s all ripe for the picking… while at the same time your brain is screaming “you shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be here at all, you especially shouldn’t be here with your five children and pregnant wife.”

It wasn’t really anything obvious or overt. And it wasn’t the poverty factor alone. We found ourselves landing behind a tiny 8-room motel in a little campground run by the same folks where most of the sites had turned in to the permanent residences of people getting by in 20-30 year old campers. And it wasn’t really the people either… sort of… they were extremely nice actually. But they were almost too nice. Something was off, but I was resisting that gut impulse, because I kept feeling compassion for their condition and couldn’t help but wonder how I and my family must appear to them. I was also too aware of my own subconscious prejudices and unintentional elitism. And after all, maybe we were there for a purpose. The last thing I wanted to think was that we were too good to stay there… but…

At the beginning I sincerely did not feel like it was even a safe place for our children to play, but Renee was totally comfortable with everything. By the end of our stay those impressions had reversed between the two of us somewhat, but there was never any fear or worry – just an internal struggle between prudence and empathy; wisdom and charity.

It didn’t help that our sewer connection was a horizontal length of 3″ pvc running along the surface of the ground, connecting all the sites in our row – each site with its own tap in – and most of those quasi-permanent. I knew exactly what was going to happen when I opened the cover on the tap at our site to tie my own hose in, but I had no choice – one of the reasons we were there was to dump our tanks and get in a shower or two and I wasn’t going to leave with 500 lbs of waste water in my tanks. I gritted my teeth, unscrewed the cap, and watched helplessly as a couple quarts of liquefied (and quite fresh) sewage backed up and spilled on the ground under our trailer. I won’t enhance your nightmares with additional details of the procedure, but I am convinced that I was experiencing something that was quite illegal.

There was an inventor living there who had made some crazy things from old junk that would never get him anywhere, but were naturally fascinating to children – like a wagon that had been rigged with 2 sizes of bicycle wheels dragster-style with a large office chair bolted on for a seat. There was a guy working on a van next to us with an air compressor and an armada of good tools. There was a lady growing cantaloupe beside her trailer, and – even though it just looked like a bunch of weeds – she was very touchy about kids getting near it. She said she was also growing pineapple. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen pineapple grow before, but it looked like she had just buried one in the ground so that the cluster of leaves were just sticking up out of the dirt. Across the way, there was a camper that looked like it would fall down if you shut the door a little too hard, but it had a direct tv dish bolted to the side. Our other neighbor had 5-6 cats that he fed by pouring a long line of dry cat food out along the cracked concrete pad of the site between us that had some sort of burned out, crumbling brick and re-bar chimney behind it. Oh, and he showed the kids his giant python that he brought out from his completely camo-painted trailer.

I could not make this stuff up. See what I mean? Instant documentary. Camp for a week and get more stories and footage than you could ever cram into a 3 hour feature.

Unfortunately, that is not why we were there. We were really on our way to Georgia and normally would have just Wal-Mart hopped until our final destination. But we had stopped near Orlando to accomplish three major things, the first of which required electricity, running water, and sewer (to buy some time).

1. Knock out a major milestone in one of my work projects
2. Get some laundry done
3. Make an important business connection

#1 turned out to be impossible, but #2 and #3 were smashing successes.

I can’t explain why we were so eager and relieved to leave in any tangible, physical, evidence-based manner. The people were extremely friendly. The inventor gave Reayah a bike (which we had to end up leaving because… well, we were extremely appreciative, but it needed  way more fixing than riding). The pineapple lady gave Reayah a bunch of bracelets and necklaces (we didn’t end up keeping those either because they felt extremely weird spiritually… hard to explain unless you already know what I mean). And they all gave free advice: use duct tape on the sewer tap, keep trying the different washers / dryers until you find ones that work, check out the wildlife refuge down the road.

Despite the weirdness that I was writing off as merely a challenge to my own environmental conditioning, I was seriously considering checking on what their monthly rate would have been like. My logic at the time was that it would be warmer there overall than trying to go further north (even Georgia is still colder than it’s supposed to be right now), basic utilities were covered, it would cost more to keep travelling and then stopping for a month, the campground we had in mind in Georgia was turning out to be a bit more expensive than we initially thought or planned, I had a new business buddy in the area (Orlando) and some stuff could happen there, etc. As I hacked away on some code into the wee hours of the morning I had hopes and prayers in my head that we’d get some clear direction.

