Road Trip Photos: South Carolina through Vermont

So, finding time to sit down and upload photos has been more difficult than expected. Who knew being unemployed (or, "self employed") could be so busy? So far we've been from South Carolina through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and we're about to leave Vermont to enter Canada. Fingers crossed they let our mutt in! We've been camping most nights and have had pretty good luck - state park campgrounds have been the most useful. Ginger has been done great in the car. She mostly just sleeps so that she is ready to play anytime we stop, and sometimes she crawls up between us on the armrest to see where we're headed. She is getting tired of having to wait outside shops and cafes. Once she sees me clamp her leash around something she just lays down and groans. Below are some pics up to this point. We forgot our memory card so no pics until after Chicago. It's a shame because we spent a night there and met up with our friends Tim and Julie. Tim works at the Field Museum, which is a huge natural history museum, and he gave us a tour including behind-the-scenes looks at the storage rooms (huge rooms filled with literally tens of thousands of dead animals in jars) and Steph's favorite - the beetles that they use to clean all the flesh of birds and other specimens they are examining. Not appearing in any photos here were stops in Sylvania, OH (her dad's hometown where we met up with her great aunt for any northerner's favorite - soft serve sundaes) and Willoughby, Ohio (my dad's hometown where we went on a factory tour of the family business and met up with my cousin Mickey and his wife).

At our campground near Kallamazoo, MI. Was pretty but lesson learned: you camp near water, you're gonna have a lot of bugs. 

Ginger got to see Niagara Falls

Steph got to ride on the "Maid of the Mist" while I looked after Ginger

Trying to take a selfie and her poncho got inflated from the wind

Steph took a pic of a covered bridge with "miniaturize" mode on

We had beautiful weather our first week. This was at a campground near Cooperstown, NY

Crossing Lake Champlain on a ferry. The signs advertising this ferry were, no joke, hand painted. Definitely a budget operation, but it was only $10 so can't complain.

Steph drinking carbonated maple sap in Middlebury, Vermont

That flower stayed there all of 1 second, but managed to get a pic

Steph loved this cafe in Bristol, VT

Not as bad as it sounds....(it was a joke, this is from the Ben & Jerry's factory tour in Waterbury, VT. The actual sample was strawberry with fudge)

"I must go down there" Lake Champlain near Burlington, VT (and yes, she did)

Green Mountain Coffee in Waterbury, VT

Sterling Pond near Stowe, VT. We turned around for 15 seconds and the fog had completely blown away 

Waiting for snow

Filter by Google. Sterling Pond loop trail, Smuggler's Notch, VT

It was supposed to rain so we paid a few bucks extra for one of these shelters and squeezed our tent in there. Smuggler's Notch State Park, VT

Cool boulder near Smuggler's Notch, VT

Poor dog was so tired after the Sterling Pond hike. She wouldn't even get out of bed.

Farm near Stowe, VT at dusk

See more photos from our road trip HERE.

We'll spend a few days near Montreal before working our way east towards Toronto. This Saturday or Sunday we'll rendezvous with our friends Thad and Krista to stay at their family cabin for a week! 

Catching Up

Actually we haven't been in Malaysia for the last 2 years as our blog was have you believe. After our trip through Malaysia and Thailand, we flew to Brisbane, Australia with the hopes of doing a year working holiday there. Unfortunately we weren't having a very easy time finding jobs we wanted to do and we had a spell of homesickness which led us to decide to move back to Atlanta. I went back to my old mechanical engineering job and Steph was in high demand in her industrial engineering field. In total we spent almost 2 years back, as hard as that is to believe, and worked hard to pay off debts and save money so that we could have more options for the future. It wasn't all work though. We flipped our first property - a small house up in Jasper, GA in a joint venture with my grandmother. Okay, so that one was work, and we're still waiting for it to sell, but it was (mostly) a lot of fun and we definitely learned a lot. This April we took a 2 week holiday to the Pacific Northwest with my friend Simon and his new wife Alexandra. We also got to spend a lot of time with family and friends while home, which has been great. As usual, that's the hardest part about leaving again. Alas, we have left again and we have a lot planned for this summer. Our last day at work was just one week ago and we're currently hanging out in Clemson with our friends Graham and Kristin. We've done some paddleboarding, watched the World Cup, played board games, and will enjoy some typical 4th of July festivities later today. Tomorrow morning we head north. We'll have about 2 weeks to get up to my friend Thad's cottage in Parry Sound, which is a few hours north of Toronto. We picked a decidedly indirect route - up to Chicago then cutting East to Vermont, north to Montreal, then back west to Parry Sound. I am not sure how often we'll get to write, but I will try to post at least some pictures on here every couple days or so.

For now I'll post a bunch of pics from the last couple years up to this point.

Went on a snorkeling trip in the Perentian Islands - saw some turtles

and some sharks...

jumped off whatever this is

and saw Nemo and his friends. None of them bit me

Our flip - anybody interested?

Us with Simon and Alexandra

Snowshoeing at Crater Lake

Hiking in Redwoods National Park

Yes we did drive thru that tree

Ginger is a good paddleboarder