Welcome to Montgomery, Alabama

Well, we are here at our new duty location in lovely, Montgomery, Alabama! Yes, it's hot. Yes, we got a ton of rain the last day or so. No, we don't have a house yet, though we will be accepting one on Monday. Yes, you can still call us on our cell phone. No, the room we are staying in is NOT big enough! Yes, all of our stuff is still loaded on the boat and in our cars, however that will change once we move in. I went to my office and started my "House-hunting" leave, so I technically don't have to be at work for about a week. However, that does not mean that I didn't spend most of today in uniform getting situated with finance and the clinic. Hopefully we will get paid soon for the move. We have already started planning the decorating of our home. We are trying to do a good job, for once, of getting wallpaper and painting out of the way before we actually start putting our furniture in place - please pray for us as we attempt to do this! I had a great time in GA with my family and got to see almost everyone. The highlight was easily spending a couple hours sailing on a Catalina 250 with my dad on Lake Lanier. I can't wait to get my boat ready for the spring! I hope everyone is doing well! God Bless you all! - David

Boundary Waters with my sibs

10/11/06 - 8 Days in the wilderness and 36-hours later, I'm back at my parent's house in Gainesville, GA. Rachel and the kids are still visiting with her grandparents and we should be meeting up again this weekend to make the final push, as a family, to our new home. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) was unbelievable! We truly "roughed it" for the entire time. I think we saw about 5 other canoes the entire time out and experienced black bears on our island, wolves howling through the night, beavers, otters, and all sorts of weather! At times, we were forced to make landfall much earlier than planned and wait out winds that caused two-foot waves in lakes that are normally completely placid. It was well worth the journey, and we all learned a lot and had a great time! I've included a few pics from the trip to the right. They hardly do justice to the grandeur of this somewhat obscure wilderness area. God Bless you all! - David

BWCAW - here we come!

10/2/06 - Today we leave for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. We are outfitted, packed, and ready to go. . . we hope. The food here is awesome and we shared a little discussion about skipping the canoeing and just sitting around Ely and eating the whole time. . . You know, take a few pics on the water to prove our trip and then spend the rest of the time in the great eateries around here. This morning was a stuffed hashbrown - really something you need to someday experience! Rachel and the kids are about to move out of the cabin and back into the Rensch's house for their last few days in Rapid. Please pray for all of us as we continue in our separate paths - utimately meeting up again in a couple weeks. The weather is awesome and we are all ready for an adventure. I'm looking forward to sharing it once we get back. God Bless you all! - David

The BIG plan

The trend was meant to be broken. Sorry for the lapse; a lot has happened, but I don't have much time - Rachel is driving around the Rapid City Public Library to keep from parking our 40-ft rig in five metered spots! Anyway, as you can assume, we are safely in South Dakota for the first solace of the trip. I will leave in a few hours to meet my brothers and sister to canoe the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota and Canada for two weeks - a dream of 10 years fulfilled! Rachel and the kids will stay here a few days and then move on to her grandparents house for a week of relaxation. We will all meet up together at our new duty assignment just before I have to report for duty. It has been an awesome trip and if I could load the pictures I've taken, you would see antelope in Wyoming, the Governer's Suite at the Billings, MT Crowne Plaza that we got "bumped" into when we showed up and they failed to produce a non-smoking room for our confirmed reservation, and you would also see Andrew riding a horse for the first time! Thank you, Jim and Linda for your wonderful hospitality during our stayover in Rapid. Well, I don't know when I'll get another note posted, so please pray for our family as we continue our journey to a new home. We continue to thank Him for the wonderful experiences we've encountered and we look forward to seeing you all in person to hear about your lives as well. God Bless you all! - David

Idaho and Holiday Inn

Wow - 3 Days in a row! Not to mention while traveling along one of the least explored coasts in the country! I'm pretty impressed, you should be too! As you can see, I've re-sorted the list - most recent up top - that way, the pics will line up with the most current news and you won't have to browse to the bottom every time! Ain't I a jeanyus! Anyway, we are in a Coer d'Alene, Idaho, in a really nice, really new, Holiday Inn, Express - I'm totally thrilled over the accomodations - as is the rest of the fam - especially Andrew - one look at the cookies waiting for us in the lobby and the indoor 24-hour pool and he was hooked! We will stay as long as we can, before we press on to our next destination. For your viewing pleasure, I've added some pics of days past that I could not upload due to inferior computers. Until later - God bless you all! - David

Ketchikan, Alaska

We made it to Ketchikan - a small community in SE Alaska - just north of Annette Island and the southernmost town in Alaska in our journey. This is where we say goodbye to Alaska for a while, anyway and welcome back the Lower 48 into our life. The trip overnight was more eventful than we were aware - somewhere between Petersberg (our first stop overnight) and Wrangell, the bow thruster on the ferry went out - so we got the assistance of a tug boat as we came into Ketchikan harbor. That was pretty cool, especially when the tug is right outside our stateroom window! We watched the tug get tied off to the boat and push us up against the pilings - one more unique experience for the chart! The family is still holding up fairly well and we are enjoying making meals in our room, walking around the boat and taking in the SE AK scenery - what a place! I can't wait to come back and experience it all for myself, at my own pace someday. Well, we are off to the grocer to get some more food for the long 1.5 days left until Bellingham, WA - our destination port. God Bless you all! - David

Juneau, Alaska

We've made it to Juneau! A 4.5 hour trip down Lynn Canal and we are safely in port at Auke Bay, just 12 miles north of the most inaccessible state capital. The northernmost point of the Inside Passage is so amazing! I'll write about my journey last summer sometime. Rachel spotted the first whales - too far away to identify, but definitely a pod of large marine mammals - we expect to se more as we trek further south. We are situated nicely in a spatious 4-berth cabin with a small table and four chairs as well as plenty of space for the pack-n-play. Andrew is pretty excited to be on the boat and Rachel and I are just relieved to be skipping the entire ALCAN - a highway that is really fun to drive - once. Our boat and Jeep are tucked away in the bowels of the M/V Malaspina, along with other trucks, cars, R/Vs, and kayaks. Our layover in Juneau is pretty short, but long enough to get ashore and post this message. I'm sorry I have no pictures this time, as the terminal I'm working from is pretty limited. Anyway, I'll go now - next stop is Ketchikan, sometime tomorrow. I'll try to post another message from there! God Bless you all! - David

Towed to go

As you can see, the boat is hitched up and we are on our way down the road! We'll try to keep you all informed - but we will at least let you know when we get to our new home - 6,000 miles away. God Bless - David