As any of our sailing friends know, in fact probably most of our friends aquatic or otherwise, plans never seem to last long, but we always agonize over making them anyway. Nicole and I have spent a lot of time deciding "what's next?". Now that we are both unemployed our options are again fairly wide-open. Not quite as wide open as in the past, since along with a neurotic kitty, we now have a 9 month old daughter in tow, but comparatively unencumbered non-the-less. I don't really feel like I am done with Southeast Alaska (and may never be) so we decided we will head back out on the boat for the summer and see how things go with our new crew. We're keeping an open mind about the whole thing, not knowing what we really have in store for us, but being fairly confident we can handle the realities of cruising with an infant. If this happens to last hours, days, weeks or months only time will tell, but we want to give it a shot and see. With a good dose of uncertainty as to the longevity of the trip, we decided to make some other plans as well, knowing we didn't want to spend another winter in Sitka. I'm sure my mother wishes this is the point that we announce we bought a house, but no such luck, at least not in the way she is thinking.
We decided to do a bit of land cruising over the fall and winter, and went ahead and purchased a camper van to accommodate the three of us. The Roadtrek is fairly swanky for a little van, outfitted with bed, table, stove, fridge and bathroom to make a self-contained travel vehicle that should suit us well. Our itinerary is not worked out yet, hence the title of this post. We are open to any and all offers of hospitality, so please let us know if you would like us to visit. Many of you will get a visit no matter if you want or not, but it would be nice to think we are wanted. Tentative plans are to start out in Western Washington where the van is currently located, head east then south to wander through a bunch of the mountain states before ending up in Moab for a bit. From there probably further south then east some more before turning north to be with family for the holidays, but it's all pretty up in the air right now. If you have suggestions for must see places, let us know. There's a good chance I've been there, but jogging my memory will probably add it to our list.
If you noticed earlier that I mentioned the three of us road-tripping, you may wonder "What about the cat?". Truth is, we are wondering about that too. I don't think she will enjoy months of road travel in a small van, so if anyone would be willing to adopt her, or at least get into a long term cat sitting position, please let us know. She's really not as bad as I make her out to be, and certainly deserves better than a cage in the van or going back to the shelter. Let us know and we can work out the details.
As far as news from Sitka, we recently had family visiting here, but I will save that for the next post, along with some long awaited pictures of Madeline.
Because I haven't bothered to read any of the parenting books I'm suppose to, I'm going on a lot of assumptions that everything is going well for Madelines development. So far she hasn't had any run-ins with the law, no issues with drugs or alcohol consumption, and no Lindsey Lohan-esque media scandals. Obviously I haven't had much of an influence on her.
