Back home, having four kids, though a lot, doesn’t seem terribly abnormal. Many of our friends have three or more kids, so what’s the big deal with four?

Well, we sure stick out like a sore thumb here. We have been the subject of many open stares, double takes, and whispered comments. With birth rates so low here (and evidently in the United States as well, just not among our circles), seeing four kids is like glimpsing a rare endangered species. The truly big family of ten kids in the USA is us in Europe.

Icelandic reactions to our crew were mainly limited to grumpy scowls, especially from older women in the grocery store. Even when our kids were behaving well, the scowls remained. Nic tried scowling back after he watched the repeated scowls of one particular Icelander – ha! At one guesthouse, the young employee saw us all and exclaimed, “That’s a lot of kids!” I’m at least happy we’re not getting the same canned comments we get all the time at home: “You’ve got your hands full,” for example, or “You know how that happens, right?”

The kids have drawn lots of friendly attention from other tourists. Several separate groups of Asian ladies fawned over the kids and commented on how beautiful they are. (Our babies have received similar comments from Asian tourists as we have traveled over the years many times – not sure why that is.) A Japanese man counted our kids and took the time to identify each by birth order before asking all the big kids for a hug. An older Italian grandma smiled kindly at Morgan for a few minutes before making kissing noises at him and then kissing the air towards the other bambini.

We see many children in Copenhagen, but almost all families have one or two kids. An American expat we chatted with in the airport said people over here have kids younger because of the government help.

We’ve heard that other places we’re traveling will be friendlier towards children, so we are looking forward to that. For now, though, we will just try to keep our brood reasonably quiet and with us.

Goodbye, Iceland! We left our Airbnb at 5am this morning and got ourselves all the way to Copenhagen. We even found the energy for a long walk to a playground. All the big kids accumulated about 13,000 steps. Somehow we’re all still awake longer than we should be.

Thankfully, the local weather improved for our last few days in Iceland, even requiring sunglasses for a few brief moments. With the sun so low on the horizon, it felt like early morning or late afternoon all day. We drove ourselves back to the southwest corner of Iceland over two days, giving us a chance to see a few things we’d skipped due to weather. Jökulsárlón, the beautiful glacial lagoon, fascinated the kids, and they wished they could have played with the glacier chunks longer on Diamond Beach. We hiked right up to Svínafellsjökull glacier. Iceland offers the chance to walk right up to giant glaciers from the parking lot – truly amazing. Farther west, Nic was especially happy to drive through Grindavik, a town that was completely evacuated a few years ago due to nearby volcanic activity. We drove on roads rerouted due to lava flows and saw steam rising from the ground all over the place. So many parts of Iceland look like a completely different planet!

Overall, nature in Iceland looks like what we remember from ten years ago. I’m sure the glaciers have receded, but we couldn’t tell. The level of development, however, has changed quite a bit. We visited Iceland just as it was starting to become popular. Ten years ago, we didn’t pay to park at any tourist sites – not so this time. We had solitary glacier experiences and often felt like the only people around. Again, not the experience today. Iceland still feels quite undeveloped and empty overall, but we’re thankful to have visited before it gained the popularity it holds today.

On the topic of food, here are a few things we ate:

• Skyr – every day, often three times a day
• Fresh produce from Icelandic greenhouses – a huge change in this industry from last time we were here and saw things like green beans from Kenya in the grocery store
• Grapes from California – I’d love to know the exact path they traveled and how long it all took
• Lamb sticks – like beef sticks but lamb, liked fairly well by all kids but a little funky
• Red currants – tart and delicious
• Cheese – we loved the Icelandic versions of Gouda and Emmental

One thing we won’t miss about Iceland is the very high cost of groceries. It makes sense that it’s expensive to get food to Iceland, but that doesn’t help alleviate the pain of swiping that card! Groceries to feed our family for two days cost about as much as five days of Walmart supplies back home. We ate out only one time, and like the locals, we got cheeseburgers, a hot dog, and fish and chips from the gas station grill. Doesn’t that sound like a meal that should cost about $30? Try $90.

Nic and I spent two weeks in Iceland in 2016. It was May, and we remember a mix of wind, sun, rain showers, and generally cool and comfortable weather. Aside from the strikingly beautiful landscape and powerful ocean, nothing stuck in our memories as particularly harsh or unforgiving.

This time, we’ve had a very different experience. While driving through crazy conditions yesterday, I asked Nic, “Which driving hazard would you choose out of what we’ve experienced in Iceland so far – piles of snow and icy roads, driving rain, or extreme winds?” (He chose the wind.) Said wind closed the only road to our next lodging for a few hours yesterday when gusts reached 80-90 mph. Park staff said the roads close frequently in winter and that closure from a few hours to a day or two was normal.

