Leaving out of Boise gave us the opportunity to spend the prior night at Van and Bobbi’s – friends for too many years to count and through as many different circumstances. We’ve grown older and somewhat smarter together, been through our share troubles, been there for each other through it all. As Van noted, we’ve lived two hours from each other for 20+ years; wish we’d spent more time together. 
Their home is the ideal stopover, lucky for us – lucky for them, I couldn’t fit their precocious cat, Pavarotti, in my bag. What a character he is. Long live Pav.
Saying good bye brought out emotions suppressed while prepping to leave for two years dominated our thoughts. Good byes are hard! Texts and calls were coming in too, and each one brought me to tears, thinking of all the good times shared with friends. We’ll have to concentrate on more good times upon return.
As well, creating so much work and so much emotion made me realize that one year wouldn’t be worth all this fuss.
Then it was off to the next stop, Washington DC, and my niece’s house in Falls Church – two days before the coronation.
The goal of everything neatly packed and the house renter-ready by Tuesday morning was a long shot. Driving away at 5:30 pm, we were only 10 hours behind but at least we were finally leaving. The most uncontrollable factor, the weather, was kind to us – a week of blue skies followed the endless snow storms.
A wide path was tidied up and with no new snow, the tractor was retired to the barn. Visions of needing the tractor to get out of the driveway crossed my mind – not that I’d have anything to do with that, I can’t even put the clutch in on the Kuboto. Happily I didn’t have to.
We proceeded to fill the barn with furniture, the bed and various whatnot using the garden cart with flaccid tires, its common condition. Spend 20 minutes searching for said garden cart before we realized we’d put the mattress on it and left it outside. We were getting goofy.
We also filled the trash – I’d’ve sworn we didn’t have much stuff, but we have a LOT less now.
A sensational snow storm dumped gobs of heavy wet snow and there’s more on the way. Of course it’s a good thing – aside from always needing the snow pack we are happy to get it over with now before we drive the sometimes treacherous 150 miles to the airport.
Cleaning the house: what I don’t want to wash, I just throw away. It’s not like we haven’t gotten our money’s worth out of whatever it is.
There is a pile of items for the Barkin’ Basement, too; rugs and such go to the Animal Shelter. Filled the feeders with the last of the sunflower seeds; the birds will have to fend for themselves for a while.
Central Arizona, middle of May. 800 miles south of here and you’d expect a little warm sunshine – but you’d be disappointed.
We were off to spend three days at the Overland Expo West, with a quick stop in Kanab, Utah, to drop off a cat (Stevie) and a dog (didn’t get his name) at the renowned Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. 
A remarkable place, Best Friends provides specialized care for creatures like Stevie. I grew fond of Stevie while volunteering so it was a real treat to see her off to a new shelter that could see to her needs.
Packing for this basic car camping trip was quick and dirty. I put all the stuff we needed in one container, and the stuff we didn’t need in another. And I told myself, don’t get these mixed up. Huh. Imagine our surprise when going to make coffee the first morning and finding everything BUT what we needed. Sure we could’ve restocked the kitchen (yuck, shopping) but where’s the fun in that? Those cardboard go-cups last a really long time and eating off the same paper plate every meal is possible. You scrape, and I’ll erase.
The Colorado River in Grand Canyon. April, 1989. 18 days, 16 people, four rafts, numerous kayaks. We put in at Lee’s Ferry and 225 river-miles later, took out at Diamond Creek. There is only one way to go on this drift and that’s downstream. Luck was with us. We had green water the entire trip. . . and no one drowned.
Looking back, the 1989 trip will never be duplicated – some of the rapids, the monster Crystal in particular, don’t even exist anymore. The Colorado river is subject to the whim of every air conditioner from Las Vegas to San Diego and with decades of low snow pack, the huge spring run-off is mostly a memory. For an exquisite experience into the river’s past, pick up The Emerald Mile, by former Outside Magazine editor Kevin Fedarko. Who knew that engineers screwed marine-grade plywood to the top of Glen Canyon Dam to hold back the biggest run-off surge ever seen? Imagining what could have happened if that particular workaround didn’t work is science fiction. A wondrous read.
The obvious place to start is the overland rig, right? The biggest upfront expense and the one most fraught with options. I dislike too many options. Narrow it down to three choices or be run ragged. So we started with a list of can’t-live-withouts (reliable, 4×4), must-haves (aircon) and would-be-nices (popup tent as opposed to RTT- rooftop tent). Simple enough.
