Pre-South America: Florida

Kelly’s parents, her aunt, and her brother live in / near Sarasota so we spent two weeks mostly spending time with them. This included celebrating Lincoln and my birthdays, renting a boat and cruising around Sarasota Bay, completing some puzzles, watching the Little League World Series, and eating home-cooked meals. It was great. We also visited Kelly’s extended family who live in Central Florida.

We made a two-day detour to Disney, primarily to experience the Star Wars attractions. Because it was “off season” the crowds and lines weren’t too bad and we were able to experience everything we wanted to experience. 

Kelly worked her magic with JetBlue and got us a full refund (they wanted to give us travel credits) and we booked accommodations in Miami instead of Ft. Lauderdale. 

We spent Labor Day weekend in Miami not doing much. We drove around, visited a couple beaches, and re-packed suitcases for the final time. We also sold the 2nd car while in Miami. Both CarMax and Carvana offered the same price, but there was a CarMax close to our hotel so we decided to sell to CarMax. While the outcome was the same with CarMax and Carvana, the Carvana sales process took 20 minutes, while the CarMax process took nearly two hours. It was painfully long, especially on our last full day when we had other things to do. 

On September 6th, we took the airport shuttle to Miami International and boarded our flight. All the travel logistics went as planned and we were on our way.

Lima Arrival

We arrived in Lima as scheduled after a five and a half hour flight from Miami. We got Gidget’s dosage right because she was really good on the flight (i.e., mostly slept, didn’t beg much to get out of the carrier, etc.). We got through Immigration / Customs without any hiccups and because we had a dog and kids they put us through the priority line. We had to do a secondary registration for Gidget, which was the first (but not last) time asking our translator (a.k.a. Colin) for help.

We met our pre-arranged taxi driver outside, though he claimed I only indicated four passengers and five suitcases. Amazingly everything fit into the car and we made the 45 minute drive to our AirBnB. At this point, Gidget hadn’t gone to the bathroom in nearly 10 hours. We shared that with our driver who stopped at a small park en route. We got to our apartment, the security guard was expecting us and gave us our key, and we got into our apartment with no issues.

The apartment we rented is a two-story unit on the twelve floor of a building in Miraflores. The first level contains three bedrooms (four beds) and two full bathrooms. There is sufficient space for clothes, suitcases, etc. The second floor has the living room, kitchen, and a large outdoor terrace. We knew the lack of a clothes dryer and dishwasher would take some adjusting to, but we would make it work. While the overall unit is small, it is what we expected and big enough for our needs. The outdoor terrace is particularly awesome, though it would be 100X better if the weather was nicer (more on that later). 

So after a long travel day, we settled in for a good night's sleep … at least as good as you can expect when you realize you are living in a major metropolitan area with lots of cars, people, and NOISE. More on that latter too.

Overall, we were really happy to have made it to Peru without many hiccups and looking forward to enjoying this experience. More updates and photos to come …

Pre-South America: Asheville / Rosman (NC)

For no reason other than we’d never been together, we went through Asheville, NC enr oute to Florida. So down to one car, we piled everything into the Ford Flex and hit the road. 

En route to Asheville, we stopped by James Madison University (Kelly’s alma mater) and Kelly got on the phone with American Airlines to book new flights. American Airlines implemented a different policy from JetBlue and there would be no issue with Gidget. She even got her own confirmation number. The new flights were 3X the price of the JetBlue ones, but in fairness, the JetBlue flights were really inexpense. Derek stopped spiraling at this point, though it would not be the last time he pointed out how Gidget increased the degree of difficulty (and cost) for this experience. 

We visited some art galleries, drank some local brews, and walked around the downtown area. Asheville is a nice area with way more to explore than we had time for. One notable thing occurred during our time in Asheville that had nothing to do with Asheville, which is that we finished reading We Came, We Saw, We Left - a book about a family that took a “gap year” together that we started reading as a family in Cleveland. We finished it over a spread of wine / sparkling cider, cheese, and fruits in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

After Asheville, we spent a couple nights in Rosman, NC, which is 45 minutes from Asheville on the outskirts of the Pisgah National Forest. We hiked a little, rode a natural rock slide, and went tubing in a river outside our AirBnB. Rosman is a very small but nice town, and it was a relaxing couple days before the long drive to Sarasota. 

To “keep it real”, traveling can be stressful, traveling with family can be stressful, and being together all day for weeks on end can be stressful … all that to say, we had a family meltdown en route to Sarasota. No details necessary, but just a reminder that this is not all sunshine and rainbows despite only capturing smiling faces on the photos we post.

