Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Probably the southernmost site on our trip: Slope Point, New Zealand Everybody was right: the distances in New Zealand are very deceiving. It takes a really long time to go anywhere. I'd guess our typical travel speed has been 45 miles per hour. One funny thing about this is that the national default speed limit is 100 kph (62 mph), which our navigation displays no matter where we are, including this gravel road. Going 42kph in a 100 zone; out the windshield you can see the gravel and in the nav you can see the curves! Anyway, we left Dunedin mid-morning on Wednesday and took about an hour to reach Balclutha on the motorway. We found a lovely municipal park with a picnic table, a great playground and a weird, small zoo. Then it was on to the Nugget Point Lighthouse, where we enjoyed a short hike hoping to see Penguins (no) but got rewarded with some baby sparrows in their nest (in the blind from which we hoped to spot the penguins!) Hoping to see some Yellow-Eyed Pengu...

There have been many firsts, of course. Henry lost the first trip of the tooth and we expect there to be many more. But because our birthdays are in March, April, June, August and December, this was the first birthday for us on the road. We had a great little party yesterday (which was Sunday) with a few kids who have become friends to Ali and Cate. If you're unfamiliar with our family, you should know that some of the birthday parties we've had for the kids over the last decade have been epic, especially in the craftiness category. The genius of yesterday's party was that the entire "party" was dispatched in about 15 minutes. The friends arrived. There were cupcakes. There was singing. There was tearing into wrapping paper. And then it was done. The kids dispersed to play in and around the house. There was water play in the sprinkler. There was the swingset. There was a moderate amount of playing with new presents. Then the adults sat around and talked! C...

Dear Reader, Having successfully broken the streak of consecutive daily posts, my attention turned to the looming milestone: one month on the road. I'm writing on Sunday, July 21. We left Portland on Sunday, June 23. In case you've forgotten, that was spent approximately one week on Whidney Island, one week driving to Minnesota and the last two weeks with Elise's parents in Duluth. This past week was camp for all four kids. Lily and Henry went to an overnight camp on Sturgeon Lake, about an hour's drive south the city. Ali and Cate went to day camp, also offered by the Duluth YMCA. Among other things, this meant that Elise and I got to disappear for 24 hours up the North Shore of Lake Superior. For a moment, I need to tell a story from almost two years ago in order to explain why we're doing what we're doing this summer. First of all, we have been talking about doing this trip for several years. In the fall of 2017 we (the two of us) went to Italy for two ...

The last 24 hours have just been summer on an epic scale. Yesterday, after a long morning of water play, we drove into Duluth for a backyard BBQ with a group of Elise's friends from high school. I didn't count but there were a handful of couples, so a dozen adults or so, and innumerable kids between 1 and 11. We spent the night in Duluth (a disappointingly sleepless night for too many of us) and drove back this morning. The children of the high school friends. Lily, the oldest among them, is in yellow. Swimming, lunch, more swimming, even more swimming, then some swimming off the pontoon boat then a break to watch some shows, eat some dinner and then a bit more bedtime swimming. Hopefully they'll sleep all night. My favorite moment came after dinner during a short canoe outing with Lily and Cate. Our lake appears to be home to one pair of loons. On a still, glassy lake, we slowly paddled toward them. I'm sorry to have caused them distress but they swam in oppos...