Fortunately, the wind and rain didn’t prevent us from reaching our guesthouse, a snug little apartment in a glacial valley, surrounded by waterfalls, mossy hills, and snowy mountain peaks. The vast Hoffellsjökull glacier dominates the view up the valley. We are at the edge of Vatnajökull, the largest ice cap in the world after the polar ice caps. With an enormous glacier at the head of every valley in sight it’s not hard to believe that this big chunk of ice occupies 10% of Iceland’s square footage.

That’s some big stuff, but it’s the little things that matter to our family most: drinkable skyr, hot pots at our guesthouse (hot tubs fed by hot springs), cool rocks, a chance to get out and jog, a few moments of peace away from the kids. And we all finally slept well last night and feel accustomed to the time zone. Apparently this takes four whole days for this crew!

After a few days in Portland, we packed up our stuff (a backpack for carrying Jude, backpacks for all and 2 suitcases currently weighing in at 99.5 pounds total) and headed to the airport. We arrived early and ate our packed lunches before dropping off our luggage. Airline employees told us our flight was only half full. Security was as fast as Missoula, and we found a perfect spot to wait for our flight and give the kids some freedom. Things were going far too smoothly to bode well for the rest of the day…

And then it was time: the long flight I’d been dreading since booking tickets in June. How do you pass seven hours in a metal box with four active kids? Sleep is an obvious solution, but our children chose to sleep a combined eighty minutes on the long flight. The timing didn’t make it feel like bedtime, but half of the hours were fair game for normal sleeping time. Not for these crazy kiddos! After struggling with extended crying jags from Jude as we tossed him back and forth and tried to get him to sleep, we gave up and decided we were just all going to completely miss a night of sleep, kids included. Jude was most happy when eating, and so that’s what he did as we flew over the US, Canada, and Greenland. 

Our flight arrived early, and everyone with a window seat immediately began talking about the snow. We expected to see light snow in Iceland, but we had the good fortune of arriving in a record-setting blizzard! So after skipping a night of sleep, Nic had the tough job of driving a wimpy rental car on very snowy roads for several hours to get us to our Airbnb. We counted at least eighteen cars off the road, so while the whole thing reminded us of the first big winter storm anywhere we’ve lived, we have never seen so many car accidents at one time. 

Having gotten some rest last night, we all feel closer to normal. With temps around 30 or below we did some school, played in the snow, hiked through the snow to a waterfall in our neighborhood, and watched the aurora during dinner. With skyr (Icelandic yogurt) at every meal, it was a pretty good day. 

So many of you have asked where we are going. I’ll tell you what I know so far!

We start our travels with a brief stop in Portland, where we will meet up with my (Katie’s) parents for a few days. I convinced my mom to join me in attending the Intentional Motherhood Retreat hosted by Intentional Parents, my favorite parenting ministry.

From Portland, we take a surprisingly short flight to Iceland. We spend a week there before heading to Copenhagen. Next comes a brief stop in Bologna, Italy, before a month in Albania. We are volunteering for 2 weeks in Lezhe, Albania, and then touring the country for a bit. We make a short stop in Milan, Italy, before getting to Bruges area in Belgium for Christmas. My parents and my youngest sister and her husband will spend Christmas with us there. We fly to southern Portugal with my parents in late December. After exploring for a week with them, we will have about another six weeks of time before a visa is required. We’re fascinated by everything we’ve seen in Portugal and might spend that whole time there, or we might venture into Spain a bit, too. I studied abroad in Spain for six months and would love to enjoy some of that delicious food again! We have tried to arrange some Workaway volunteering in Spain and Portugal but don’t know if that will pan out. It has been difficult to find volunteering that we can all participate in!

Around the middle of February we will fly to the UK and spend the remainder of our trip in the UK and Ireland. We fly home at the end of March.

If you have any valuable intel to share on what we must see and do in Portugal, the UK, or Ireland, we’d love to hear from you!

Why so many places? We are asking ourselves that, too. We originally envisioned one place per month, which sounds much more reasonable considering the logistics to haul our crew around and the time it takes to research suitable lodging. But once we started dreaming and researching, we struggled in limiting ourselves. This is a constant problem for us. Even when we’ve purposed to rein in our wanderlust, it’s so hard to cross off places we’d like to see. Also, getting around in Europe is much cheaper and easier than in the US. We can book a flight for six of us from one country to another in Europe for less than it would cost for one of us to fly and visit family in the US. Public transit makes it relatively easy to get around, although we will rent a car a few times too.

We are down to five days and counting! Time to keep plugging away at that to-do list!

