Kigertales is back!  It was great being home for a year and a half after our grand adventure through much of the lower 48 in 2016.  We spent much time with our kids, grandkids, friends, and church family. One of us got a new knee. And we worked on a few maintenance projects around home. Took a Windstar cruise around the South Pacific (best vacation ever!).  Now we are ready to hit the road again.  In a few days, we will head up to the Northern California coast for a week or two, then on to Oregon and Washington. We plan to spend two months exploring these two states that we have spent very little time in. We meet two couples in Seattle at the end of May for a seven day Alaska cruise. When we get back to Seattle after the cruise, we will be heading to Alaska with one of the couples. We will probably spend two months exploring but it could be less or it could be more. We hope our previous subscribers will continue to follow us and maybe we will pick up some new ones. I will also be posting each post (that sounds weird) to Facebook since we had some subscriber issues last time.

So here are some facts that will be fun to compare at the end of our journey:

Current mileage on our car (some of you may notice that we have a newer car since it didn’t seem wise to take the old trusty Land Cruiser on the Alaska Highway with 227,000 miles on it):

Here’s the current map of the states we’ve visited in our Lance trailer. We are excited to add to it!

We are extremely excited for this new adventure but there are some things we will miss. In no particular order: summertime on Southern California beaches, Tucker, camping for the whole summer at San Clemente State Park during Summer Soul Surf Camp, being with our beloved church family, Tucker, a dishwasher, washing machine and dryer. But the hardest thing is leaving our kids, their spouses and the grandkids for such a long time. Tiffany texted me this morning and said she overheard Stone (age 5) while holding a dandelion saying “I wish Mimi and Papa wouldn’t go on their big trip”. Uggg! A couple of weeks ago we spent our last time together with everyone. We will miss them so much!

Things we are not looking forward to:  the planning it takes to have a place to stay each night. We don’t like to reserve ahead of time, so it can be challenging.  The blog. I have a love/hate relationship with it  but since I had nice books printed from it for our own enjoyment last time, I will keep doing it. Going to laundromat.  They can be gross.  Surfing. John, not me

Our last trip to the beach yesterday with two of our kids and their kids:

Hooking up and starting to pack:

For the Facebook group. Look for us.

See y’all down the road!