Driving Overseas

The final tally is just over 11,000 kms on foreign roads in 6 different motor vehicles
- A Dodge Van in LA
- A Chrysler Town & Country in Orlando
- A Mazda MPV in Virginia
- A Ford F350 29 foot motorhome (5,600kms) in the USA (South to North on the East Coast)
- A Volkswagon Sharon in the Cottswolds
- A Fiat Dethleffs Motor home (4,003kms) in Europe (Germany, France, Luxemburg, Spain)

How many incidents?

We nearly took out a Pheasant in the Volkswagon & a motorcyclist in the Fiat. We did however massacre countless thousands of bugs on our windscreen. One cracked blinker on the Fiat thanks to European style bumper parking – why do they do that?

How much petrol?

Too much, our environmental footprint is now the size of a small African nation!

How many navigational issues?

Not as many as it could have been. The invention of the GPS has saved countless marriages around the world now including ours.

How many Tolls?

Way too many, especially in France. However at least the French charge to use really good roads with high speed limits whereas the Americans only ever charge for really narrow, poorly kept, unpleasant windy roads that make you question every mile of the charge.

Now all I have to do is get used to driving on the other side of the road back home.

Michael

American Hospitality

It actually happened. It took until the 7th week to occur and only happened once on the whole trip but we finally endured an example of poor American hospitality.

It was an absolute stand out for repeated rudeness, callousness and went on for an entire week at every interaction. Sadly on reflection it was the kind of lip and attitude I’d expect to receive weekly in Australia, but not so here in the USA. Which is what made it so startling for the comparative examples we have enjoyed at every turn, on every occasion, everywhere else we have travelled throughout this country, people have been courteous, gracious, kind, apologetic, and helpful to a fault. Sure there have been hundreds of examples of normal interactions in shops and toll booths and crowds and so on. Yet whenever we have had reason to ask for particular help or have been guests (paying or free loading) the hospitality we have received has been amazingly good.

For the record then, and so that we never forget them, it is time to mention some people and the kind of wonderful things they have done to care for us:

~ The Parrish Family – Chuck who drove to the airport, waited forever and then escorted us safely on our first drive in a strange country. Wonderful Connie also who together with Chuck gave us their bedrooms, food and the run of their house
~ The Toyashiba Family – Joey, Minda, Briar-Rose, Brienne & Baylee who tooks us to Knotts Berry Farm & Hollywood, even taking the girls out of school so we could spend two wonderful days together
~ The Parish-Wishart Family – Kelly & Jeff, Wyatt & Stuey the dog who made our visit to Universal (including Harry Potter World) brilliant with Fast Passes. Add to that an airport pick-up, Cape Canaveral, & days of driveway lodging
~ The maid at Disney Fort Wilderness – how exciting it was each day to see what she had done to welcome us home (once the TV was left on and the teddies were all lined up watching it with remote in-paw)
~ The Disney World street cleaner – who used his broom and a bucket of water to “paint” characters for us on the pavement when Aidan was having a hard time, it worked and drew a crowd too
~ Walt Disney World – who named a street after us just to make us feel welcome
The rental car lady in Orlando – who put us into the brand new Chrysler Town & Country – very swish!
~ The old people in Florida swimming pools – who did not complain when that wild Aussie family jumped into the pool
~ Bonnie – our guide in Savannah Georgia who went the extra mile to care for us and made a beautiful new city really interesting
~ Johnny Peebles – who adopted us in South Carolina and made our Civil War experience unforgettable
~ RV park in Asheville North Carolina – the lady who gave us copious maps, a discount and even offered me a job
~ K Robins – unbelievable hospitality in Virginia – her car, her time, her driveway, her washing machine & her house in Richmond. What would we have done without K?! Certainly not as much as we did. Thanks should also go to K’s daughter Leila who lined it all up for us.
~ Paul the Ski Tube attendant – who engaged us, advised us and kept the ride open for us when all the other staff wanted to close early because of the rain, fog and lack of customers
~ Doug the train attendant at Richmond Staples Mills – helpful, funny, informative and greeted us on our return journey with pennies he squashed under our train as a souvenir!
~ Washington D.C. – the lady we never met who gave us a password to use her internet connection & the guy at Safeway who used his discount card to reduce the price on our groceries
~ The Fresh Family in Pennsylvania – who gave up ½ their house for a Willo raid lasting a whole week, their time, their dog, their food, their transport, their love
~ Two ladies in D.C. – who teamed up and ensured I made it to Union Station after I got on the wrong train
~ Susan & Bruce – who gave me a room and breakfast every day in D.C. open for food and a chat at all hours of the day and night
~ 9 Marks staff at Capitol Hill Baptist Church – who bent over backwards and then some to make my conference there an unforgettable experience
~ Derek the tour guide – who for a “tip” gave us 8 hours of his life so we could experience & understand NYC
~ The Boston train man – not only shared his life experiences in the Episcopal Church of the USA also ensured we went the right direction, found bathrooms and saved us a train fare or two
~ The office staff at Circle Ranch RV M.A. – who took on all our second hand RV equipment and old clothes to “re-purpose” them at the local thrift shop.

