April marked FIVE YEARS since we sold it all and hit the road, and at this point we are currently living in Ecuador. How did we wind up here? I'll come back to that. We ended up spending four and a half years living in an RV full-time while traveling the US and Canada soaking in the gorgeous views and history North America has to offer. Our plan for year 5 was to spend more time exploring other countries, but that was postponed to spend much-needed time with family. We picked a spot near family that we could use as a home base when we aren't traveling. Last year we spent 6 months at our home base and 6 months traveling- our longest trip away being a roadtrip from the east coast to Las Vegas and back, plus a couple trips up to Ohio. We added two new states this year: Oklahoma and Arkansas, which leaves us 3 states short of the full deck: Minnesota, North Dakota and, weirdly, South Carolina.
This year we dug for diamonds in Arkansas, discovered a new favorite hike at Tent Rocks in New Mexico. We watched our kids gaze for the first time into the depths of the Grand Canyon. We kayaked with manatees and monkeys in Florida. In Ohio we held BlueJays and the largest bullfrog in history, ok, maybe not, but he was huge. I saw a Snowy Owl, a Kirtland's Warbler and a Shoebill Stork this year. We hosted two exchange students, one from Spain and the other from China.
We became active in recruiting potential bone marrow donors after meeting a very special mom and little boy who are desperately looking for his match. (See if you're a match HERE.)
We had some interesting things happen, like the time Asher had a scorpion on his neck, and when the kids were invited by a pilot into the cockpit on one of our flights.
Back at the cabin, we adopted two snakes (a ball python and a baby corn snake), a black bear became a regular visitor, a dog vs water moccasin showdown resulted in the death of both participants, and an alligator walked thru our yard!
We hugged our sweet Bella for the last time and left our sweet Asa with my mom. That was super hard, but again, we expected to be mostly traveling internationally which would not only be difficult, but not in her best interest.
We toured the offices of ITEC where they opened our eyes to a new way of sharing the gospel. This lead to an opportunity for us to join ITEC on a trip to Kenya to train locals while the twins enjoyed quality time with their grandparents and cousins. While there we learned much about Kenyan and Maasi culture. We went on safari and saw giraffes, monkeys, rhinos, and of course amazing birds. Then we spent time in Uganda with old friends.
We've been wanting to learn Spanish and give the kids more cultural experiences. An opportunity arose for us to help at ITEC Ecuador for 6 months, so here we are. Details of our life here will follow in future posts.
