Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

The second reservation we made for this global adventure was for a recreational vehicle (RV). About 11 months later, we stood in the driveway of RV Northwest in Tigard, Oregon holding the keys to a 2019 Forest River FR3. This beast sits on a Ford truck chassis with a V10 engine. It is 34 feet long (not including our bike rack, which has never looked smaller), almost 13 feet tall and just over 8 feet wide. After Elise drove this monster to our house through nearly an hour of rush hour traffic and after she parked it on our block and after friends and neighbors popped in for a tour and after we loaded it with everything we had carefully prepared and after we spent a full day running around Portland acquiring more stuff, making two and a half trips to Target, and after one of those nights of sleep shaped by anxiety and excitement, we pulled away from the curb at about 7am. RV Driving Lesson #1: There's a $95 limit on pay-at-the-pump gas transactions. This isn't relevant, eve...

Let's start with pictures today. Merry-go-round fun  Ali loving the carousel Happy Henry Grabbing the ring for a free ride AC and Library time  Love the eyebrow Still smiling If you skipped the captions, the recap is that we woke up AND went to sleep in Missoula today. There was terrible hotel breakfast. There were hours in the in-house waterpark, at the end of which the kids were literally dragging themselves out by their elbows. For Lily/Jon, there was going to church with our beloved former nanny, Corie, whose birthday we were here to celebrate. Corie's father is the Pastor and it was special to feel so welcomed by the community. There was picnic lunch in the riverfront park, followed by four rides on the original/authentic carousel. There was shopping and then a visit to the public library. Then there was Corie's birthday party, which was overwhelmingly celebrated by the families Corie has nurtured over the years. Then there was mor...