What to Expect

I expect that I will have to push on the accelerator a bit harder to climb out of our driveway.  I expect that I will have to swing a bit wider turning out of the driveway.  I expect that because I've done it in the past and I know I need to do that.

What I don't know and for what I have only vague or no expectations is where we will park the first night or where we will fuel up.  Believe it or not we have never fueled this camper van.  This is a relatively new experience for us.  Oh, we've traveled broadly having been to al the states but Oklahoma and some 20 countries, but we were younger, more adaptable to change and foolish enough to take unforeseen risks.

We've talked to Jack and Shannon on the lake with whom we will share a St Patrick's Day meal.  And with Toni who has had her son clear the trailer from her driveway in Reno so we can park there.  Cousin Cheryl is planning to go to the Mormon genealogy library in Salt Lake City with us in about a week.  Even with those general plans we don't know what to expect for details.

The van itself has many variables like which switches need to be flipped which way to make the refrigerator work.  And how comfortable will the fold-down couch/bed actually be.  And then there's the dripping water we discovered yesterday after waiting for months to fill the tanks, months during which temperatures dropped low enough to freeze the water if we had filled the tanks earlier.

One of the joys and outcomes from living in remote Alaska is that we had to solve many unexpected issues on the run.  We expect that there will be some of the same on this trip.  It makes me a little nervous but visiting with family and friends, especially after two years of pandemic limitations, the deaths of Gail's sister and cousin, Denvy's brother and niece (none COVID related), is worth any risk.  Rising and record-breaking fuel prices are a topic in the news these days but that's irrelevant considering that a reason for the increases is the war in Ukraine where we left friends and acquaintances after a mission trip to that country almost two decades ago.  We are so concerned about them that fuel prices are trite.

We expect to be gone from Oregon for more than two months, long enough for the war to take some drastic turns, COVID variants to disturb normality again, the status of friends and family to change with marriages, births and deaths, and Mother Earth to kick up some notable weather and regreen its fields and forests.  Thinking of it that way we are ready and rearing to go.

Having done some twenty-plus mission and service trips and several extensive family journeys including three weeks of driving around Europe in a van, we know this will end on the up-side.  Therefore we set aside our expectations and heed the words that say don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will have enough to worry about in itself.

The above pre-trip images are from Bob Main's collection of awesome photos.  Thanks, Bob.  It is our expectation to provide our own images as we move along.