Jonesberries

We are on our way now. Backpackers for 7 months. Yup, very light packers. Well, I thought we would be. Actually we are only taking a few clothes. It is just all the other stuff – beddding for 5, a kitchen (stove, pots, bowls, cups and utensils), office, laundry (brush and tube of soap), toilet (shovel) and school. Lots to bring. So, actually not such light packers.

First flew from Prague to East Midlands Airport.

Jen picked us up from the airport and brought us to her house for a sleep. We also got a chance to rethink the backpack situation. Quite early I realized that TJs bag is too bulky. I think she can carry the weight but the size scares her. So, I put all her clothes into the stuff sack and she says it is much lighter. Andrew is carrying her sleeping bag and school notebooks. Abi is carrying her sleeping pad along with the laundry. Hannah is carrying all her own stuff except her sleeping pad (I get to carry that). As we were going through Prague I noticed that Hannah’s sleeping bag on top was too far forward at her neck and have made some adjustments. I also carry part of the kitchen and one laptop. Andrew also carries his laptop, the kitchen pots.

In the midst of the repacking and after a great night’s sleep we have enjoyed good english hospitality from Jen and Fran. All the kids british food desires are being catered to.
Fish and Chips, baked beans, Chicken Korma, Apple Crumble and Custard. Yummmmm.

Slept in the Sheffield bus station

in order to catch our £3 bus to London/Victoria.

Notice how we are down to only essentials now. : )
Helped Shannon clean up a bit after her big Sweet Notions Grand Party.

Andrew escorted some “friends” from the party home in a taxi.

Spent day and evening with friends from 3 continents before spending the night and making our early morning start to Heathrow and here we are in the good ‘ol USA. It is always great to hear at least one “welcome home” from the officials at the airport.

We are now staying with our old friends from when me and Andrew were dating!  Yeah! REALLY old friends. Mauricio and Shauna LaBorde and their boys.

We are looking at old photos of all the kids together when they were really cute and little. Learning alot about football (soccer). Dressing like football stars and having a great, albeit silly, time.

Oh yeah, and we think we found a van to drive around the states. In about an hour we leave to go and look at it and maybe drive it back. Let you know later on.

Well, this is it. It is 6 in the morning. Me and Andrew are already awake. The truck is all nestled in tight. Inigo the magnificent has a home to stay in with his best friend, Rudy and his owners, Mathais and Carrie. We have been staying in their hostel, Sir Toby’s while Andrew puts the truck to sleep and finishes varnishing our new kitchen so we have a kitchen to come back to.

The kids have been enjoying getting a “Kofola” (communist coke) on tap in the pub each evening and playing board games with Miro, one of the managers at Sir Toby’s. He actually is a professional chess teacher. It has been good not staying in the truck these last few days. The kids perception of what we actually can fit into our backpacks has altered tremendously and Andrew has been taking a bag back to the truck each day. Hannah was a especially funny site when we left the Mudrick’s house and came to to Sir Toby’s carrying about 4 extra bags of treasures. I spent alot of my day with my mini sewing kit. Repairing clothes and backpacks for the trip and making straps for the sleeping bags.

The kids are getting so excited. Abi couldn’t stop playing games with Inigo yesterday. They must have sounded like baby elephants to the office below. TJ was like a mischievous elf trying to navigate the room on beds. Hmmmm, maybe I should have spent less of my day sewing and more taking the kids out. to burn off some energy. Hannah…well, Hannah is Hannah. She was reading a book with her little bedside light. I think I will need to take them all on a very long walk with a fully loaded backpack tomorrow. Yep. That’s what we’ll do.

Our first flight is this evening. We fly into Sheffield. We will be staying in 3 different friends houses the next 3 nights. Sheffield (Jen and Fran), Kings Lynn (Maggie and Phouc-Tan) and London (Shannon). We thought we would be spending one of these nights in the bus station and another at “Camp Heathrow” (the airport) but our friends had other plans. Hannah really wants to sleep at an airport. Dad talks about doing it all the time. I am sure we will get the chance.

On the 19th is the big flight into JFK, New York. We get picked up from the airport and brought to Poughkeepsie. Isn’t Poughkeepsie a great name. It is one of those words that can make you giggle just for the fun of it as it rolls off the tongue or off the keyboard. Poughkeepsie. You gotta love it.

Anyway, back to the real world. We have known these Mauricio and Shauna for 25 years. Our kids can’t believe that we were hanging out with them before we all got married. They got married 6 months after us and have kids finishing high school as well. We last saw them about 11 years ago.

Went to Mathias and Carrie’s house for dinner. Tan made a Vietnamese 4 course banquet. Our friends, the Mudrick’s were there and other new friends. The house was full of happy kids and dogs. We got to meet  Steve and Oddny Gumaer. They started a group that puts teams in the jungles of Burma to help people who are running from the military. Yea, you read that right. Pretty harsh stuff that we have never heard of before. The military runs the country and when they want oil or anything else valuable on the land a village is at they just take it. Well, they don’t just take it, they burn the villages, chase and kill the inhabitants. They have done this to thousands of villages. These aren’t some minority group in their country it is just normal villagers. Steve and Oddny told the story of a nine year old girl whose village was attacked and showed us a short movie. Steve and Oddny’s group put teams of people in the jungles to provide safe havens for people to run to and get help. They even have doctors on their teams.  I tell you, I had no idea this was going on.

