Day 5 of our Road Trip!

We had a fairly uneventful day today~ Leaving Tuscan, AZ in the morning and stopping for the day 1 1/2 hours east of El Paso, Tx. Probably the most eventful thing that happened was our encounter with some hitchhiking hippy/bohemian men who were in a Walmart parking lot. They were singing to us about peanut butter sandwiches and religious people. They were kind of intimidating looking and obviously mocking us.. We went over and made friends with them, gave them some bagged popcorn, tracts and shared the gospel. That was a blessing.

 

Grace & Laura have been enjoying all of the different varieties of cactus plants! In addition, we were able to see many century plants which we had studied about this year in school.

                                              Century Plant Description

Agave americana 'Marginata'

Although it is called the century plant, it typically lives only 10 to 30 years. It has a spread around 6–10 ft (1.8–3.0 m) with gray-green leaves of 3–5 ft (0.9–1.5 m) long, each with a prickly margin and a heavy spike at the tip that can pierce deeply. Near the end of its life, the plant sends up a tall, branched stalk, laden with yellow blossoms, that may reach a total height up to 25–30 ft (8–9 m) tall.

 

Grant & Timmy enjoy a short pit stop

 

Beautiful scenes in Arizona 

 

 

 

Hard to see here but this pic was taken in El Paso, TX.. You could see the crowded brightly painted houses on the Mexico side. Such a dichotomy.. dilapidated houses one block from luxuriant shopping complexes.

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3

Starting out on our Belize Trip!

On February 15, 2017 we left Halsey, OR with our friends the Kings for a trip to Belize. We plan to finish our house and spend some time down there together. We look forward to both the road trip through Mexico with them as well as the time we will be spending together working &serving.

 

Its amazing how much trash we had.. I think we took 2000 pounds to the dump that last week!

 

We parked the trailer next to the house so that we could load it up with our household stuff. When we went to weigh it we were over in weight by quite a lot. Grant and I spent the day before we left resorting stuff and putting things into storage. It was a bit stressful but we were able to get it done!

 

resorting at the last minutes

 We were so blessed to have lovely weather the last few days of packing and finishing up at the house. The weather was so beautiful that these early spring flowers sprung up in the yard

 

And we are off! We met the Kings at PV near our place at 8:30 am- gassed up, filled tires and hit the road! After about a half hour Jeremy's check engine light came on.. he quickly found a mechanic to take a look at his vehicle. It ended up being no big deal and we were quickly on the road again, Praise the Lord! Once we hit the coast we realized there was a huge storm coming in. We experienced 70 mph gusts and torrential downpours. It was pretty stressful driving at times but we reached a Walmart in Crescent City and gratefully slept like babies.

 

The  next day Grady noticed some extreme vibration in our front brakes while braking down steep grades. We decided to stop to have the front brakes checked out.. and ended up having them re machined..we ended up staying in that town ALL day while waiting for the rotors to be worked on. We all got a bit stircrazy in the trailers with the children (in the city!!) Our family & Becca King had a nice stroll in the rain and found a cheerful Starbucks along the way! We all were disappointed to lose a whole day of travel but later found out that had we traveled that day we would have caught up with a terrible windstorm, mudslides and snarled traffic. We are so grateful that the Lord answered our prayers and kept us from harm. It reminded us to keep that in mind the next time a trial comes our way- the Lord is in control of all things and we can trust him!

 

 We had planned out our route the next day only to find out that the way we had planned to go had roads washed out, mudslides, sinkholes and 10 miles of backed up traffic. Amazingly enough, the Kings friend was traveling the very road we had planned to take and was able to warn us of the delays and dangers. Again, we thanked the Lord for protecting us! We took the desert route instead and were able to avoid the entire affected area.

 

Just outside of Napa,CA

 

Jeremy & Grady purchased some walkie talkies to enable easy communication

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It was such a blessing to get past the bad weather and step out at the gas station to 65 degrees and sun! Pretty much everyone immediately switched over to flip flops :)

 

Somewhere in CA or AZ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the end of day 4

What a view!

 

Winter Driving

We headed out to the International Airport in Portland to pick up Ashley and Amanda's new dog. By the time we got to Salem we realized that a snow storm was moving in! We couldn't NOT pick up the dog at air cargo.. we had to go on despite the weather conditions. We arrived to find out that the plane had a 2 hour delay so we then headed to Denny's to treat everyone to hot chocolate.. by that time the snow had piled up almost a foot!

The airport parking lot for the cargo was covered in snow by the time we arrived

 

We found out the plane was delayed 2 hours so we headed to Shari's

Hot chocolates all around!

2 hours at Shari's crept by..

We got to the airport at 11 pm only to find we would have to wait another hour....

Finally around midnight we were told that the plane had been rerouted to Seattle and we would have to come back the next day to get the dog! They assured us that she would be well taken care of..

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The next morning Grady and the kids had a very harrowing 4 hour trip back up to the airport. It was crazy and dangerous but at the end of the day.. the pup showed up safe and sound. Praise the Lord!

Happy 9th Birthday Sweetheart!!

 

For Grace's 9th birthday daddy and I took her to Staples to publish the book she wrote about Coco. She had such a fun time publishing her special work.

 

Grandma Barb came a few days later to wish Gracie a happy birthday too!

Deep Freeze!