Things you do in the ten days prior to a 5-month international family trip:

• Tell your kid to please get out of the tree, since we can’t have any broken arms this week.
• Pray your husband is safe with the big tools during his last week of work, since we also cannot have any lost appendages this week.
• Proudly finish knitting the first sweater you’ve made for your husband only to find out it’s backwards. Wonder what else you’ve done wrong in this craziness that you don’t yet know about. On the knitting front, make sure to have another sweater project going that you’re trying to finish before you leave.
• Work frantically to get the garden cleaned up and tilled. We’re coming back just in time for spring gardening season, so of course we must be ready! Now if only I could start peppers and onions remotely…
• Reconfigure the garage to store another car.
• Ignore the children for long stretches of time – sanity is at a premium right now.
• Bump up the caffeine intake. Start this tomorrow.
• Clean the septic filter. Change the house water filter. Change the drinking water filter. Change the reverse osmosis membrane.
• Take a hilarious video of your toddler showing off a new skill: picking his nose and eating it too!
• Attempt to read about an entire country and plan six weeks of lodging in a few days.
• Definitely find time to keep working through Season 6 of The Office. (This started as a trade. I agreed to watch as many minutes as Nic listened to of a parenting podcast of my choice. Now I’m a convert, I guess.)
• That French job – mow zee lawn. (Grandpa Hendrychs joke)
• Purchase the equipment for a new hobby after just recently setting yourself up for another new hobby. You won’t be able to take either of these hobbies on the trip, but you know you have them and can at least daydream. (Reader, this was not the writer.)
• Give your oldest child the role of lunchtime barista. This is a great arrangement – I make lunch; she makes my iced latte.
• Dismantle and “fix” that precious espresso maker several times. Of course this is a priority.
• Deep-clean your daughters’ bedroom. I cannot emphasize enough: this is the absolute worst task on this list. I’d rather take the whole family for vaccines.
• Take the whole family in for those last vaccines. Doesn’t that sound fun?
• Organize all the closets in the house.
• Buy lots and lots of dog, cat, and chicken food. Think they’ll all survive if we just cut the bags open and leave them out where they can find them? Just kidding!
• Accomplish all the usual tasks with minimal grace and style: endless piles of laundry, homeschooling multiple kids, too many conversations about putting pee only where it belongs, refereeing about a thousand arguments, wiping poopy butts, fixing all the things the kids took apart this week, etc.

So if my mind is scattered as I resume my short-lived blogging career, forgive me.

One week from today, our family of six embarks on a 5-month European jaunt, our Sabbatical 2.0. Nic and I decided about a decade ago that we would try to take a sabbatical every seven years. We took our last sabbatical in 2017, extending the process of moving to Montana into a 9-month roadtrip in a crappy RV. You can still peruse all the old content. At the beginning of that trip, I wrote about the sabbatical year concept. Read about it here. We are a year overdue for our second sabbatical, but we’ve been a little busy adding four humans to this crazy world and doing our best to keep them alive.

When we took our first trip, so many people told us we were smart to do it while we could, i.e., before having kids. This chafed our stubborn, willful personalities. Neither of us enjoys being told what we can and cannot do. So here we are, doing it, with four children. Of course it will be crazy and ridiculous and difficult, but our daily life is all of those things as well, even on a good day.

We are so pleased that you are spending a few precious minutes reading about our journey. With limited time and brain power, we will do our best to keep you updated on our whereabouts, share some photos of what we’re seeing, write about the logistics of doing this type of thing with four kids 7 and under, and provide plenty of crazy stories of the ridiculous things that will doubtless occur. It’s going to be a wild ride. Thank you for joining us!

Since our latest post, nearly two weeks have flown by in a blur. We have found a happy, peaceful inertia consisting of taking care of moving details, relaxing, and exploring the area.

Our biggest concerns two weeks ago were finding a rental house and a job for Nic. I am happy to report that we have found a place to call home in Big Arm, MT. We love everything about our rental house. Situated on ten acres, we will have lots of elbow room. We have always wanted to live at least a little remotely, and this spot will give us a great taste of rural life without being too far from grocery stores and other conveniences. The house is on the side of a hill overlooking a grassy and treed valley; a steep gravel driveway leads up it, requiring four-wheel drive in the winter. We will have room for guests but not so much house to care for that we’ll be overwhelmed. We will live surrounded by a few well-spaced neighbors and cattle ranching land. Birdsong, muted cows, and wind will form the soundtrack of our quiet life here. We hit it off very well with our new landlords, and they have even let us camp a few nights on the property. We have been able to see dusk cover the golden hills, to know for sure that we will survive without AC even at the peak of a Montana summer, to taste the well water and know we will love it. We have explored the surrounding roads on dirt bike and on foot. Nic has plenty of gravel to keep him busy, and I will have plenty of options for running with or without a stroller and dog in tow. On the negative side, Nic will most likely have a longer commute than we had pictured. We have both been spoiled by many years of very quick commutes, so this will be a change. On the positive side of that issue, the road he will most likely take to work each day is impressively scenic and rarely crowded. All in all, we feel so blessed to have found a really great living situation.