Here we are, still in Germany. Actually we are in Bad Gogging. It is an ancient spa town from Roman Empire days. Lots of statues of old, dead Roman dudes. We thought a spa town would be a great place to have Andrew’s birthday as Andrew has had memorable spa experiences on 2 other birthdays. Hey, its tradition. So, Andrew went off for his birthday spa this morning only to realize that it was ladies day at the spa. Try as he might they didn’t let him in. Maybe tomorrow. No cheap thrills here, just in case you were wondering.

How are we entertaining ourselves in the meantime?


We got given 2 slightly used tyres. YIPPEE. No more thump, thump as we drive down the road.


We entertain ourselves as only native english speakers can with a few local words. This is the cheap thrills. I guess you’ve got to be a Jones to get a good giggle from these.

We continue to renovate our kitchen while a motorbike resides in the middle of it. It is on our list of things to do to our truck before we leave her behind for a bit. I mean, would you want to come back to no kitchen?

We are making our way to Prague where she will spend the winter nice and cosy in a barn. Inigo will winter with another crazy family with 5 kids.

Busy, busy, busy.

Starting to get really excited as well as a bit scared.

Did I mention in the last post that it was great to have friends? Check this out.

What next?  Glad you asked. Well, we have finally figured it out.

We are going to  leave our beloved truck in the capable hands of friends. Our Spanish dog with the Czech microchip floating around in his neck will stay in Europe with other friends. Good to have friends huh. We will jump on a plane and fly around the world. Easy huh. Dang, why didn’t we do this sooner. We have been talking about this for years and are finally doing it. We found some amazing tickets.  We have friends and family to see in places that it is cost-prohibitive to bring the truck to. We need to re-establish our foundations before we continue on in our truck. We do belong somewhere in the world. We just haven’t seen those places in a very long time. Our kids need to touch homebase. We need to touch homebase before we continue on. We think the next stage with the truck will be especially difficult so we need to get things together a bit more before we continue on.

So, here is the plan.

We are going to fly into NYC on the 19^th of September and make our way around the states for the next 3 months to be with family and friends. Paying special attention to seeing our oldest 2 children in Texas and my parents and sisters in Oregon. We will be in Oregon for Christmas. This is very important to my mum. She has no less than 10 big boxes of Christmas decorations she brings out every Christmas. 

On the 12^th of January we will fly to New Zealand. Hopefully, with all 5 kids. Only my two oldest kids have been there when they were babies. Our kids hold New Zealand passports and don’t know it at all.

On the 2^nd of April we will fly to Sydney, Australia. On the 5^th of April we fly to Perth, Australia. In Perth we have Andrew’s family. The kids are frequently bringing it to my attention that they have cousins that they have never met there.

On the 6^th of May we fly to Hong Kong and then train across to Beijing. China is very difficult, if not impossible to bring the truck into so this is the Asia stop we chose to experience China and possibly to open doors for a return trip in our truck.

On the 23^rd of May we fly back through London to Germany to our dear truck and join a convoy around Germany and then on through Turkey to Asia and North Africa.

How is that for an itinerary?  A great challenge will be to keep the costs down as we will be more vulnerable without our big truck.  We plan to travel with a small, portable kitchen, sleeping bags, pads and some small tents.  Some friends in the U.S. are trying to get us an RV to travel around in. 

All very exciting and scary. The kids have already begun to pack. To be perfectly honest, I have begun to pack. I am concerned on finishing some things on the truck because we plan on hitting the ground running when we come back to her. We still need to finish our kitchen counter, install our woodstove and build a better platform on the back of the truck so we can take our motorbike out of the kitchen. It makes a great place to sit but kinda gets in the way sometimes.

Leaving “Easter Island” after 3 weeks. What an amazing time.

We finally got the brake seal on Thursday. Willie and Andrew fixed the truck the same day.

Abi wanted to stay a few more days so she could celebrate her 15^th birthday with her new friends.

Hanna took the opportunity to learn some graffiti art on an official graffiti wall with paint cans that have been left over the last few weeks by all the graffiti artists.

We left richer than we entered.

We got our truck fixed for free.

Free training for Inigo from a professional dog trainer.

We were given a very,very cool old, German motorbike (only 50cc, don’t worry nana).

The best of all we have some new, very amazing, friends that we hope to see again soon. 

Oh yeah, one of our new friends, Kolya, is selling his truck. Yeah, I know. He did all the boring bits of doing a far better job at insulating the box than we would ever do. Get this. He has replaced most of the metal frame with wood frame. Put holes in the wood frame so that there is a barrier of circulating air. The next layer in comes the insulation and then the walls. All you need to do is add the fun bits. He loves his truck but needs to sell it because he has terminal cancer and can’t drive it anymore. If you’re interested email us and we’ll put you in touch.

I am still processing so much that we learned there. Our time at “Easter Island” has to be one of my favourite travelling experiences over the last year and a half. It has changed us, I believe for the better.