#7-We've started

On the road again…
The long awaited departure has happened. We be traveling. Although thus far we aren’t going anywhere too far, too fast.

Wednesday found us stopping for lunch with Henry in Columbia, and then overnighting in Bloomfield, IA at my Weilbrenner cousins. They had other cousins over so it was nice to see some of my dad’s family that I have seen little of over the last 20 years. Although some have visited us, it was a long overdue visit on our part.

And now we have lit in Des Moines, at our friend’s Chris & Sandy’s house. The funny thing is that even though everyone has had ample guest rooms available, the three of us agree we like sleeping in our trailer—it’s turning quite comfortable. Although we do take advantage of their shower—we aren’t stupid!

While in Des Moines we are planning on showing Yuliya the Iowa State Fair, since it has to be one of the best state fairs around. We have other friends that are riding in the Iowa State Queen contest tonight so we will have a bit of a reunion. And of course we have already gotten $80 ahead at our local casino.

We plan on heading NW on Saturday morning and then our true trip begins. We need to go 1850 miles to Calgary before August 15th. No problem.

Yuliya is back to being the fun and relaxed girl we took to Albuquerque 2 years ago. She seems to be finding peace and it just all reassures us that this was all suppose to happen this way. We will admit adding her to our plans was a bit of an adjustment for us initially—but I honestly assure everyone—it’s all good. We travel well together and it’s nice to have 27, sometimes going on 15 year old eyes to see with. We’ve always tried our best to smell the roses along the way but sometimes you need someone else to point out all the other flowers—and Yuliya is doing that. We should all come home better because of it. But lacking any of that—we’re having tons of fun…
Pictures will be coming I promise…