TOGETHER

Ten Years!  Wow!

At Nina's Farm and with Sheri's Urban Chicks

Claire and Neil are being immersed into small farm culture in South Dakota.  

Kitties, pigs and chickens fill most mornings with afternoon tea parties.  

Seven baby kittens!

New baby chick--just arrived. 

Gathering eggs!

Neil only broke one.

Sheri's neighbor provides free day old bread for the pigs--they prefer to eat it while lying in the mud.   Claire named one of the pigs weeks ago and finally got to meet Sally Bacon.  Paul choose the middle name. Her cousin named the other pig--Glitter.

Tea time!  

Montana, Wyoming and finally South Dakota

Hail and rainbows in MT!  Claire was fascinated by hail.  

Long day of driving on the 21st.  Montana is beautiful but we are feeling the push to wrap up the driving.  The kids were in the car for over 10 hours yesterday.  Neil talks more each day.  He saw a truck with two dogs in it and yelled out “two dog truck!”.  

We drove and then drove again and again through a hail storm in MT.  Stopping along the side of the road and waiting till it passed only to keep catching up to the storm again.  The hail was over an inch deep in spots.  We finally arrived in Gillette, WY at 8pm.  Paul ventured out to visit the local meadery.

On our final day we finished listening to Steinbeck’s, 'Travel’s with Charley: in Search of America'. For some reason, I just enjoy this   His portrayal and discussion of America is enlightening.  Even is some of the book is fiction—his gift for looking at our society and seeing it at the cusp of change is very relevant to today.

We stopped near the town of Philip—were my grandmother grew up and had a picnic lunch at the local schoolhouse.  

We were not able to find the train depot in Philip but it was nice to tour the town—next stop Nina’s!

Processing

We decided to leave, the house sold, friends were told and goodbye after goodbye was said.

Goodbye’s are hard, really hard.  We love Alaska and our friends.  We have learned so much and lived here in full for over a decade. We started our journeys of dating, marriage and parenthood here supported by so many incredible friends. 

It is hard to know how to be able to fully express our appreciation for everything that all our Alaskan friends and family did to help us embark on our journey.  I simply don’t have the words to say how full my heart was and how much we will miss so many.

It was a good thing to have 4,375 miles and 10 days (most of them without smart phones) to just process the past few weeks and the significant changes. I really don't have the words to express this--just a feeling of a full heart and an ache from the goodbyes. 

The drive through Canada was beautiful and the kids did incredible on the ultimate family road trip.