Monday, October 30, 2017

Shoes, Summer trip pictures, and Mexico see you soon!

When we left the SF Bay Area in October 2014, we emptied and sorted though our small storage locker and sent it off to Tod's parents in Ohio. Mostly we sent papers, pictures, and sentimental stuff.  We both do not own much shoes, basically you see us wearing sandals as long as the weather permits it. If we go hiking here, we will wear our hiking shoes. It seems that when you are back to land life, a bit more variety in shoes is "required" (really self imposed). So all of our sudden, the shoe rack that came with the house is filling up. But soon, those sandals will come out again, as we will be flying to our beloved Bliss next month to do a "short" somewhat intense stint in the Sea or Cortez and hopefully Banderas Bay. We want to make sure that Tessa isn't forgetting her boat life, it's been 1.5 yrs since we sailed!

our Betsy travels during the last years, the blue Northern route is from this summer 2017
I don't really get it why Ohio is called Mid West....

Both Tod and I remark how fast land life goes. It has been almost 1 year since we left Italy and landed in Ohio for Thanksgiving. We bought our 1st house during the last year, enrolled Tessa in  school, and then it was summer! Time to fly back to the SF Bay Area to pick up our RV Betsy, connect again with friends, and drive her cross country to our current home town Shaker Heights, OH.

Instead of approximately 2400 miles direct route, we took the long tour, wondering up North into Washington State and BC, Canada to see our dear family, relatives and friends. Seven weeks and 5200 miles later (yep, that's a lot of miles!), we came home. Lots of mostly fun memories (only just one quick RV breakdown) of beautiful places and great encounters with familiar and new people. One comes to mind where we got invited to a birthday party in a city park in tiny Chester (population less than 800) in East Montana. We were treated as long time friends, having fun sliding and gliding, getting soaking wet. along with our kids in the hot summer. With stops in Wisconsin and Illinois we got the chance to reconnect with more of our family and relatives, good times!

Don't get me wrong about land life. We do love living in our old home in Shaker Heights,exploring
the area and making new friends in this community. But for me, variety is the spice of life, and mixing things up, no matter how much work that sometimes requires, feels good.



enjoying my sister's home town Port Townsend, WA  



visiting dear friends in very cute La Conner, WA


 Cascades state park

we love the Okanagan, BC area and our family there!

Pristine, ice cold Christina Lake, BC

library stop in Whitefish, Montana

Canola crops in Montana

Glacier NP

oath to Junior Ranger





one of the many Minnesota lakes





Betsy after 5200 miles in front of our home