Pre-South America: Washington DC

We spent what amounts to a long weekend in DC. This included an afternoon with three of Kelly’s friends plus their children … which ended up being 21 people, including 13 kids. They had a nice pool where the kids played and one of the dad’s worked the grill. Kelly had a great time catching up and talking with her friends. 

Derek caught up with his former boss from Nashville schools and we spent some time visiting the National Mall and surrounding spaces. 

We experienced our first travel roadblock while in DC when we found out Gidget would not be allowed to travel on our JetBlue flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Lima due to CDC guidance on dogs coming from (emphasis added) Peru to the US. Apparently there is some issue with rabies in Columbia, Ecuador and Peru and JetBlue was enforcing a policy of not allowing dogs coming from or going to. Despite Derek's in-person questioning of a JetBlue agent at Reagan Airport, we would need to either not take our dog (not an option) or book new flights on a different airline. While we knew there would be challenges, this first stressor sent Derek into a tailspin for a couple days. Fortunately, Kelly is the cooler head when these sorts of things happen. More on the solution en route to Asheville.

Finally, we sold the Ford Escape to Carvana, which offered a better price than CarMax. It was a relatively simple and straight-forward experience. The CarMax experience would come in Miami, which was not as enjoyable.

Pre-South America: Pennsylvania

We made two stops in Pennsylvania - Bolivar and Harrisburg.

The Bolivar stop was to attend the Transracial Journeys Family Camp. We attended this camp in-person in 2019, virtually in 2021, and back in-person this year. It is a powerful experience and an opportunity to engage with families that look like ours. To learn more or support the organization, go to: https://www.transracialjourneys.org/.

Next we traveled to Harrisburg for the purpose of being close to Hershey. Colin portrayed Milton Hershey for a Wax Museum project in school this year and wanted to visit places he read about. Harrisburg was a good opportunity to take a breath and chill, especially after the intensity of the Transracial Journey camp. We largely vegged out, took some walks, did some laundry, reshuffled some luggage, etc. The AirBnB we rented had a ping pong table, which consumed hours of the kids’ time! We visited with a friend from DC who lives in the area and took in a Harrisburg Senators (AA) baseball game. 

In Hershey we took the chocolate tour, rode the trolley around Hershey, and shopped for chocolate treats that we snacked on until we got to Florida.

En Route to South America

Today is our 15th day in Lima, Peru. In case this is news to you, we sold our house and cars, gave away most of our clothes and furniture, and set off for South America with our kids and dog. 

For context, the “backstory” is that we lived outside the US early in our marriage and have desired to do it again. When we started having kids, living outside the US was an experience we wanted to provide them as well. We discussed ideas prior to COVID, but they were put on hold due to the pandemic. Once the pandemic started to wane, we made the decision that it was now-or-never (especially if we wanted to take our kids while they were kids). So, Derek gave notice to my employer, we put our house on the market, and put things in motion. We knew we wanted to go to a Spanish-speaking country and settled on South America, starting in Peru. 

From a timeline perspective, we closed on our home in Cleveland on July 25th, my last formal day at work was July 29th, and we left Cleveland to visit friends and family around the US on July 30th. We spent some time in Indianapolis, Bolivar (PA), Harrisburg (PA), Washington DC, Asheville (NC), Sarasota (FL), and Miami (FL) between July 30th and September 5th. On September 6th, we boarded an American Airlines flight from Miami to Lima and arrived five and a half hours later with three kids and a dog in tow.

Here are links to short stories and pictures from those places as well as an initial post from Lima. You can follow this blog to get updated stories and pictures:

• Indianapolis

• Pennsylvania

• Washington DC

• Asheville / Rosman

• Sarasota / Miami

• Lima, Peru Arrival

Pre-South America: Indianapolis

We had five weeks to get to Ft. Lauderdale (ended up being Miami … more on that later) and Derek’s brother and his family were going to be in Indianapolis at the end of July, so it was a good starting point for our travels.

We spent time with Derek's brother and his family, Derek's mom and stepdad, and his dad and step mom. It was a relatively short trip so we did not have much time to visit any other family or friends, and we wanted to soak in as much time with family knowing it might be a while before we spent time together again. 

We swam in the pond, paddle boated, visited a winery, played some golf, and made a long desired (by some) outing to a nearby paintball park. We originally planned to sell one of the cars in Indianapolis, but decided to take both onward for a couple more legs.