Summer wrap-up

Hello all and welcome to our blog. Cassie and I have decided to once again venture into the “blogosphere” as we travel to Eastern Europe. For those of you who remember the blog from Japan, this should seem quite familiar, for newcomers welcome and enjoy. We will be making every attempt to keep this up to date and want you to make comments, give us feedback, and tell us what you would like to see.

Our summer vacation officially started on the 7th of June. We were going to meet some friends in San Diego on the 30th of June and the thought of spending a month in the Yuma sun did not sound great. Thus we planned to travel the American West camping in the national parks and just enjoying the beauty of America.

After two and a half weeks of camping in the rain, we gave up on roughing it and finished the journey “camping” in hotels. Below are some pictures from this part of the journey…
The car with all of our belongings

The area around Yuma

Our first real stop was Northern New Mexico. We went to a National Monument and a National Park while there. The first was called Tent Rocks. We were able to climb through a canyon and then climb to the top of a mesa and look all around. It was very cool...

We then went to Bandelier National Park to see the cliff dwellings

Next we travelled to Colorado to visit the Ojennes's...

From there we travelled to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks driving through Wyoming we took these pictures:

At Yellowstone we had to get a picture of Old Faithful aswell as some of the wildlife


These are the Tetons


From the Tetons we went to Glacier National Park. This was our favorite, even though there was snow.


We then hit Seattle, Portland, the Redwood Forrest and San Francisco, where we met up with Rita. Rita showed us around the bay area and I was able to catch a Tigers game in Oakland.



After that we met up with Tom, Alister, and Doug in San Diego. With them, we travelled to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.


Cassie had training in Toronto, so she flew there and I drove across country to meet her. Nebraska and Iowa never end…

Since we got to Rockford we have been busy, busy, busy. I built a shed for Barb. Cassie has been prepping for the mother of all classes: she gets to teach high schoolers philosophy. We have been getting together with friends and family. Not all of this has been joyous: my cousin Matt lost his battle with cancer last week. It was a shock, but I was very thankful that I was near Chicago and able to attend the funeral services.

As I have posted this same thing twice and succeeded in erasing it both times, I will end here. With luck I will not delete it again. We look forward to hearing from all of you..


By the way, here are some photos we just got from our new apartment in Kiev, it looks as though we will have an extra bedroom: perfect for guests...