made it to Berkeley, CA

It has been a long time since our arrival to Berkeley. We drove straight to the hospital from Donner Lake to be the first to see the twins, Grant and Chase!! They are cute! We have since helped Lisa's sister do some home renovation work then we flew all the way across the country to Maine to take a week long AP workshop. This was to prepare for our new teaching assignments in Hanoi. The workshops were great but intense and fast. We managed to visit our friends Gelman and Rosie and their 7 month old son, Sam in Portland for a few days before returning to California. The return trip took us 17 hours! We volunteered to be bumped off our flight from Portland, ME. This then led us on a 1.5 hour taxi ride to Boston airport, security check complete with full body scan with an X-ray backscattter scanner, then a flight to Minneapolis that was late leaving. We got off the plane at 2:03 and then RAN from gate D6 to G17, like a half mile, to catch our 2:15 flight. Needless to say, although we arrived at the gate at 2:13 sweaty and breathless, we were not allowed to board the plane. So, after some discussion time with a Delta representative, 2.5 hours later we were were sitting in first class for a 3 hour flight to San Francisco. Sweet!

Today we took the BART into San Francisco then a cable car to the Vietnam Consulate to get our passports stamped with our work visa for the year. We were told it would take 20 minutes. An hour and a half later, we were all set!
We leave in less than a week.

Camping at Donner Lake

Blue sky, Sierra granite and Donner Pass.

Donner Lake. The far end of the lake is where the members of the ill-fated Donner Party were forced to camp for the winter having missed their opportunity to cross the last bit of the Sierras before it snowed on them.

Ted standing at a monument for all the people who walked west. The height of the stone portion is equal to the snow depth during the winter of 1846-47 when the Donner Party got trapped . Incredible!

Our campsite which was only about a 3 minute walk from where the Murphy cabin was located. We traded some eggs from our chickens to our super nice camping neighbors for dinner, beverages and great conversation about history and firefighting! Thanks Tom and Carah!

Some of the survivors.

Driving from Park City Utah to the Sierras

The Salt Desert. What appears to be snow is actually salt.

The Morton Salt Factory in Utah.

Sunrise over the Great Salt Lake.

We drove across the salt desert with the sunrise coming up behind us and then into the state of Nevada. We drove all the way across Nevada after stopping for breakfast at a strange diner in Wells, Nevada where you could buy breakfast, coffee beans, a shot of whiskey, a T-shirt or stuffed animal. The sign outside the diner for the truck wash made me laugh so I had to take a picture. Tacos??

Waking up to cross the Great Salt Desert

Early morning rise in Park City, Utah getting ready for our drive to Donner Memorial State Park in California.

Driving up to the Rockies

Driving for hours and hours on Interstate 80, we were from this point on to California following the old California Trail from the mid 1800s. We enjoyed imagining how people walked this distance and how difficult and dusty and hot it would have been for them. We saw several wind farms and parts of the wind turbines (blades) transported on a truck, picture included. We saw pronghorn antelope and then in the middle of nowhere huge oil refineries. We don't have air conditioning in our 1994 black Toyota truck which now has 160,000 miles on it. So the "air" involved a towel in the window and sleeves on the driver's left arm. We camped in Utah and had a chilly night.

Crossing the Great Plains

Our first day we drove from Hinesburg, Vermont to East Aurora, New York where Ted's dad grew up. We stayed there overnight and then headed out to Illinois. We camped in Utica, Illinois with a huge corn field about 50 feet from our tent. The next day we made our way to Nebraska. We were in "Corn Country" of the Great Plains. There are miles and miles and miles of land with no hills and lots of corn on either side of Interstate 80. As a generalization, eastern Nebraska is covered with corn and western Nebraska is for beef cattle. So, eastern Nebraska feeds western Nebraska and western Nebraska feeds us hamburgers.

It is pretty flat out in the middle of the country! It was fun noticing the slow and gradual uphill on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. After enduring a thunderstorm and torrential downpour on our tent on the 4th of July (the date the Declaration of Independence was approved) we drove out of Nebraska, across all of southern Wyoming and into Utah. After about 550 miles on the road, we found a nice campground in Park City, Utah. We dried off our tent and sleeping bags and then had a very cold night up in the mountains where the temperature dipped below 32 degrees!

Marina's Great Adventure!

Part of our adventures this summer involved driving Marina, Frances and Sylvia (our chickens) to warmer climes.

They are vacationing in Berkeley, CA under the care of our nephew, Max (aka The Pizza).

Ted turned the bed of the truck into a mobile chicken palace, only the best for Marina - she does have her standards. The deluxe travel accommodations included their food and water, nest box, roosting stick, treats bowl, and their dust bath.

This first class arrangement did not leave much room for us and all of our stuff for the next year in Vietnam...