Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

This day we put down the miles. The tripmeter started at 762 and ended at 1582. We started in western Montana and finished an hour into Minnesota. In other words, we crossed most of Montana and all of North Dakota. We also logged our first thousand mile mark. One thousand miles and a cool reflection in the dash. There were terrifying construction zones; narrow lanes next to oncoming traffic aren't a big deal in a typical car but, holy cow, motorhome + narrow lane + cross wind = white knuckles. There was a really funny sign outside the Teddy Roosevelt National Park visitor center (remember, we visited the park last time but not the visitor center). The evening gave us an opportunity to try out a few of the travel apps we've collected on the advice of the never-ending world of RV lifestyle blogs out there. The KOA app helps you find exactly what you'd expect. The Good Sam is a bit broader, including all RV parks, including KOA but differentiating places that are...

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...

1. We crossed North Dakota 2. We visited Makoshita State Park before leaving Glendive, MT this morning and it was extremely photogenic. Also, it was thrilling for our aspiring paleontologist(s). 3. We stopped at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the highlights of which were seeing prairie dogs, turning around and a "road closed" sign, and eating a good lunch with live music in the town square. 4. We crossed North Dakota 5. Sleeping in Fargo, we are less than six hours from our destination.  Here is some photographic evidence.

We left Missoula (milepost 99) at 9:18 a.m.. We ate lunch in Bozeman at a terrific local joint called Naked Noodles. Acting on some passing advice from a dad who noticed my Mariners t-shirt because his family had just moved from Seattle, we enjoyed Bogert Park. This gave Henry the opportunity to fall into a creek just after I told him to step in but keep his shorts dry. Whoops. We reached Glendive at 6:30. The car was beeping because our "distance to empty" had reached zero. We had driven 567 miles. But none of that mattered because we were one short costume change away from being in a swimming pool. By 8:00 we had been swimming, showered, received pizza delivered from a local shop and spread out over our hotel room to watch a new episode of American Ninja Warrier, one of our favorite shows. Lily had a Skype chat with a friend, Elise prepared to use the gym and now, at 9:30, the lights are off and there's a guided meditation playing. There's about 11 hours of ...

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...

By all measures, today was easy. We ate breakfast in the hotel. Henry got to buy the book he tantrummed about in Coupeville at an adorable local bookstore, where I was also able to add to our sticker collection. We paid less than $50 for lunch and ate it in a beautiful park near an amazing playground adjacent to the lake in downtown Coeur d'Alene. That's right, we classed it up at a public park in our underwear. Look out world! Our driving was less than four hours and the kids watched movies the entire time. We crossed the Clark Fork dozens of times because that's what I-90 does on its way into Missoula. We got to our hotel, ate an acceptable dinner at a local Mexican restaurant (under $100), and got back in time to spend an hour in the water park. This was just long enough for Ali to build up the courage to go down a waterslide by herself. It's 10:30 and the kids are probably asleep. I wouldn't know, though, because we've put them in an adjacent (not ad...