Big hike to begin soon

Greetings from Fayetteville! This town is really treating us well. Yesterday we discovered a great swimming hole less than 10 minutes by bike away, beautiful spot on the White River. It was a little too cold to actually swim so we just scoped out the scenery and checked out the cool abandoned stone buildings. No pics, sorry. I'm out of the habit of bringing my camera around but I'm trying to get better.

Friday night Paul and Skye had a wonderful party that involved lots of square dancing, with Matt calling and lots of musicians. It was a great time, I made a wheat-free white cake with chocolate icing and strawberries, yum! The people are really nice and there are tons of folks in the neighborhood growing gardens and biking around. Matt and I walked over to the neighborhood park and flew some kites then watched the skaters and BMXers at the cute skate park. That was prior to the party.

Saturday we got up early (grumble grumble) and set out for the farmer's market to play some tunes and earn some spending money, and it was successful. A full market, tons of families and dogs and great looking veggie starts and ornamental plants. I sure was tired tho. So much guitar playing has my poor fingers feeling bruised but it sure is fun.

Tomorrow we are borrowing our friend Pete's car to shuttle our van to the end of the trail. It is a 2.5 hr trip (one way) and is supposed to be lovely. The trail is called the Ozark Highlands Trail and runs 165 miles. We will be doing the whole trail and it should take us 2 weeks. Here is a link to a great article about the trail in National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/ozark-trail/white-text

Today we stocked up on all of our food for the hike and got some last minute gear. The general menu is instant oatmeal, pop tarts, or granola for breakfast, bagels and pepperoni, cheese, tuna, or peanut butter for lunch, and instant rice with soup mix (corn chowder, lentil, or split pea) for dinner. Snacks are granola bars and snickers (1-2 a day). It's not fine dining and hopefully we'll get enough calories. It was pretty annoying how much we had to eat on the bike trip because the body gets in such a high metabolic rate that the food just burns up. This trip we will be using iodine to purify the water and mixing delicious Countrytime lemonade to hide the nasty flavor. My nice filter is sadly in storage because I forgot it! Just a little less to carry I suppose.

Our plan is to begin Wednesday morning and of course the silly weather looks horrible, but it has called for rain for a few days and we have had virtually none. Cross your fingers!

Well I'm 30!

Now we are in Fayetteville enjoying ourselves immensely. Today is my b-day and it has been a full day--Matt made us french toast for breakfast and then we set out to a friend's house in the van-- but it was broken! An injection line was cleanly snapped in two. Aarrgh. It did not stop us for long. As luck would have it someone put a postcard under our windshield wiper advertising their shop that specialized in VWs, Audis, and Porsches. We called them up and conveniently they are located along the nice bike trail in town so we rode there and got our part used for only $7! Great, the easiest fix yet!

Happy Earth Day everyone!

back on track

A few photos of our van jam, then of Laura and I enjoying her deck, and of course our van loaded up for a float trip!

Hello all! After a nice winter in St. Louis playing lots of tunes and working at a coffee shop I'm back in travel mode. This time Matt and I are on four wheels in our new van--an 82 Volkswagen Vanagon and it's a diesel. Our dream van. We also have our bikes and backpacks for a plethora of travel options. Today we upped the ante and went by water (just a day trip), a great canoe trip on the James River in Stone County, MO. Lovely! The highlights were a grouping of 20 heron nests (way up in sweetgum trees) with mating pairs hanging around, and the thunderstorm that made us paddle like mad to beat the rain (we did not stay dry).

Our first stop this trip was at my folk's house where we finally settled in to traveling and put some stuff in storage, and had a too short visit with them. Then it was 2 nights in Columbia, MO with our friend Laura where we had our first van jam and did some much needed van organizing. It is not the camper model with stove fridge etc. but the basic passenger van with the middle seat removed. Very roomy! Yesterday we arrived at our friend's house here (Kim and Jim in Galena, MO) and we always have the best time! Unfortunately they are in KC, MO tonight at a gig, but we had fun anyway with the above mentioned float trip and a successful hunt for morel mushrooms! We scored a grand total of 4 and they tasted great in a cream sauce with pasta.

Tomorrow we are headed out to Fayetteville, AR to scope out the town. Loosely the purpose of this trip is to scout out a new place to live because St. Louis is just not cutting it for us. Also we are going to hike the Ozark Highlands trail in Arkansas which runs east to west 150 miles. It will take us about 2 weeks. Look forward to updates as our current adventure unfolds!