Countless ticket sellers, train attendants, strangers on platforms, street corners and shops who never failed to help us with generous and accurate advice.

Writing on the eve of our departure I can happily say that the USA has been a truly wonderful place to visit particularly because of all these people God graciously placed in our path. Even that lady in New Jersey, for without her showing us what it could have been like, we would never have been so thankful for all those who were so kind.

God bless America!

Michael

Farewell USA!

Wow. We left home on the 7th February and today is the 7th April. We've been in this country for 2 months, visited 13 states, seen snow, swum in the Atlantic, done the theme park thing,and so much more. Along the way we've met so many lovely, generous people and reacquainted with old, dear friends.

I am aware that many of you are praying for this time away for us. Thanks for your prayers. God has answered them as we have had so much time together, building memories, enjoying each other's individual differences and experiencing so much as a family.

Of course there have been hard times (despite our ever cheery blog posts!) It has been tricky sometimes in a RV when we are used to more space in a house. The cold has been hard to adjust to. I'm an introvert and there haven't been many chances to have time out. Navigating and driving a 30 foot RV have had their moments! Yet the benefits have far outweighed these 'light and momentary troubles'.

We have spent the day cleaning the RV and packing (we have 4 more bags than when we left Australia! Three of them are filled with sleeping bags, towels, saucepans, sheets,utensils and all our other RV set up stuff which we will need in Europe.)And, over the past few days, we have been eating all the food we have left. So, this morning, when the cupboard was bare except for rice, brekkie cereal and honey, I googled 'family restaurants Bellingham'. And so we ended up at 'Joff's Backyard Grill'.

What a find! The decor was 'outdoor furniture brought inside' and the guy was quite bemused to find an Australian family in his restaurant, asking questions like 'what are buffalo wings? and ranch fries? and black cherry soda?' But we ordered, and it was fantastic! Finger lickin good, in fact (and there was a roll of paper towel on each table, we soon found out why...) I'll let the pictures tell the story. Suffice to say, we had fun, talked about our favourite memories from the past 2 months, laughed, cried, and ate so much BBQ that we rolled out of there. A memorable last night!

Karen

"It'll get CRAZY down there!"

So said the local Sherriff! We were camped at Broxton Bridge Plantation just outside or Erhardt, South Carolina. Year round they go hog and deer shooting here, but on the 1st weekend in March, they pretend to shoot each other in a Civil War re-enactment. 150 years ago General Sherman (North/Union/Yankee) came through here with 65,000 troops laying waste to South Carolina and Georgia as he headed for the coast. Here at Broxton Bridge just 6,500 (South/Confederate/Rebels) tried to stop them. After just two days of solid fighting Sherman broke through and completed his destructive journey all the way to Savannah.

The re-enactment of this battle was absolutely amazing to experience first hand. Live fire cannons and muskets from over 200 participants along with period dress nurses, locals and a campsite set up as original. The breastworks (earth embankments behind which they site the canons) are original and we were told this is one of the only places where the re-enactment occurs on the original site using the original defences & bullets fired in the battle 150 years before can still be found. We were no more than 100m from the action and much of the time no more than 2m, and a terrific local called Johnny became our guide to explain what was going on.

Was it crazy? Absolutely! Mounted troops, snipers up trees, platoons firing repeated volleys, and with up to 10 canons firing in rapid succession it was berserk. The muzzle loading rifles were loud enough to hurt your ears and a single canon made the ground shake and you felt the shockwave run through your chest no matter how far away you were – and the close ones were quite overwhelming. An amazing sight was the massive donut ring of smoke that would come out of the cannon and go blasting through the trees. They kept this up for over an hour before the south won this particular skirmish and everyone marched back to camp.