On the job front, Nic has everything short of a job offer for a cable installation job in Kalispell. He has interviewed and met with the manager already, and the job sounds like it could be a really good fit. He will complete the drug test and background check when we move here in September, so we will know more then. He is particularly looking forward to working independently and traveling around the Flathead Valley each day. This job will allow him a chance to really get to know the area well, and that reconnaissance will prove super helpful if we end up settling here long-term and building.

Dusk over Flathead Lake in Big Arm, MT. 

The sunny, dry heat we experienced during our first few days in Montana has not relented. After leaving our higher elevation perch atop Blacktail Mountain, we chose the next best option for beating the heat: time at the lake. We have spent most of the last two weeks camping at a variety of locations on Hungry Horse Reservoir or Flathead Lake. On hot days, we swim several times a day to cool off. Luna whines to go with us each time, as swimming is just about her favorite thing in life (after ingesting anything and everything). Homer tentatively plays at the water’s edge and keeps his paws nice and cool. For over a week straight, we bathed in the lake each night, bringing our body temps down enough to fall asleep comfortably and sometimes even with a little bit of a chill. We have been amazed by the water quality of both Hungry Horse and Flathead, especially after enjoying Lake Geneva’s clean waters each summer. We can’t wait to try out our water toys in the area – we just have to figure out how that works with an infant!

It’s bath time at Hungry Horse Reservoir!

Little by little, we are making our first baby steps towards being locals. I picked huckleberries at Hungry Horse (not as great as expected, but they started to grow on me). We’ve been told that locals will divulge their bank account number before telling you where they pick “hucks.” And we got our first taste of Flathead cherries when Nic bought some beautiful Rainier cherries from a local stand. You might not guess that Montana would produce fruit, but miles and miles of leafy orchards line the east side of Flathead Lake. We established ourselves with a local midwife after meeting with several. We will be one of the many locals who drives a bit of a distance to a hospital for delivery, but that’s typical for people here. We have checked out a variety of grocery stores in the area. On each trip, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by how courteous the shoppers and store employees were. I’m accustomed to shopping rather aggressively to defend myself against the bad manners of fellow shoppers and to make good use of my time. My pushy habits come across rather rudely here, as locals eagerly yield at the end of rows and smile kindly. Even our local driving experience has proven that most people here are pretty laidback, content to take in their beautiful surroundings even while following a slow RV on a narrow, winding road.

Take me swimming, Daaaaaadddd!

To sum it all up, we love this place so far. It’s been tough to summarize our impressions in this post, especially since few reading this will have spent any considerable amount of time in the area. We have already talked our parents’ and siblings’ ears off about Montana, and we will eventually bombard anyone who will listen with the same information. We hope to have many, many visitors who will be able to experience Montana in person. You will love it here – come check it out! Your airport shuttle, private dirt bike track, and guest room await!

Hungry Horse Reservoir

We left Seward knowing we only had about a week left in Alaska. We had seen so many interesting things in Alaska and are so glad to have made the drive, but we were feeling eager to get to Montana and start scouting for jobs and a place to live.

Swinging through Anchorage again gave us a chance to stock up on groceries, visit some stores to see and touch a few baby-related items for our registry, get more dog food, visit Pita Pit again, and get acquainted with yet another motorcycle repair shop (should be set for a while now). Way more fun and life-giving than all those errands was a coffee date with some Alaskan friends we met at church back in Wisconsin. We had a lot to talk about with our travels and their recent relocations. We swapped wildlife stories over lattes, and as longtime Alaska residents, they answered our burning questions about what we had been observing in their home state. We have felt refueled each time we are blessed to get together with friends and family on this trip. We can only imagine how meaningful it will be to soon be able to spend a chunk of time with friends and family back in Wisconsin.

As we drove north toward Fairbanks, we were so focused on where to find free camping and how far we wanted to drive that evening that we were totally surprised when we started to see huge mountains appearing on the horizon. Clouds layered the higher parts of the mountains, but the massive lower slopes glimmered in the eternal dusk. And these mountains were big. I grabbed the road guide to try to find out what we were looking at, and sure enough, we had caught our first (and only) glimpse of Denali. We were headed to Denali National Park two days later, so we didn’t even stop to take a picture. We felt fortunate to see the Mountain (how Denali is referred to locally), since only 30% of visitors lay eyes on this continent’s highest peak. With several days of sunny weather forecast, we figured our chances would be good for seeing the Mountain up close a few days later.

