2017 Mission Trip to Charleston, WV

GETTING THE WORD OUT

It has been a while since I have posted on my Journeys of a Redeemed Child blog. I used to use this blog to record my trips while I was working as a full-time missionary in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. If you are interested in those adventures then please review my older blog posts.

Since I have left that work and returned to the corporate world due to the lack of funding, I now do short-term missions activities with my parish at St. Paul's Orthodox Church in America. This year we have a team of 5 people that will be going to Charleston, WV to do construction work on homes that were damaged by floods last year. We are doing this work through the International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC). Our team will be departing on Sunday, July 16th and will be returning on July 22nd.

As in the past, I will be doing daily blogs, posting pictures of our team and the work that we are doing. This gives us an opportunity to bring along (virtually) on our trip our family and friends who support us in being here. I hope you enjoy the journey.

Day 17: Home Sweet Home

Another annual Short Family Reunion has come and gone. We made it home at about 7:00 PM EST. We had another rainy day but made it home safe and sound. As with every trip of this sort, it is good to be home, but we miss all of our loved ones that we were able to spend time with. It is so hard having family spread all around the world because it is so hard to see them as often as we would like. I am thankful that we live in the day that we do so that we can stay connected so much easier.

I must admit, I have a real trooper for a wife. She was an awesome passenger and partner for 5,202 miles on the back of a motorcycle. This trip was a little bit more challenging than some of our others because our communications system between the helmets started acting up and we were not able to communicate as much as we would have liked. By the end of the trip, we had no connectivity at all. We are already talking about some of our next trips on the bike and one of the first things that we will replace will be this system.

Final results of the trip!

This year we traveled through 12 states.

For those of you, who followed our journey...Thank You! Remember, life is about the journey and not the destination. Enjoy the journey and share as much of it as you can with your loved ones.

Day 16: Rainy Day

Today was another long day, running about 530 miles. Fairly uneventful except for about 400 of those miles being in the rain, sometimes misty and sometimes hard. As with every long distance ride, we have to always plan to be flexible. On our first full day headed East we had 104 degrees most of the way and today mid-60's and rain. We live in such an awesome country with so much variability. I love so much being able to freely travel around at will.

A beautiful rainy summer day in Nebraska.

Laura took a picture of my view during the ride.

Ah, the joy of finishing up a long ride at dinner with your lovely wife...and of course she has the camera!

We ended up dropping back down to 80 so that we would miss the storms.

Day 15: The Adventure Home

Today was quite the adventure as we started our main push for home. We rested in a little longer than normal, which was probably a good thing. The route we chose was a little more direct so that we could optimize our time. That too seems to have been a good choice. The weather was beautiful in Cody and for most of our drive across Wyoming. The fun started as we entered into Nebraska.



See that red hook by Gering? We followed the edge of that storm as the GPS vectored us through the countryside. Laura kept wondering if it was going to drop into a funnel cloud. We only encountered a few sprinkles along the way, but apparently the core of the storm dropped 3-4 inches of rain along its path.



Laura's snapshot of the storm.




We made it to our destination, North Platte, Nebraska, about 11:00 PM just to find out that all of the hotels in the entire town were booked. Traveling on a motorcycle in this kind of variable weather makes it a little difficult to book ahead because you never know when you might have to stop early. Fortunately we found a hotel in the next town and put in a little over 600 miles. It looks like the adventure will continue as bad weather continues to settle in on the way home.

Day 14: Yellowstone National Park

One of the things that I enjoy so much about riding a motorcycle is that it puts you right in the middle of your surroundings. Today we spent most of the day riding through Yellowstone National Park. I would encourage everyone to put a visit to this park on their bucket list. I will let the pictures below tell the story.

The day started off looking like we might have a rainy day. We had a couple of false starts and ended up with beautiful blue skies most of the day.

First stop was some of the smaller geysers and boiling mud pots. Having grown up in Northern California and oft e visiting Mt. Lassen, an active volcano, this area brought back many memories.

Here is a panoramic view of the area.

Nothing like a giant pot of boiling mud that looks like boiling paint.

This water is so clear that you can easily see the boiling steam over 25 feet down. However, this water hole is both boiling water and has a high acid content...deadly.

Of course, no trip is complete without a viewing of Old Faithful. We were able to view it within a few minutes of our arrival.

We were able to see moose,

bison...up close and personal,

elk,

a grizzly bear eating a bison carcass, and deer. Unfortunately, these latter ones were not able to be photographed.

It was an awesome day and a short distance day, although we were on the bike most of the day.

Yesterday and today's route.

Day 13: Our Longest Day

Wednesday, we headed out from Eagle Point to see if we could get back on track with the route that we originally laid out. Our destination was Idaho Falls, Idaho. We made it...736 miles in about 14 hours. Definitely a long day, but worth it.

The forest areas of Oregon.

Mt. Thielsen, one of the many volcanoes in this part of the country.

Sunset somewhere in the middle of Eastern Idaho.

Day 12: Trip Detour

Today we left my mother's home and headed out on our trip home. This is always the hardest part of the trip. I know that we miss each other and saying goodbye is always so hard to do...wait there is a song about that. We have chosen to alter our trip home from our original plan. If I have learned anything with al of the mission trips that I have been on it is to be flexible. While at my mother's we found out that the property that used to be their home in Eagle Point, OR, which is now a rental, was not being taken care of by the property management group. My sister and her husband decided to head there today and do some landscaping clean up. Laura and I decided that since we were here we would route through Eagle Point and help out. So today was a day of gardening in Oregon. We will do a long ride tomorrow to get back on track for our trip home.

Northern California is really a beautiful area. Here is Mt. Shasta. Highway 5 to Oregon comes up on the south end of the mountain and wraps around on the west side. Wonderful views for a couple of hundred miles.

Fortunately, everything at my mother's rental was not as bad as it had sounded like. Here are just a couple of before pictures. We were able to get most of the landscaping cleanup taken care of today. Linda and Nick will finish things up tomorrow by putting down some weed barrier and gravel in the bare areas and finishing up by finding someone new to manage the property and the landscaping.

The after shots of the same areas. 

Tomorrow we continue our trip home by heading to Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Here is the route so far for our trip.

Note: you can follow the route of our trip at https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=112ce5760b6e027cdf. You need to select the trip name in the upper left-hand corner, then Adjustments and select All Days to see the whole trip.