2006/03 Southwest USA trip (AZ-MN) - Minnesota |
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Although it was a sunny day, it didn’t get up to freezing until late morning. In central Iowa we noticed that the lakes were still frozen, and there was snow in the ditches. By southern Minnesota there were snow-covered fields and the temperature which had peaked at 40 was sliding rapidly towards freezing point as we headed north. We stopped at a rest area and emptied the sewer tanks, drained all the water, and filled the pipes with antifreeze, as we couldn’t risk waiting until we got home.
Back in Maplewood we drove to our local Bakers Square restaurant and called the kids, offering them a meal if they were fast enough to get there. Christina and Ryan made it in time. Michael showed up at home to help roll his car out of the way, the one that still is divorced from its engine! Everyone seemed to be in good shape, with college classes going OK. Joanna and Nick have done a lot of work to get the house ready for the baby, and we were invited over for Sunday. Joanna had been having some contractions earlier in the week, but the baby seemed to be keeping to schedule so far. We scurried around and got all the freezables out of the camper as the forecast was for fifteen degrees – welcome home! Some of the lawn was clear but most was under a foot of snow, with more promised for Sunday. Everyone was desperate to do laundry so I disemboweled the dryer and diagnosed a burned-out heater core, easy to fix in the morning.
And so ended one of our more relaxing trips. We covered about 7500 miles, but they were spread over nine weeks, so we didn’t feel like we were battling the tyranny of distance. We didn’t get to many of the places on our “list” but we ended up in some really great spots that we didn’t even know about before the trip. We’ll be back again in either spring or fall so that we can visit those places that were too high and too cold for a winter visit.
Our next trip begins in May and is a bit more ambitious. We’re spending three weeks in a camper van on New Zealand’s north island. (May is their November, so the south island with its massive mountains ranges would be more appropriate for a skiing holiday than a camping trip!) Then we’ll be crossing the pond to John and Edna’s in Melbourne and taking the Landcruiser around Australia’s great western loop. This will take us north through Alice Springs to Darwin and the Top End, west through the Kimberley, south to Perth, and back to Melbourne via the Nullarbor. We hope to do most of this by hopping from one national park to the next, so there’ll be plenty to see, and we’ll be taking our time – about twelve weeks for the whole loop.
So that’s what we have to look forward to. In the meantime, we’re into cleaning, fixing, and waiting for baby (who eventually arrived on March 19th, but that’s the subject of another letter).
Love from Peter and Sandie