At 2am Renee woke up and started talking about the vivid dream she was just having. In her dream she was having a conversation with YHWH – asking Him whether we should stay or go, and He was telling her that we had to get out of their right away because He was going to wipe that place out with a tornado. We got up early and never had a more efficient and orderly time of breaking camp and getting the trailer ready to travel again. We weren’t taking Renee’s dream literally, but we were taking it as our answer, and there was already enough motivation once we had a clear plan.

I never asked about the monthly rates. I didn’t even ever open the valve on our black (sewer) tank, because I knew what would happen. As badly as I wanted to get on the road without that extra weight, it wasn’t worth the consequences under the likelihood that there wasn’t anywhere for the tank’s contents to go. Sure enough, there was a lot of gray (dish and sink) water backed up and stuck in our hose as it was, and that ended up having to go somewhere.

As we were pulling out, the truck started making a bad sound. Here we were, checking out an hour early (which never happens – we’re usually out just in time) and then I had to start wondering if the truck is going to fail me and strand us there. Got the trailer out of the site and started slowly down the road, but the truck was still protesting. It wasn’t the extra weight – we’ve pulled extra before – something sounded wrong. Pulled over behind an industrial building and started hitting diesel forums and trying to figure out what and how bad it might be. I was looking at all the info and starting to make a plan in my head about how to go about checking some things, but I got the distinct impression in my heart that we should just leave and trust. Renee reminded me that we should pray about it and so we did. Putting my analytical side on the shelf, we drove away and it was completely fine – the sound was totally gone!

Several hours later we pulled into paradise. Not by appearance. Not by amenities. Not by a stretch of the imagination – but by the standards of weary travelers who have been on the road for a month and a half, through 8 states, over 3200 miles, a dozen Wal-Marts, a handful of campgrounds, not longer than a few nights in any one place (except for the 2 weeks with our friends), trying to move major work projects forward through all of that, and more than ready to have a fraction of stability.

We are parked. We have a lake view. Actually, we’re only 50 feet from the lake and can fish for free without a license since it’s private. I even set up the slide-out jacks and our out-door carpet. We have electric, water, AND sewer (with a proper pipe and everything). We have free WiFi (which is a big deal because with all the work we have we were otherwise going to bust the 5GB limit on our mobile provider this month). There is laundry 50 feet away. Bennah was catching lizards again today. There is a rec house with puzzles and games for bad weather. Jaiden and Zach made a volcano with some water and a giant climbable dirt pile. The “neighbors” are mostly older, but very sweet. Reayah has a new best friend – the campground owner’s daughter. Necessity shopping is 30 minutes away. It is beautiful (though still a little chilly) here. Joy is taking it all in stride. Business is really looking up. Spring is close. And we have dropped anchor for at least a month.

Two months or so ago I was out driving around near Denver with my 4 year old boy Zach. He was having a rare turn up in the front seat, and looking out through the windshield towards the mountains he suddenly piped up with an epiphany: “Dad!!! I know how to get to the end of nowhere!” he exclaimed rather passionately.

How else can a father reply? “Oh yeah?” I said – not at all sardonically. “How’s that?”

To which Zach confidently replied, “You just keep driving that way and don’t stop!” while pointing straight ahead out the window.

Well, today I made good on my promise to take him to the end of nowhere some time. We spent the afternoon on the furthest SE point of the United States to which one can drive – the southern end of Hwy 1 – the edge of Key West, FL. We have literally driven the entire length of Florida now, entering about a month ago on the far western tip of the panhandle and driving first east and then south along the coast, and then cutting over through alligator alley along the Everglades, and then down Hwy 1 across all the keys. WOW.

What a beautiful place. 75 degrees F today and we played in the ocean in February. Crazy. I’d love to stay longer but it is Expensive with a capital E. Here are some shots from the day (keep reading below the gallery to get caught up on the rest of everything).