Smoke at Denali

No views today…

As we neared Denali, we started smelling and seeing smoke. With itchy throats and eyes, we looked online to confirm that yes, there were some huge forest fires in several parts of Alaska. Unfortunately, the wind had blown some major smoke right into our path, obscuring most of the national park’s splendor. Bad timing, but when do weather conditions in Alaska ever cooperate well? We made the best of our two smoky, unusually warm days in Denali. The long road leading into the park is only partially open to passenger cars during the summer season. You must figure out the complicated variety of bus options to venture farther into the park. We rode our dirt bikes in as far as we could and embarked from there on a beautiful hike. We couldn’t see the hike’s promised views of the Mountain, but we enjoyed the experience even so. Nic had wanted an excuse to hike with his shotgun, and we figured grizzly territory was as good a place as any. It may come as a surprise to those less comfortable or familiar with firearms, but you can legally walk around Alaska carrying a big old shotgun. I know – I think it’s a little weird too.

Hiking with his shotgun

My favorite and very polite shirt

The next day, we took a shuttle bus fifty miles into the park. We weren’t particularly excited about spending most of the day on a bus with a bunch of other tourists, especially with the smoke, but we had reserved our tickets in advance and did hope to see more wildlife on the drive. We saw three grizzlies, a few caribou, mountain goats, and numerous ptarmigan. For seven hours of driving, we were not overly impressed with those sightings. On the positive side, our fellow tourists were surprisingly quiet and polite. When the bus stopped to view an animal, everyone was instructed to whisper as we lowered the windows. Perhaps more interesting than seeing the wildlife was watching a busload of adults whisper in awe as we heard the comical call of a mama ptarmigan. We felt a little jaded that day. The ranger who gave a brief inspirational talk on our bus waxed on about how she had been so amazed at the many miles of untouched wilderness the first time she rode the bus into Denali. We muttered that she obviously hadn’t driven through Canada. We know that Denali is one of the most striking places in the USA, so maybe we just caught her on a bad day.

Shuttle bus at Denali

Caribou!

We had originally planned to drive back through Canada in a little less than two weeks after leaving Denali. Nic went on and on about how “highly motivated” he was to make it to Montana in good time, so we let the inertia of several long driving days carry us through Canada. We left Denali on a Friday morning, looped up through Fairbanks, and made it nearly to the border that evening. We had our fastest border crossing the next morning. According to Nic, it was “faster than the drive through at McDonald’s,” once again proving that we are rather boring. The miles flew by faster than expected as we crossed the frost heave-riddled tundra and made our way back to Whitehorse. We traveled south on a different route than our northbound journey, and we were happy to see some new scenery. On the day we wound through the northern reaches of the Canadian Rockies, we kept our eyes peeled for wildlife and were rewarded with sightings of seven bears, 100+ bison, 2 foxes, and 1 huge golden eagle – all in one day of driving! We were relieved to roll into Dawson Creek and reach mile 0 of the Alaska Highway. We had driven the whole dang thing on our drive south, and we were ready to be done with its frost heaves, gravel breaks, and construction delays. Wanting one last scenic drive through the mountains of Jasper and Banff, we cut south from Grande Prairie. We spent our loudest night of the whole trip camping next to a bridge over a creek. Logging and gas trucks roared up and down the hill all night, seemingly right outside our thin windows. We woke the next morning eager to be nearing the US border. Just outside of Jasper, we hit thick smoke again from fires burning all over British Columbia. We were so happy to have seen these mountains before, because we couldn’t see a thing this time. The smoke was thick enough to give us headaches and coughs, so we hurried through the area as fast as we could. We felt bad for the tourists who had spent so much money to see this place in such poor conditions. On the way through Kootenay National Park, we visited our favorite hot springs of the trip: Radium Hot Springs. The only thing between us and Montana at that point was another night spent in the parking lot of Home Hardware Building Centre in Cranbrook, BC. Thank God it was a quiet and dark night. During our drive south, we happily observed the shrinking hours of daylight that helped us sleep so much better.

Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway – at last!

One of our favorite quick dinners

Free camping in Canada

Luna finally made her way into our bed!!!

Bison lining the Alaska Highway

I wasn’t quick enough to catch this guy mama and two siblings who ran across the road before him.

More smoke in Jasper

And now we are in the Flathead Valley at last. After a stretch of long driving days, it felt strange to not be moving. Our major task over the next two weeks is to see if we can find a place to live and a job for Nic. Affordable rentals are tough to find, and it seems like demand outpaces supply considerably. We have been spoiled by owning a big home for a number of years, so bending to the rules of renting feels restrictive. Finding a job is never fun either, but Nic has applied for a number of positions and is making some progress there. We would love your prayers for God’s guidance in these areas. We started talking about moving to this area three whole years ago, and we feel like God has lined so many things up for us to make that dream come true. Now that we’re almost here, though, we really want to see some of these important things come together. It makes us anxious to know that we plan on driving a moving truck out here in less than two months without even knowing where all our stuff will land. And where will Nic find suitable work? And of course our growing baby will make his/her appearance just a few short months after our arrival here, so how will that work?

