Forgot to Mention

Whoever planned for our flight out of Denver to go over the Grand Canyon was pretty sneaky. We get it. The US is beautiful too. I guess we’ll have to buy return tickets someday.

Can we sleep yet?

We haven’t quite finished traveling yet, but seeing as we are jet lagged and hanging around the Brisbane airport it is time for a first update. Here is the first documentary evidence of our existence on the other side of the world. Look, we're in the clouds!

Not the plane we were in, or the airline we were flying (yet), but out this window of the airport we got to see the sun rise above New Zealand for the first time while we waited for our connecting flight to Australia.

Too confused to try and write something witty and coherent so we’ll check back in after we reach Darwin and get some sleep.

G’Day all!

The Itinerary

I've added an itinerary to the right side of the blog page. This is the current plan and probably won't change much since changing airplane tickets is expensive.

By the next post we will probably have left Boston and most likely will be in Denver.

Homeless!

With the help of many hearty friends we have banished all of our worldly possessions into the safe keeping of friends and family. For the record, we have 55 labeled boxes, 10+ boxes I didn't bother to label, many plastic bags full of bedding and pillows, and the usual sets of furniture. We managed to give away about two car loads of old clothes and various other junk we used to treasure. It was a very cathartic experience that I highly recommend. Spending 3 days boxing up and moving all of our crap actually makes us want to just toss it into a big bonfire and incinerate everything. Perhaps we should do that when we return and have survived living a year without any of it.

After delivering much of this stuff to my parents house my Mom called me and had only one complaint: I had neglected to drop off our Roomba. Apparently the piles of stuff we left clogging the attic don't really matter as long as she gets to reacquire my Roomba (nickname: Roomy). Never fear Mom, once he is done cleaning our now empty apartment Roomy will be yours again.

Caleb and Elizabeth have taken us into their home for the week, and we have created a staging area in their upstairs bedroom where we are completing our final packing for the journey. Currently there are a dozen piles of possible things to bring with us: electronics, medical stuff, clothes, camping gear, etc. Somehow over these last few hectic days we'll whittle everything down to a manageable (and packable) set of traveling gear that can fit into our two backpacks.

Oh, and to finally quash the question from our parents: yes, we have completed buying health insurance.

Just cause we're leaving doesn't mean we can't go camping.

Got some photos up from our more recent domestic adventures: Hiking in NH, Camping on the Cape, and Camping in the White Mountains.

I think I spent 4 hours whittling down, and cleaning up the 500 photos I took on these three trips. I have no idea how I am going to be able to keep up with all of the Australia and New Zealand pictures we're bound to take. Oh, and I just received the underwater housing we bought for our old digital camera. So even snorkeling will be producing photos.


Mekayla beat me to the top of this mountain by at least 15 minutes. Actually, I collapsed about 30 feet from the top and decided I was close enough and the view was good enough from there. Somehow she coaxed me to the top. Round trip it was about an 8 mile hike (6 1/2 hours).

Like the hat? I'm breaking it in for Australia.

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Liftoff

We've finally bought our first set of tickets, so I guess plans are finalized enough to give a rough breakdown of where we are going and when. These logistics are pretty boring to write about so I'll just bullet point it (all dates/times are local):

• July 31st: Somerville lease is up, and we become nomads (but still nomads with jobs if only briefly)
• Aug 3rd: We end our jobs and go to San Diego for Mekayla's cousin's Bat Mitzvah
• Aug 7th: We fly from Los Angeles to Brisbane via Auckland, NZ
• Aug 9th:
  
• 9AM: We arrive in Brisbane feeling like it is who knows what time.
• 10PM: We get on another flight for Darwin, Australia. No idea what we do in between. Sleep? Eat? Surf?
• Aug 10th-15th: Darwin, Australia and camp in Kakadu National Park:

• Aug 16th: Fly to Cairns via Brisbane.

At this point we just have a general idea of renting or buying a car and then trekking down the East Coast to Melbourne (about 2000+ miles) camping along the way. We'll certainly spend some time snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef though we aren't sure which part of it yet. We plan on mostly following the coastline down through Sydney and Blue Mountains National Park, but the road will probably take us off the coast from time to time.

We haven't bought our tickets from Melbourne to Auckland, NZ yet, but have a vague date in mind of Oct 2nd.

I'll try and have more story and less list in future posts, but this seemed like some practical information to get out to everyone.