Hey all! I'm not sure what's been going on with our blog at this point, but it's clearly undergone some difficulties, starting with the fact that I've completely flaked on keeping it updated! Hopefully, I can get you all up to speed again in this post.
What started out as a long weekend in Anacortes Washington, turned into a month in Anacortes! From the moment, we arrived we were besotted with the place and after months on the road, and moving from spot to spot every few days, it quickly became apparent that we just needed some time to be still. We were blessed beyond measure that our dear friend, Bob Dvorak (who I used to work with at Habitat For Humanity in Vero Beach Florida) had a great hook up for the RV and allowed us to stay on his property, overlooking the Similk Bay, indefinitely.
We enjoyed our time with him there immensely. We loved his little church and were able to go with him several weeks in a row. His daughter-in-law, Katrina and her mother, Brenda, soon became our besties as well, and we thoroughly enjoyed some framily time with them!
A few highlights of our time in Anacortes were:
* Taking the ferry over to Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands
* A whale watching tour where we followed a humpback for a while
* Touring the American Tug manufacturing facility in LaConner
* Lots of dock walking and dreaming about boats
* Chartering a trawler for a 3 day cruise around the San Juans. . . which including an Orca sighting right off the bow of the boat!
We knocked out five customer meetings the following week with stops in Ellensburg, WA, Yakima, WA, Chewelah, WA, Coville, WA and Hayden, ID. We were more than ready for some July 4th fun after running so hard and lucked out again when a customer invited us to hang out with him for the weekend on his boat on Lake Coeur D'Alene! We had a fantastic time getting to know them, having some more time on the water (which is good for both of our souls) and seeing that treasure of a place!
Again the following week we hit the ground running with meetings in Lewiston, Moscow, Boise and Twin Falls, Idaho! After two weeks of knocking out meetings, we realized that we needed to slow it down again so that we could actually get some real work done. It's been hard balancing both the travel, meetings and regular work and we'd gotten a little out of practice while we were in Anacortes, so we decided to take this week and next to slow it down a bit, and get caught up on work before we begin the trek back to Georgia/Florida the last week in July.
We're currently in Missoula, MT in a SQUARE DANCING CAMP GROUND (my former Habitat co-workers should know that Fred & Pauline have yet to be far from my thoughts since we arrived!)! We'll be here until Saturday when we're going to head on up to Kalispell, where we'll spend a week tying up lose ends and catching our breathe. We're planning to take the following week for the drive home. . working each morning and driving 6-7 hours in the afternoon/evening. If all goes according to plan we'll be in Ga on the 1st of August and back in Melbourne on the 6th. We'll be there for 3 weeks, before heading back out on the road to Colorado in September.
We have run into a little snag with our motorhome though, so our plan may be blown to shreds if we have to take it back to Tiffin in Red Bay, Alabama. We have a slide motor that's not very happy with us and Jeff is concerned about some more serious worries regarding the chassis, so we've got a few weeks to figure out how to best address those concerns while trying to keep our schedule as in tact as possible.
I feel like I would be missing out on sharing the best part of this adventure if I didn't say that despite meeting weeks, like the last two, being a bit hectic for us, we have loved every second of them! There is no way to equate all that we have learned from our customers and how much we have enjoyed meeting them face to face and in some instances, really spending time with them. We are meeting the nicest people and it's becoming apparent to us that they are the very best part of this business and we are so blessed to have this opportunity to be out meeting them!