Forest road running partner

Sunset from Blacktail Mountain

In the meantime, we’re exploring Kalispell and its surroundings. We have camped the last few nights off random forest roads where we can find cell service and enough shade to keep us cool on these hot, dry summer days. It’s easy to remember why we want to live here when we again experience the infinite number of forest roads, trails, and lakes. We could spend the rest of our lives exploring this area, one backcountry spot at a time.

Speaking of backcountry experiences, we met some local color this evening. We have been minding our own business and exploring the top of Blacktail Mountain today. Skiing area by winter, local off-roading and hiking destination by summer, we expected to see more activity when we arrived last night. The very top of the mountain appears to be a high school hangout for who knows what kind of mischief, but we couldn’t hear any noise from our spot just a little downhill. We’ve seen typical OHV activity in the area today, but we parked far enough away from the road to avoid constantly eating dust from their crazy driving. While I was putting the finishing touches on dinner, a few guys parked their truck close to us and started walking over to talk to Nic while he loaded up our dirt bikes. They wanted to give us a friendly warning that they were about to blow up $200 of tannerite not too far away from where we were parked. Apparently, target practice at a load of tannerite is all the rage. You shoot the target, and you get a much more satisfying noise than broken glass. Perhaps you’ll even get hit with the blast wave. Things [male] hicks do. Anyway, they invited us out to watch the shenanigans. Out of the three recent high school graduates, only perhaps one was dependably sober. They proceeded to take turns shooting at the target with an old WWII semi-automatic rifle. While Nic engaged in the appropriate man talk and took videos with his phone, I stood back and covered my ears. These guys weren’t at all fazed by the occasional car that drove by us as they aimed their rifle over the cab of the truck. Fortunately, they guys handled their weapon safely, and we felt that the situation was much more amusing than dangerous. I lost interest after no one could hit the target at such long range, so I went back to the RV and waited for the big bang. I found poor Homer shaking pathetically; he does not enjoy the sound of gunfire and wanted to fit himself into the RV’s tightest corners for the rest of the evening. Luna didn’t seem perturbed at all, but she has been exposed to gunfire a bit. Open cans of beer on the hood of their truck, the guys let Nic try for the target with their gun and then with his shotgun. Finally, the ringleader got closer to the target and hit the explosives. The bang was indeed big enough to feel from quite a distance, but I know it wasn’t worth $200. After enjoying a bit of tequila, the guys did a few donuts and headed back down the mountain in a cloud of dust. Oh my. So this is who our kids will be attending high school with…

We left Homer slightly nervously on Sunday, July 2. We weren’t sure we’d be able to find a camping spot right in the middle of a holiday weekend. With some good potential spots and a few good backup options surrounding the town of Kenai, we took our chances and headed up the coast. In a stroke of good fortune, we got an excellent campsite overlooking the Cook Inlet, the huge body of water that makes its way inland to Anchorage. The relatively laidback campground was only half full for our three nights there, and it was too far from civilization for us to be disturbed by late-night fireworks. The campground’s harmless bicycle gang of kids stayed up until midnight driving endless circles around the campground loop, but we couldn’t complain when they got up and out even later than we did each morning. We breathed a sigh of relief when the long holiday weekend was over, and we are grateful to have had a much easier time finding campsites than on Memorial Day weekend.

Taken at 11pm over Cook Inlet.

Glowing wildflowers

Volcanoes on the horizon.

After more than four months on the road, we have begun to tire of my standard set of recipes. We’ve had some iteration of tacos way too many times, and even our favorite RV meals just sound…overplayed. I haven’t baked much in the RV, mostly because it feels like a waste of resources. Baking involves generator use, extra dishes (and extra water), and precious cabinet space for ingredients I may not use often. Then there is the issue of wanting to make something and not having cell service to find the recipe. Or sometimes I have the ingredient list saved but forget to include the part of the recipe with the actual baking instructions. Struggles aside, we really needed some menu changes. I am happy to report that in the last week, we have gotten more creative and have made and enjoyed beef pho, our favorite green onion and feta turkey burgers, chocolate chip banana bread, spicy veal chili, and buttermilk cornbread. Yum! This trip has been mostly about necessities, but we certainly have fun splurging a bit on the menu!

Warm banana bread – yum!

Believe me, there is something extra special about a steaming loaf of banana bread made in the RV at our boondocking spot in the middle of nowhere. I had to be more efficient with the dishes used to keep my busboy from striking (and to make sure we had enough water to shower!), and determining the proper cook time in our little microwave/oven contraption required some guesswork. It took extra thought during our grocery trip two days prior to make sure I had all the ingredients I needed. We asked that generator to run well for a longer time period than normal to get that loaf perfectly baked. With all the work Nic has done, it happily complied. The result was absolutely perfect. The warm loaf came out of the pan just like at home, leaving behind just a few spoonfuls of the heavy chocolate chippy perfection that hangs out at the bottom of my banana bread. My cook time estimate was right on, and we got the slightly gooey loaf we prefer. We ate it happily, staring out at the snowy mountains surrounding our RV.