The indispensable Africa driving site, 4×4 Community Forum, is an excellent place to start, with its plethora of forums, topics and eclectic people out for a drive of some sort and happy to talk about it. Gumtree is a good site as well, and this site while sparsely updated has interesting options – Africa 4×4 Cafe. The Hubb, Horizons Unlimited, is another worthy site, full of insights into traveling every continent.
After failed attempts at rig buying, obviously this isn’t such a simple project. Tripped up by the distance and the banking aspects we considered maybe we should just wait until we get there and start looking. Should we buy a truck here, outfit it and ship it? Shopping once we’ve arrived in South Africa wasn’t an attractive proposition – who knows how long that would take. Buying here in the US had its good points, we’d be able to customize it to our liking – and likely to the determent of all the other chores to do. We kept looking.
Minus 10 fahrenheit doesn’t sound nearly as cold as -23 celsius. With no wind and blue skies, it’s lovely with the right clothes, for a quick three-mile walk.
The cat, Peanut, is now encased in a new home out Glendale Road. 
A woman looking for a companion cat came by to meet her; Peanut went right up to the woman and asked for a head scratch. Very endearing. A couple of hours later and Peanut is off to terrorize a new household. One more difficult detail is crossed off the list.
Birds are a passion for us. They are everywhere all the time and searching for them hones spotting skills. Photographing them – a hobby for otherwise un-frustrated – is a digital photographers dream. You’re only limited by how much time you want to spend deleting.
Practice + Patience + Proximity = luck and maybe one or two decent photos.
That birds are well-adapted, well-evolved dinosaurs is fascinating. We live among dinosaurs – we even feed them. New fossil finds and research is indicating that birds were “bird dinosaurs” not dinosaurs who “turned into birds” after the meteor hit, and evidence of feathers goes way back in the fossil records. This article in Scientific American has terrific current findings and the Cornell University site is full of information.
Which birding books to take? All of them. Bird drawing books, personal sketch books and bird coloring books round out the library.
Finding the Beagle seems like fate now. Keeping needs in mind we kept perusing the various vehicle sites. Jim was on the Alu-Cab site one night and he read out loud the details: a 2008 Toyota, overland ready, with 28,000 kilometers on it. Must be a misprint, I thought; an eight year old rig with so few kilometers?. . . somebody dropped a zero. But no, the mileage wasn’t a misprint. The truck was the Alu-Cab showroom vehicle for the drive-off camper attached to it. Cool.
Rather than commit before financing was lined up, this time we went straight for the money – we beat up our options and came up with a plan. Sent the sellers a new email, saying if they still had the vehicle we were positively interested. And we didn’t hear back. . . oh well. Missed that one but there would be another one showing up soon. It’s just that this one seemed to meet so many of our wants and needs – couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Thinking that the opportunity was long gone, imagine our excitement when we got an email saying the vehicle was still around – the sellers were set to take it an expo in Cape Town but if we were to commit, they’d be happy to not have to drive it to the expo. Yea! 
We got on the stick and a couple days later, the Beagle was ours, sight unseen but for the photos the sellers provided. The buying experience was a delight. The sellers were excited to share their Africa camping adventures – we can’t wait to drive the Beagle up to their house and hear some stories.
Now to get it registered in our name and store it – the hard part – we sent Jim to Cape Town. What a drag, right? The bureaucracy was daunting but not undo-able. Storage was easily handled by Duncan at African Overlanders near Stellenbosch. Adrian and Rentia were most helpful and Jim was able to spend some time with them. He took the Red Bus around Cape Town and climbed Table Mountain on a nice day. It’s a mean flight home from there but he got it done.
We finished an excellent Kalahari safari with our hosts Adrian and Rentia of African Bush Adventures (terrific hosts and superb guides), but as always it is a drag to go home. After a month of working out the kinks and finally feeling organized camping in the bush, it’s time to leave. All that practice gone to waste.
So from our Backpackers room in Cape Town with its sunny yellow walls and wonderful view of Table Mountain we pondered where to go on the next trip. The options piled up. I dislike too many options. Instead of choosing between many, why not see it all? What would that look like? What would we need? It won’t be eazepeezelemonsqueeze, as my brother in Oz would say, we were pretty sure of that. We hatched the beginning of the plan that morning in Cape Town – go home, save $$ and come back asap to stay for a couple of years.
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