Florida – The Blue Van – Overland Travels

Florida — Jennah

Jennah — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 21:53:58 +0000

We are now in Tampa, Florida. Grandma and Grandpa have a pool, but the water is quite chilly, but we Alaskans go swimming anyways. Tonight Jack, Grandma, Grandpa and I are going to a concert, a symphony. Father and Ryan have left to drop the trailer and van off to be freighted away to Columbia. Our… Continue reading

Preparing the van and camper for a sea voyage — and freaking out a little bit

admin — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:52:36 +0000

On Sunday, the van and camper and Mark and Ryan depart Dunedin for Port Everglades. On Monday morning, they meet up with Aturo to get the paperwork ready for customs and the van & camper go on a giant RORO ship. Mark and Ryan are taking a Greyhound (Ryan’s idea) back. This is stressful as it completely 100% commits us to leaving. Some small freaking out moments happened. So much in not knowable — will people steal stuff from inside? Will it cost much more than we planned? Will we get stuck in South America, unable to return??

But the moments passed and we all feel better. We spent all day cleaning and organizing the camper for whatever kind of Colombian inspection lies ahead. Laundry, paperwork (and holy cow, is there a lot of paperwork!), van maintenance — so much fun. Tomorrow we condense our personal belongings into three dufflebags for the next 13 days and for the inevitable plane trip to Cartagena on 12/12/12. Then we are stuck here. Without a car. For 13 days.

We have reservations for two rooms inside the walled city – one family room that sleeps 6 and one additional room that sleeps 3. The dogs will be guests of a veterinarian down the street from our hotel. The van & camper is scheduled to arrive on 12/13, which is Thursday. But the RORO ship stops along the way and it could be delayed so we may not be able to retrieve the vehicles until Monday.

One thing we did do this evening is to try to make reservations for language immersion in Ecuador. Mar Azul is our first choice (http://ecuador-spanishschool.com/) – they have salsa lessons, too. Not sure how they feel about 6 kids being there, we’ll see.

Flo Rida — Jack

Jack — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:36:26 +0000

We’ve been in Florida for a while now. Every time I spell Florida I think of Flo Rida. I don’t like Flo Rida. Florida is like one continuous suburb. The state is probably at least 20% strip mall and old people. The coolest part of the state is Miami, alligators, and the ocean. Also the forts are pretty cool and the miniature golf courses look pretty exciting. The service is also pretty grand down here and the food and other stuff is cheap. The trees are cool too, oak, cypress, and mangrove are my favorite type and we have none of those up north. But the cons still outweigh the pros in this here state and I would not recommend it as a place of living (remember, this is coming from a 15 year old boy, my views may change. I mean no offense to the citizens of Florida, everything in this post is just my personal opinion). Our grandparents also live in Florida so all’s not bad. We’re actually currently staying with our grandparents right now. Most of the day is filled with preparing the trailer and van for their sea voyage and taking dips in our grandparent’s pool. Lizards are cool and there are some of those down here. That’s about all I can think of for Florida right now.
Peace out.
-Jack

Lousiana, Mississippi and some of Florida — Max

Max — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:43:00 +0000

In Lousiana we dove to in to New Olean and Ryan toured the Loyola University and got accepted! while they toured, Annabelle, Sylvia, Jennah and I went to the Playground across the street. We went to Downtown and across the Ferry. After the Ferry we set out in search of DOUGNUTS!!!! After about a hour we found them and they were awesome! so if you ever go to New Olenas go to Tastee Donuts and get a chocolate glazed one. Soo to carry on with the totally awesome life of ME we go to the oh so plesent town of Slidell we got PO-BOYS! I got a French Frie Po-Boy and so did Jennah and Annabelle but I got the best, it had lettuce and tomato it was AMAZING!!!!!! Then we went to Mississippi, and we stayed in the guest house of Mr.Richards it was so comfortable l that I didn’t want to get up. Then I was crulely ripped from my bed and dragged to the cold world of work, then I happily whet to Waffle House and then we had to leave the best house in the world and drove to Alabama, we dove to Florida! We dove to two in the morning and camped at a Walmart and so here we are in Tallahassee going to Tampa to see Grandma and Grandpa soo goodbye!

The End Of November – Jennah

Jennah — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:22:51 +0000

We arrived in Port Isabel, Texas. The terrain was familiar, as we went here on the last trip.
We camped at the same RV park, and went to the beach, which had a many of rolling dunes and syringes. Micellaneous items had washed up from Mexico and other areas.
After hanging at the beach, giant terrifying beach moths came out and started ferociously attacking us. We fled the beach and went back.
For Thanksgiving we were still in Port Isabel, which is near South Padre Island. We drove to the Golden Corral, an all you can eat buffet. We left that night and, due to a startling change of events, headed toward Florida, where we planned to fly away to Colombia.
We stayed in a number of Wal-Mart up the coast of Texas. The first stop in Louisiana was a giant play ground resembling a miniature castle. Mother said the bugs were bad, so we left fairly soon. We stopped in Eunice, another place from the previous trip. Mother and Father went out for dinner then went to a dance taking place at the campground
We left the next morning and headed towards New Orleans.
It seemed to have greatly improved in the last two years. It was considerably cleaner.
Ryan, Jack and Mother toured a college while my siblings and I were forced to play at a playground. Ugh.
The next morning I was awoken early by rain hammering against the roof and wind tearing at the walls. We had to stay in the Walmart longer, though, due to some research.
By a chance of fate, we were able to visit Perkinston, Mississippi, where we spent Christmas last trip. We stayed over night in the guest house, and went out to breakfast at the Waffle-House with Mr. Richards, an old friend…
We arrived in Florida today, and are hoping to possibly make it most of the way to Tampa.
-Jennah