We arrived in the Seward area a few days ago, once we thought holiday festivities had safely passed. We found a great free camping spot outside of town on the road that leads to Exit Glacier. While I freaked out and tried to ignore what was going on, Nic very skillfully maneuvered us through some very bumpy rocky areas to our gravel riverbed campsite. A few other campers joined us that evening and the next, one of whom enjoyed doing some rapid-fire target practice within sight of us. Overall, we enjoyed the great views and the peaceful vibe of the place. We still don’t complain about free either. Our nightly average has gone up to just under $7.00, since we haven’t been able to find as much free camping in Canada and Alaska.

Free camping outside of Seward.

The camping area was surprisingly devoid of wildlife until just before we left. I let the dogs out on our last morning and noticed an eagle perched by the creek about fifty yards from us. I don’t know if an eagle would be interested in snacking on Homer, but I kept a careful eye on him while our tasty little dog made his morning rounds. Pooches safely inside, I grabbed the camera and slowly walked closer to the eagle. I managed to get about thirty feet away from him, with only a shallow creek separating us. While I let the dogs back inside, he had caught a fat salmon that must have been over a foot long. As I approached him I could see the fish flopping around under the eagle’s talons. The eagle had to use his wings to balance himself as he struggled with the desperate fish. When he had sufficiently subdued the fish, he began to rip into its flesh, taking bloody chunks from the still-flopping body. While I felt a little disgusted to watch the still-alive salmon die one eagle bite at a time, it was pretty incredible to see the strength of the eagle. He guarded his prey carefully, looking skyward in between mouthfuls. When some seagulls ventured over to check things out, he screamed angrily at them, threatening them to stay away. After returning to the RV, we continued to watch the spectacle from our window. A female eagle joined her mate, and then another pair of eagles appeared to get a piece of the action. We watched the birds as we ate our oatmeal. Only seeing bears eating salmon would have been better breakfast entertainment.

Flopping fish

Getting bloody

Screaming at seagulls

In flight

After our two nights outside of Seward, we made our way back into civilization. We (and hundreds of other RV campers) are camped now in the bustling waterfront area of Seward. When we arrived yesterday, two huge cruise ships dominated the harbor skyline. We could barely get the internet to work on our phones, since Seward’s tiny bandwidth (meant for a population of less than 3,000) couldn’t handle all the visitors. We happily watched the cruise ships leave last night, and we have slightly better internet now. After so much remote camping, we have enjoyed the opportunity to walk to locations right from our RV. We have visited the library and the grocery store on foot, and the waterfront path’s sights have kept my eyes occupied as I’ve caught up on phone calls today. We’ll find some fish and chips for Nic tonight and get some laundry done tomorrow. For now, we are watching boats come in and out of the busy harbor as Nic applies for jobs in Montana. Our biggest concern of the day is staying warm and dry, as it’s rainy and only about 50 degrees.

Exit Glacier

Exit Glacier

In the last few days, we have made our way out on the Kenai Peninsula, a huge natural playground jutting out south of Anchorage.

We left Valdez last weekend, making our way to Anchorage over two easy days of driving through spectacular scenery. Nic fed our RV yet another fuel filter when we started losing engine power just outside of Glennallen. We think the fuel pump is going to fail sometime, and we really hope it will wait until we’ve done about 6,000 more miles. In the meantime, monthly fuel filter snacks seem to appease the monster well enough.

Anchorage provided a breath of…civilization. I can’t say it was refreshing, because we’d choose empty roads and slim grocery choices most days over the rat race of Anchorage. It’s easy enough to get overwhelmed in the rush of people in their daily routines and tourists like us bumbling around clumsily. We did enjoy checking some important items off our to-do list: a very speedy oil change, our second prenatal appointment, an expensive stocking-up groceries trip, lunch at Pita Pit, and a new battery for the old girl.

Did you hear our big news? Our reading list might clue you in on what’s happening in our lives in December!

Between all these errands, we found some quiet and free camping on the Matanuska River. Luna and I enjoyed the paved multiuse path by our campsite, as it gave us a chance for a long and safe run more than ten feet away from traffic and free of the fear of making a new bear friend. Our only choice the day before had been running on the shoulder of a busy highway and then finding dead-ends, seriously debilitated bridges, and threatening private property signs on the few nearby dirt roads. And we can never escape the ever-present possibility of seeing a bear stroll out of the woods. We don’t mind taking our chances on running into a bear, but we do enjoy the peace of mind while running on a nice, friendly paved path. Nic doesn’t threaten to creep behind me on his dirt bike with a shotgun in hand either. (Can you picture that?) Any Alaskan would probably tell me I am just as likely to see a bear on the paved path, but it’s easy to think that’s not the case. You may be surprised to hear that small-town Alaska provides its residents a paved path. I don’t know of many paved paths like this one where we lived in Wisconsin, yet nearly every tiny town here seems to have at least a few miles of path. The paved paths often peter out into dirt 4-wheel trails, which go for many miles around some small towns.

