Making Lemonade

Hard to believe it’s a Tuesday – we’ve been enjoying not knowing what day it was but after the last 2 we’re pretty much completely out of sync with everything! The good news is that we think we have all of our main challenges solved now and we’re continuing on a modified trip.

Here’s the latest on what’s happening:

• Scoob and the Highlander are at the junk yard in Cortez, CO. The insurance adjuster will get there tomorrow (10-JUL). We know Scoob will be totaled but it will be interesting to see what the outcome on the car is – if it’s fixable, the insurance company said they will ship it back to NC first. Either way, we’ll probably be doing some camper/car shopping sometime in the next few months!
• We’re now in a rented Dodge Caravan minivan with all of our worldly possessions jammed into the back and our 3 bikes up on the roof – talk about tiny house living. If we could figure out how to sleep in it we’d be all set! We’re going to drive this baby all the way back to NC. The radio isn’t as good as in our Highlander but maybe we’ll have more interesting conversations now!
• Today we drove down to Durango and spent a fun afternoon and evening hiking along the river, being touristas in town, and having dinner at a fun little roof top bar with a guy playing guitar (when he played a Lukas Nelson cover we knew it was a sign that all was good again – ask Aunt Betsy if you don’t know about Lukas Nelson and our connection there!)
• The plan for now is that we’ll drive tomorrow to Moab, UT and spend a few days in a KOA campground (in a nice cabin). We’ll do day trips out to Canyonlands Nat’l Park and Arches Nat’l Park. After that we’ll drive to Boulder and visit with a bunch of friends who will all happen to all be there at the same time – that will be a great unexpected change to the trip. After that it’s more loosey-goosey but we’ll probably make our way back through Kansas and then into Missouri where we’ll try to get some cycling (and maybe some bikepacking) in on the Katy Trail (at least the parts that aren’t flooded). We’ll cross MO and visit Aunt Cal in St. Louis. Then maybe on to Paducah, KY to visit some of Donna’s relatives and then back into NC with maybe a day or two in Asheville (and maybe even on to the beach for a long weekend to top it all off – anyone want to meet us at the NC coast in a few weeks?

So, despite a rough few days, all is good and we’re still feeling lucky and looking forward to the next few weeks. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying following us – if you happen to be anywhere in our new path in the next few weeks please give us a holler – one of our favorite parts of traveling so far has been hanging out with other people and sharing stories (and cocktails!).