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Our next plan is to head up for Georgia where it’s still not all that cold, but away from the majority of migratory retirees which improves the campground rates; hunker down for maybe a month and knock out a ton of work that is looming. Which reminds me I still need to hit some of the highlights from the last month in my typical, inadequate bullet fashion. Here are the primary memories:

• Gabe and Heather’s wonderful southern hospitality and opening their home and land and lives to us for a couple weeks
• The kids playing endlessly together with nary an issue that needed adult mediation; from building robots out of a busted, rusted out 8-track player they found in the woods, to planning their treehouse, to whacking golf balls all over the yard, to jumping on the trampoline and playing in the dirt… it was country bliss like I grew up in
• Early morning hunting adventures
• Bennah’s first lesson on a real rifle
• Tinkering in the studio, recording the band’s first recording, writing a song on Gabe’s old guitar over the course of 2 weeks in the short 2-3 minute segments of time that I was in there each night to monitor my children during their pre-bedtime potty rituals
• Getting overloaded on baby girl cuteness in one place
• Shifting gears in the work arena when our project with La Vie Labs and Clairte did not work out like we had planned and hoped; and focusing all my energies on a new, exciting project
• Golfing in a cow pasture with Gabe and our two oldest boys (the “hole” was an old rusted out washing machine in the corner of the field)
• (And for those who have not noticed my not-so subtle title change on the blog yet) FINDING OUT WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A BABY #6 probably some time in October. Blessings upon blessings (and a bit freaked out at first) but children are a gift from YHWH and He has filled our quiver to be sure.

And that was just northern FL. Then we headed south and landed in Bradenton for a couple days and were extremely well cared for by dear (new) friends – parents of friends that we had grown very close to in Colorado. In fact, if you love garlic, they grow a whole bunch up in Ohio every year and it is absolutely incomparable to what you can buy in the store: Charlie’s Gourmet Garlic! You can watch the video that I edited a while back to get an idea of what Charlie and his farm are like – it’s the 2nd one down on this page: http://doctorbeautiful.com/blog/?page_id=48 So, while we were with them, they gave us and helped us pickle about 2.5 quarts of garlic! In about 3 more weeks the heat will be gone, but all the yummy healthy goodness will be intact. Thanks again Charlie!!!

They also hang out in FL for a few months in the winter so we were parked in Bradenton near their home down there. The tricky thing was that it was just a parking lot designed for RV visitors, and fine for sleeping, but with no electric, water, or sewer not well suited for working or living very long. With some critical work that came up we had to relocate. Ironically, one of the absolute nicest campgrounds in the overall area was also the cheapest (although it wasn’t all that cheap). So, we headed back up north about 30 miles and ended up managing to stretch it out for a week at the Fort De Soto Park Campground. That’s where the last five photos from the previous post were taken. 5 of those days we had a beach-front site. Fabulous. During that time:

• I worked my tail off and got a lot accomplished on a new work project
• The kids got sandy and wet pretty much every day
• We had to fend off the raccoons
• We met two other amazing families who live in that area and are close friends of close friends. They also opened their home and lives to us and we had a wonderful time getting to know them and their children, hitting the hot tub, feasting and fellowshipping together. It never felt like we had only just met.
• We explored Fort De Soto and the beaches there; and I managed to get a few pictures in… still way under quota right now.

And I’m probably forgetting something else important, but then we headed down here on a mission to get to the End of Nowhere. And so here we are. Tomorrow we head north once again.

First day back on the road and it’d been great. It’s wonderful to be on the road again. Jaiden is serenading Reayah, Zach is asleep on my shoulders, Joy is chewing on a carrot, Bennah is playing my ipod and I am getting some design work done! 7 Hours ago we pulled away from Andrew’s parent’s home in 4 inches of snow with frozen water and gray tanks. It’s been a peaceful day. We are now driving through New Mexico and got to see some incredible scenery before the sun completely disappeared. We’ll be driving late tonight to the next Walmart (they are few and far between on this stretch of our route) where we’ll spend the night in below freezing temperatures. We’ll be bundling up tonight in the trailer and keeping the thermostat on a low temperature to save on propane. That’s the plan anyway. We’ll see how it goes. It’s 6 degrees F already and will keep dropping through the night.