After it was over Johnny introduced us to two of the participants who then talked us through it all and allowed us photos with a rifle. Johnny was incredibly only 3 generations removed from the war, and Brad and Steve’s descendants had fought in this particular battle. Together they avidly informed us of the southern perspective on the war which accorded with many other perspectives I had often heard but pretty much never found in any books i.e. that this was a battle over two differing interpretations of the constitution – Federalism V State’s rights. The flash point in this debate was federal taxes and their unequal expenditure, the issue of slavery was pretty much a non-issue except in how it has been written up ever since. Facts like 80,000 blacks fighting for the South as fully paid volunteer troops compared to one segregated black unit in the North and General Lee (South) having no slaves compared to General Grant (North) owning slaves, all seem to go unheralded in the historical accounts. I guess it goes to prove the age old problem that history books are only ever written by the victors.

The entire experience was wonderful, exciting and sobering on every front. We will never forget it.

Karen feeling a little under dressed next to Mary-Elizabeth!

Michael

Of Hats & Lightsabers

How could these possibly be related? Trouble, that’s how!

Let’s begin with the hats. As I write we’ve just returned from Disney Lost & Found, which thankfully exists. Yep we’ve been losing hats everywhere. To date only Luke and Karen haven’t lost their hats. Mine turned up the next day (hidden under a seat in the car), Aidan’s turned up 5 days after it was replaced (behind the TV), Ethan’s is still not found and has since been replaced (we think it’s somewhere in L.A though it had had an earlier escape attempt on the plane just as we came in from Aus), and Max’s brand new L.A. cap came back to us today (after spending at least 5 days at Hollywood Studios). Will we return to Australia with any of our original hats? If anyone out there is a “bookie” I reckon there’s money to be made on taking bets per hat, per person … any takers?

And then there’s create your own lightsabers. For a bargain $22 you can create your own by screwing and/or clipping together 7 different sections (each with multiple options). They light up and a 3-way duel on a dark night in the camp ground is quite the spectacle. Now this has got to be a big money spinner for Disney – except when the Williamson’s show up! Two of our sons managed to build one each and they worked perfectly. Another son (who will remain nameless) put his together and then 30 mins after leaving the shop it stopped working. So we returned and they replaced it willingly as this apparently never happens. Yet it did this time and it did again later that same day, then again, and again, and again, and again. A total of 6 trips back to the same shop and their basket of rejects was growing alarmingly. A mini staff conference followed the last transaction, but with typical Disney smiles, apologies and enthusiasm they offered to keep on swapping whilst ever we kept returning. How many more? Only time will tell.

Michael

Plumbing Pandemonium

Not only does the water go down clockwise here in the northern hemisphere, there are numerous other plumbing “issues” to contend with.

Automatic flushing toilets are terrific in theory, but when a 4 year old mounts the loo the sensor doesn’t always register his presence and/or departure and when he arrived or left. So what happens when it sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t? Mid stream the cistern fires and then we have one terrified little boy screaming for dear life and refusing to ever go again.

And then there is the very full bowls. Now we understand why American movies feature the regular joke about the dog drinking from the toilet, it really is possible, and head flushing, and … let’s stop there. Even still this is confusing for little ones who are now astounded at the volume of what they’ve just passed.

Getting back to the sensors, these are also attached to the hand basins. Highly entertaining when you can repeatedly walk the length of 10 basins firing them all off without getting your hands wet. We could spend all day in there doing that.

Then there are the showers. One pressure setting with a pull on/push off knob. Turn it left and right to change the temperature. Lots of screaming somehow seems to help in getting this right. Lessons in shower curtains are also required. Step 1. If you want to flood the bathroom whilst showering, leave the shower curtain hanging outside the bath. Step 2 Don’t listen to the lecture your brother received about it and then you can do it too.

Somehow the bubblers are also back to front, how this could be I’m not quite sure, but the gymnastics required to operate them are quite the show to be seen.

Michael

Formation Willo

Two adults, Four children, umpteen bags & personal items, you should have seen us getting through customs! Last week we joked about the need to walk in Willo Formation while we were away. In fun we devised 6 Willo Formations each with its own call sign and practiced them at home:

Willo 1 – single file;
Willo 2 – two abreast in three pairs each with a designated “buddy”;
Willo 3 – three abreast in two rows (like on the plane over here);
Willo 4 – arrow head one, then two behind, then three abreast in the rear;
Willo 5 – one adult in front and one at rear with two rows of two in the middle;
Willo 6 – 6 abreast strolling arm in arm – quite a formidable sight this one!!

What began in fun became necessary the moment we walked into Sydney airport – those rope lines are very hard to negotiate in Willo 6, not to mention the x-ray machine and the automatic doors! Willo 1, 2 & 5 have all become immediately useful, praise God we practiced.

Michael