We headed south from Anchorage to charming Girdwood. More Colorado ski town than Alaska frontier, Girdwood was a pleasant stop for us. We slept through a very rainy night, hoping the skies would clear for some hiking the next day. The sun wasn’t shining, and we couldn’t see any blue sky, but the rain had stopped when we woke up the next morning. We have seen very little sunshine since being in Washington state, really, so now we are just very grateful for overcast skies with anything less than drizzle coming down. We took Luna on a hike up Winner Creek. After a pleasant few miles through lush forests, we arrived at a unique hand tram that would carry us across the gorge high above the rushing river. Tram riders and spectators at both sides of the gorge get a workout when they help tow each other across the river by tugging the rope through the pulley system. I had tried to find information online about whether or not dogs could use the hand tram, but I never found solid evidence saying it was possible or permitted. Luna has a rather consistent track record of freaking out on bridges and being somewhat nervous in general, but after watching a few people use the tram, we decided to see if we could get her across. The whole thing was so foreign to her anyway that we thought she would be over the gorge before she even figured out that the situation called for a neurotic episode. She and I crouched in the metal basket together as Nic and some kind strangers pulled us across the river. Luna probably didn’t love the experience as much as rolling in dead fish, but she did just fine and even got some encouraging cheers from spectators.

Nic gets his workout towing a few people across the gorge.

Winner Creek hike.

Nic’s turn to ride!

Hiking by Winner Creek gave us a chance to have an informal executive meeting about the future. We are both really excited about settling down in northwest Montana. While we are still loving the adventure, we are also thrilled for what lies beyond the big road trip. We look forward to that day when we park our vehicles in the same spot every night, get squeaky clean in our own real shower, bake homemade bread, watch our sewage disappear effortlessly, and wash our dishes in a dishwasher. And we now have a hard deadline with a baby on the way in December. We certainly want some time to adjust to new surroundings before the baby’s arrival. So we made our next prenatal appointment in Kalispell about a month from now, and Nic applied for a job. We will swing through the area in late July/early August and try to find a place to live and a job or two. We will make our way back to Wisconsin in August to spend time with friends and family and pack our storage units into a moving truck before heading west for good.

Since the rain continued to hold off after our Winner Creek hike, we decided to squeeze in one more tourist activity for the day. While the Alyeska Ski Resort tram whisked Nic up 2,200 feet of ski hill, I hiked up the steep slope. He gave me a big head start, so we arrived at about the same time. The clouds hovered over the mountains, but we still had a nice view of Turnagain Sound and a few of the hanging glaciers in the area.

Alyeska Ski Resort tram.

Hanging glacier views.

Turnagain Sound

We left Girdwood that afternoon and made the short drive to Whittier. Accessible by road for less than two decades, Whittier is an interesting little town. The only way to drive there is to pass through the one-lane Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, the longest combined vehicle-railroad tunnel in North America. We paid our tunnel toll and waited in our assigned lane for our turn in the narrow 2.5-mile tunnel. Traffic alternates between each direction on the half hour, and you can’t drive into town at all hours of the night. A train passes through the tunnel at regular intervals also, which we had a chance to observe while waiting. At 7:30pm on the dot, the tunnel officials began releasing the lanes of traffic around us. The tunnel itself was dark and damp, and Nic said he could feel the slippery train rails pulling on our wheels. We couldn’t see much of Whittier over the next twelve hours because of the heavy downpour of rain. We drove to the end of town the next morning, passing by what was once the largest building in Alaska (built to house 1,000 military personnel during World War II). We also saw the two small condo buildings where the majority of Whittier’s small population now resides. As we headed back to the tunnel, we wondered about the long line of cars coming into town. Whittier does connect with other port towns by ferry, so maybe the cars were headed for other destinations via water.

Kachemak Bay views from the end of Homer Spit.

Trying to follow the path of least precipitation, we headed to Homer next. Our drive took us through beautiful mountain scenery on the Kenai. Eventually, the mountains gave way to the dreaded spruce swamps we had been so happy to escape recently. As we drove toward the Cook Inlet, we hoped we weren’t in for more mosquito wars. Though the flat route took us past famous (and attractive) fishing rivers, we wondered if driving all the way to Homer was worth it. Just before reaching Homer, the highway crested a hill, and we were astonished to see the Kachemak Bay and a backdrop of towering mountains. Worth it. We’ve been enjoying the small town of Homer these last few days. We can see glaciers and mountains from our relatively quiet campsite. We did a few scenic drives, visited the local farmer’s market, acquainted ourselves with the high school pool (very clean and very hot showers), and browsed some interesting local shops. We love this little town at the tip of the Kenai.