Preparations, Projects, & Processes

I've spent the last week organizing and starting the projects that need to be completed to take off. Case's previous realtor, Joyce, will be over seeing our home while we are way. She has been very generous to offer her help, and she is needed because we are hoping to do at least one home exchange over seas this year. We've been setting ourselves up with a few companies that help arrange these contacts. We are hoping to find a base home in Europe for a few months this year. It has been fun setting up, both this blog and home exchange web sites, and I am grateful to Case who patiently helps me when I get frustratingly stuck. We've also found people to finish all the details of the house remodel so we can pass our final inspection, as well as a tree maintence man to trim our trees, and remove our dead palm tree in the back yard that the power company topped because it was in the power lines.


I've also been poring over books, maps and websites to map out at least a loose plan of our travels for December - middle February. We are very excited and looking forward to exploring Chile and Argentina, especially southern Chile in the Lakes District, Patagonia and Torres del Paine, and if we can find away maybe make it down to Antarctica. Case dreams of seeing Antarctica and I am game to explore and adventure just about anywhere, although he may need to find me a warm tropical beach later to thaw me out! We have been setting ourselves up to travel warm and light even though it will be summer, the coastal tempertures will be in the mid-sixties for highs and Patagonia is know for wind and rain, Should make for interesting hiking and camping! We did hear back finally from our prospect for work in Anchorage, Alaska and it seems to have fallen through. The good news is that there are lots of options still remaining and since it took this long to hear back we had a feeling it wouldn't work out. It was a tighter work schedule than Case was looking for but the consistency did appeal. It is for the best because this leaves us more free to adventure and we will fit work in around our adventuring rather than work dictating when we can adventure in our sabbatical year.