Well, we made it… safely I might add. 1200 miles (1900 km) in three days… 515 miles the last day. From north of Calgary to south of Denver, climbing and falling and re-climbing hundreds of feet each day – it felt like 2/3rds of our time was spent chugging 40 mph up long hills and often even slower by the top. Our 32′ trailer is definitely going on a forced diet while we’re here, and we will most certainly have the Second Great and Ruthless Purging of 2009. We weighed all three axles somewhere in Alberta again but haven’t run the conversions from kg’s yet to figure out where we were at in terms of lbs. But we’ll know soon. And then we will purge some more.

Sorry this is so random. Not quite as obscurely flowing beautiful obtuse beatnick as I’d like, but certainly not orderly or carefully constructed either. Sort of shot from the hip. Like the status of my sleeping. Or checking items off the massive to-do lists we’ve accumulated over the last 5 months.

The last two hours into Denver as the sun set and everything got dark and the friday night traffic became possessed / obsessed with diving insane margins between speed and safety thinner and thinner like sheets of onion paper while I lumbered on at the speed limit or GASP often slower using every ounce of willpower to stay between the same set of dotted lines and Renee kept the peace in the truck like a sheriff out of the wild west was something that rivaled our infiltration of the downtown Chicago construction wind toll madness fortress. Was that on a friday night too? I don’t know why I insist on striking straight into the heart of crazy cities in the dark on friday nights. I always say next time I’ll go around. But I guess I chafe at routes that are longer and might be just as bad for traffic anyway and so on… oh, that and the fact that my GPS couldn’t come up with a route that intelligently balances time of travel with distance and rationality to save its life. In fact, I am quite vehemently frustrated with my GPS, but it’s a squall that has been building for some time. I had already started shopping to replace it, but when it tried to prepare me for a left lane exit – and I dutifully got over early – when the exit was, in reality, three lanes over to the right and the only way I made it without causing a massive crash was YHWH’s grace in the timing and an understanding driver who gave me the all-clear hi-beam flash the same split second I had to decide whether to stay on or get off.

It was a narrow escape, but YHWH answered our prayers as we pray every day and put our trust in His protection and provision on the road.

That GPS is definitely done. Personal opinion: TomTom bad. Garmin good. TomTom was a compromise because that’s what came built into the HP Travelmate I got on an irresistible company discount 2 years ago. After the maiden voyage on that summer road trip I wen’t back to my much older Garmin that was superb (if a little slow). Before we pulled away in April, that old trusty Garmin took a spill and didn’t make it out alive. The TomTom was all that was left, and at the time I couldn’t justify spending money on another new unit. Now, I’d pay good money for anything else. Replacing the GPS is definitely on the massive to-do list.

Sleep is too… but somewhere beneath the item labeled “Processing and editing the 1400 photos and stitching the panos that Josh and I took in Kananaskis Country on our backpacking / camping trip.” Went with a great bunch of guys. Many stories in all of that. Tackled some seriously crazy trails (at least for this out of shape body… I’m in decent condition overall, but these trails kicked my butt). Felt SPECTACULAR! I could barely walk and basically stumbled to the shower and bed that night we returned with a belly full of Irish Stew and a pint of Alexander Kieth’s from an amazing little place we hit in Canmore upon returning to civilization.

So, here we are parked beside the house where my wonderful parents and awesome sister and brother(-in-law) and their 2 kids live. We’re excited about the next couple weeks… Tomorrow Reayah turns 6 and the Feast of Trumpets – Yom Teruah – kicks of the Scriptural fall celebrations that are shadow pictures of things to come – Messiah’s return and the fulfillment of all things in the Bible.

Then we’ll have some adventures riding out the onset of winter here and figuring some things out before we head east and then south again eventually.

So many memories from the last few weeks… Had an amazing wonderful time with our cousins near Calgary and their family. That kind of time is always too short. Even squeezed in IKEA and MEC trips in Calgary… that’s why our travel was compressed into 3 days instead of 4…. originally planned to take 4 days to get here. Lots of good scenery on the road. Lots of other things…

Ok, back to Kananaskis photos.