The last two months of 2015 have been full of changes, and we're just now settling down into a routine that might give us some time to update this website every now and then. We wrapped up our time in New Zealand at the end of October with one final road trip back to Christchurch and 30 hours of flights back to New Jersey. We spent a few weeks in the Garden State recuperating from all of the travel, and one long weekend bartending for the food truck festival at Laurita Winery before loading up the truck to head out to our next adventure.

On November 16th we embarked on a 6 day, 50 hour road trip 2/3 of the way across the country, passing through 7 states on our way to Telluride, Colorado. After losing all of our kitchen supplies off of the roof of the truck on our last major road trip we ordered a new rack for the roof of the cab so we could re-arrange all of our belongings. It arrived in the afternoon of the day we planned on leaving without any installation instructions, so we didn't manage to get on the road until well into the evening. We drove just a few hours to Amish Country in Pennsylvania then slept for the night in the parking lot of a hardware store.

We woke up the next morning with a horse and buggy parked next to us, and spend the morning exploring some of the little shops around town before we went for lunch at the Rumspringa Brewing Company in Intercourse (yes, that's the name of the town!). Rumspringa translates to "running around," and refers to the time that Amish youth spend exploring the outside world before they decide whether or not to commit to officially joining the Church and living the Amish lifestyle.

After lunch we left the farmland behind and stopped briefly in Hershey, Pennsylvania to check out the Hershey museum and buy some giant Reeses peanut butter cups before continuing on the road. Our late departure from New Jersey really threw off our schedule, but even though we passed through Wayne, OH at nearly midnight, we still got to stop by my Aunt Lois' bakery for a quick visit and the worlds best sugar cookies.

We drove as far as we could manage into the night, so that the next day we would have as much time as possible to spend at Starved Rock State park in Oglesby, Illinois. The area right along the Illinois river is rich with Native American history and is criss-crossed with hiking trails that lead to huge sandstone canyons. Although the fall is typically too dry for the waterfalls to run there had been a recent storm so we were treated to amazing cascades in every canyon that we visited. It felt great to get out of the truck and stretch our legs and we spent the better part of the afternoon exploring all of the trails. On the way out of town we stopped at a little bakery called Two Girls, One Cupcake that specialized in all kinds of quirky cupcakes and was guarded by an enormous pink yeti at the door. That evening we stopped at the Worlds Largest Truckstop off of I-80 in Walcott, Iowa for a traditional trucker's dinner (fast food) and a stroll around their truck-accessory store that was so big it had 3 18-wheelers parked inside as displays. The Worlds Largest Truckstop also had a chapel, a movie theater, a gift shop, full shower facilities, 2 arcades and parking for 900 trucks! Needless to say we drove on to a quieter rest-stop before calling it a night.

The next morning I woke up early to drive the rest of the way into Omaha, Nebraska where we had plans to tour the Joslyn Castle, a 4-story 35 room Scottish Baronial mansion built in 1903 by some distant relatives of Steve's on his dad's side. George and Sarah Joslyn were entrepreneurs and philanthropists who arrived in Omaha with just the clothes on their backs, and ended up becoming the richest people in the city in the early 1900s. When they died they left their estate to the City and it was used for years as the headquarters for the Omaha Public Schools before being restored by the Joslyn Castle Trust. Since Steve's relationship to the Joslyn's practically makes him the Prince of Omaha, the nice ladies in the office gave us the opportunity to join in on a private tour free of charge.

The mansion is full of such incredible details... beautifully carved exotic (and in some cases extinct) wood, intricate tile mosaics, ornate stained glass, fireplaces, chandeliers, technological advances that were cutting edge in the early 1900s, towers, greenhouses, gardens, a ball room and at one time a whole room devoted to a massive pipe organ. Restoring the wallpaper in just the entrance hall had cost well over $200,000. The whole house was an amazing work of art and engineering. After our tour of the castle we headed to the other side of the city to see the Joslyn Art museum, built by Sarah Joslyn in 1930 as a memorial after George's death. After our long day we met up for dinner and drinks with an old friend of Steve's that he hadn't seen in almost 10 years before getting back on the road.

We spent the majority of the next day just trying to make it through the rest of Nebraska. Its not as bad of a drive as Kansas, but it's a close second... just a long flat straight road. The highlight of the day was stopping at California Hill in Brule, Nebraska. It was climbed by thousands of covered wagon emigrants heading west on the Oregon trail between 1841 and 1860. Apparently the wagon ruts are still visible today, but the ground was too snowy and muddy for us to make out much. We finally crossed into Colorado and stopped in Ft. Collins to visit our friend Craig from Alaska and spend the night. The next morning we fulfilled our annual road-trip tradition by stopping at Voodoo Donut in Denver before pressing on across the state and arriving in Telluride  at 8pm.

We had a few days to settle into our (very small) room in company housing and two days to ride the mountain before we had to attend "snow college," the final stage in the interview process to become snowboard instructors. On the finally day of college we received our job offers as part-time instructors, Steve was assigned to children and I was assigned to adults. We then spent 4 days training with the two best instructors on the mountain before having almost two weeks off before we started work. Just before the busy Christmas season we were given the opportunity to shadow another instructors lesson before being thrown into the deep end at the busiest time of the year.

