Saturday, April 28, 2012

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Route in More Detail

As we get closer to our departure, our route continues to come together. I (Jesse) have been researching in many places but the two sites I owe most of my knowledge to are these:

www.expedionportal.com
www.advrider.com
www.pasdansunfauteuil.fr -our original inspiration and well worth your time to skim through.

If you want to see where we get our ideas, information, gear and inspiration, you should check them out. That said, most of my routing is original, though with input from local adventurers, and has been painstakingly viewed through Googlemaps, then Google Earth and finally Benchmark or Delorme Atlases. Here is what the trip will look like; the off-pavement  travel begins outside of Des Arc, Arkansas and ends in Grand Island, Nebraska where we will high-tail on pavement for home so I can get back to work.


And a warning about bears as we move through Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.

 Come join us for a section!

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Birthday, Easter and Egg-hunts

On Sunday we celebrated Stephanie's birthday with her parents, my parents, her sister's family and Kathleen.
Stephanie made the cake and was excited about the piping. (Is 'piping' that green stuff on her dress?)

Harper and Adelaide beautifying.


 
Easter wouldn't be Easter without an egg-hunt so some of our neighbors joined our kids for a grand multi-yard hunt. And the men-folk had an egg-hunt of their own when someone (not to be named) tried hiding an egg on the edge of the new (used) raised air intake on the Landcruiser. The hunt took on many different iterations as we sifted through ideas.

Reaching in from the top didn't work even when Bailey tried, nor reaching from the bottom despite our encouragement that there were no spiders inside waiting to bite him.


  Someone thought to use the shop-vac to try to suck it out and that did eventually work.

 Broken-armed, I (Jesse) pretty much took a backseat and "supervised" as the antics ensued.

      Unfortunately we never quite made it around to trying my idea: find very steep hill, engage 4 wheel drive, drive up said steep hill and wait for egg to roll out. I even knew where to find such a hill!


     On another note, we were on holiday Monday, so I met up with Tommy Ellis who did some welding on the front bumper for me. I finished painting it today and installed it and the used lights that Marshall picked up for me in Oregon.

  By the end of the day we were all plum-tuckered out. Harper's face says it all.