Since two days a week at ski school would barely even cover our groceries, both of us also spent our early days in town looking for night jobs. I got hired on as a gondola operator 3 nights as week from 4:15 until 12:45am, and Steve got a job with a local restaurant as a busser and food runner. Since we were both working double shifts on Christmas we celebrated quietly on Christmas Eve with an early dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. So far the early season snow has been amazing, and it looks like el-Nino is going to give us the best snow season either of us has ever seen!

We officially reached the west coast around 10:30 the next morning and headed North. Our first stop was at Blue Pools, a 30 minute round trip hike to a suspension bridge over a river with some beautiful deep clear blue pools. From there we stopped outside Haast at the Curly Tree Whitebait Company to try whitebait pattys. Whitebait is just the term for a baby fish, doesn't matter what species, and you eat them whole fried up with a bit of egg and served with lemon and salt. We stopped at two waterfalls between there and the town of Fox taking the drive nice and slow to save gas and not miss any of the scenery. In Fox we hiked up to the glacier, but the Department of Conservation doesn't allow visitors to get closer than 200m from the ice. From Fox we drove on to Franz Joseph and splurged on a night in a holiday park so we could take our weekly shower.

The weather was a bit dreary the next day, but cleared up just long enough for us to hike out to the glacier viewing point, past the prettiest waterfall in New Zealand. We headed back to town to hunt down our friend Wyatt from Alaska who was working as a guide on the glacier, and after a quick lunch to catch up we got back on the road. 40 minutes North of Franz Joseph is a beautiful little DOC campsite next to Lake Lanthe so we decided to set up an early camp to watch the beautiful sunset over the water.

We slept in the next morning then made our way slowly to Hokitika, a cute little town with a lot of shops and cafes. We spent some time walking around, visited the Sock Machine Museum and ate lunch at Fat Pipis Pizza. From Hokitika we headed to Greymouth, but despite it being the largest town on the West Coast we couldn't find much to do. We had expected our trip up the coast to take a bit longer than it did, so we had made an appointment at Barrytown Knifemaking for Saturday. Unfortunately we made it to Greymouth on Wednesday so we stocked up on food and headed to Nelson Creek to the free campground to hang out for a few days.

After 3 relaxing days at Nelson Creek reading and napping we headed to Barrytown to forge our own knives in a full-day class. We started at 9:30 in the morning with a raw bar of steel and ended at 5 with a shiny new knife. We had to heat the steel in the forge until it glowed orange...too long and it would burn...then hammer it out on the anvil to flatten the blade and infuse the steel with more carbon. 3 or 4 rounds of hammering and then we heated it once more and quenched it in a bucket of water to harden it. From there we marked out the length of the handle and cut off the extra steel with a hacksaw. Then we took the steel to the belt sander to remove the black and polish the middle of the blade before we started on the handle. 

After we finished up with the knives we still had enough daylight left to explore Pancake Rocks, thin sheets of limestone with thinner layers of mudstone in between that make them look just like big stacks of flapjacks. Scientists aren't exactly sure what caused them to form that way, but they do know that they formed on the sea-bed and were later lifted up and eroded away to form the large towers and cliffs. We ended our day at a holiday park in Charleston and enjoyed another good shower to wash off all the ash from the forge.

The next morning we drove through Westport headed for the end of the West Coast road. We stopped in Seddonville to explore the Chasm Creek Walkway, a short bushwalk that went through an old railway tunnel and over several bridges. After our little hike we drove through Karamea to Oparara to see the limestone arches and caves. All the trails were at the end of a 14k dirt road and it was in pretty rough shape so it took quite a while to get out there. We hiked out to the Oparara Arch on a trail that ran parallel to a beautiful stream. The arch was massive...several hundred feet high and wide...but the best part of the hike was the friendly little bird we met on the way back. He followed us for several feet, flying past our heads and jumping from branch to branch next to us, and when we stopped and put out our hands he had no qualms about jumping into our palms and trying to divest us of our rings. By the time we finished the hike we were both pretty hungry, so we decided to cook dinner and save the cave hikes for the next morning.

We woke up to a bit of a drizzle, but considering we planned on spending the morning underground it didn't bother us too much. We made the short hike out to Crazy Paving Cave where the floor was covered in "bricks" of fine sediment that dried slowly and cracked to give it a cobblestone look. The walkway was wired off to protect the fragile formations and it only took a few minutes to see the whole cave. Box Canyon Cave, right next door, didn't have any of the natural "paving stones" and so we were free to explore every nook and cranny of the enormous cave. Steve quickly found the narrowest passage possible and we began worming our way into the depths of the cave. 

Our side-stepping and shoulder scraping paid off in the form of a small chamber full of massive hand-sized spiders. These cave spiders are apparently direct descendants of the earliest known true spiders and the sign at the entrance warned us to "look but do not touch," a sentiment entirely unnecessary in my opinion as I can't even imagine wanting to touch them with a 10 foot pole. It did make me slightly less inclined to want to go squeezing into any more small spaces, but when we made our way to the back of the cave I couldn't resist climbing up a large pile of sedimental clay deposited by who know what source of water. From the top of my 30ft mountain and I had a clear view of the massive cave around me, and I discovered another small passageway that led to the rear of the cave where we found a little colony of glow worms. We turned off our headlamps and enjoyed the artificial starlight for a few minutes before heading back above ground.

By the time we emerged into the daylight the rain had all but ended and our drive back to the main road was bumpy, but uneventful. We headed back south to Westport and took the road for Nelson, planning to slowly make our way from there to Christchurch and then back to the Queenstown Lakes area to start looking for jobs.

To see more of the West Coast's beauty go to the photo post here.