Welcome to South Dakota!!!

Well we did it! The Caribbean Adventures are over for now (hmmm, maybe I should figure out how to change the title on the blog?) and the Pickerel Lake, South Dakota Adventures are just beginning!!!

It’s been quite the trip though! We packed up our 250 pounds of stuff and our cats and caught a flight to New York City. We then drove to Syracuse, NY to spend two days with my parents, then headed to Buffalo for a Sunday night Lost and Found concert and got a chance to catch up with some of the most amazing people in the world!!! Monday morning we headed to LCLC to load up the kayaks – it took us an hour! And we were FREEZING!!!

After securing the kayaks to the tiny little roof of our GTI and catching up with the camp folk we hit the open road!!!

… Well not quite… we made a stop about a half hour down the road cuz our cell phone wasn’t working and we realized that I had forgotten to tighten the saddles to the roof rack so one of the kayaks was not on so well (don’ t worry Olivia…. It wasn’t yours, he was nice and snug!)

We drove all night and after about 22 hours we pulled up to Lando’s family cabin. It’s so beautiful here! There is no one around! People in St. Thomas think that life is slow paced in the islands…. But they have no clue! … they have never been to rural South Dakota!




Our jobs are great! It’s so awesome working with cool friendly people who don’t treat you like you are a simple-minded 4-year-old!!! We are only working part time at the Pickerel Lake lodge… so we have plenty of time to kayak, exercise, eat healthy, and best of all, hang out with family (which yesterday included watching Lando’s brother, Dillon – who’s a real cowboy – ride a BULL!!! I was pretty excited and scared to death!

So life is good, but Internet access is limited, so we may not be posting stuff too often. But our adventures for the summer look something like this.

June 22-26th: Heading to the Black Hills to visit family and Mt. Rushmore (I’ve never been)

July 7th/8th: Heading to Minneapolis to see a play, a Guster concert and visit the Mall of America (again, I’ve never been)

August 12th & random surrounding dates: A visit back to New York to include hopefully a visit to LCLC, a Counting Crows concert in PA and my brother’s wedding!

After that, who knows????? We have a job interview on the 10th of J
une for a gig in Arizona… and we’ll be exploring during the summer, so who knows where the next adventure will be, but we’ll keep you posted!

Final Adventures in St. Croix

Happy Monday. As I type, our quest to fly toward the cooler temperatures is down to three days. This will most definitely be the last blog entry ‘till we are landlocked in the Midwest. Because of this, I’ll do my best to catch you up on our past few weeks as quickly as possible.

We officially have two days of work left, but it’s basically gonna end up being two half-days for me. Tomorrow morning, I’m attending a luncheon aboard the Caribbean Princess. Apparently the St. John tour that I’m the guide for is the highest grossing tour of the year for Princess. This basically means I get to ditch out of my morning tour (which I’ll gladly welcome as it means one less time to turn on the auto pilot as I point out all the sites between STT and STJ). I’ll still have my afternoon tour tomorrow, and then we are officially done after my Wednesday morning tour with Disney.

(Speaking of Disney, here’s a pic of Jaca and Minnie…Minnie is the one on the left with big ears and sailor hat)



We went to St. Croix last week. We have now been to all four U.S. islands. We caught a sea plane in the morning, rented a car, and set out on a tour of the largest island (almost three times the size of STT). The seaplane was crazy small. It felt like we were sitting in seats made for 5-year-olds. It was such a cool ride though--much better than parasailing! The nose dive for the water right before the landing was a little sketchy, but we made it.


In St. Croix they actually have roads with a speed limit of 55mph! On a similar theme, my vote for worst song ever written is Sammy Hagar’s I Can’t Drive 55. You may not agree. You are entitled to your opinion.





The start of our day was slightly altered by a triathlon that closed half of the roads on the island and the end of our day was cut short by an all-out downpour. As a whole it was a pretty decent day. However, just as we took the rental back, we got a call telling us our flight was cancelled. It worked out well though, because we still had fifteen minutes to catch the fast ferry back home. When we arrived at the terminal we realized you had to pay CASH for the tickets! PANIC!!! Between the two of us, we scrambled up $89 in cash…$1 to spare… PHEW!

We were soon on our way back to St. Thomas on a ferry ride that took about and hour and forty-five minutes on some of the roughest seas. Many stomachs were left in knots as the boat dropped five feet over each wave. Lots of green faces, heads-in-the-hands and barf bags.

Other recent noteworthy events:
1) Doug Flutie was on my tour last week. I challenged him to a coconut throwing contest and we re-enacted his 1984 Orange Bowl hail mary. Seemed like a nice guy, but it was a little weird that he carries his Heisman Trophy in a man-purse wherever he goes.

2)Our car is officially sold…they have the title, we have a check! It’s sad though, we really liked our little Wrangler.

3) Gus is officially stressed as can be seen by the matching patches on his back legs where he has licked off all the hair. It’s going to be a rough week for him and when we get to SD he’ll hide under the bed for a week cuz he’s pissed…that’s what he did when we arrived here.

To all of you near Western New York….Lost and Found Concert, Zion Lutheran Church, 6pm Sunday – BE THERE!!!

See you then!

Homeward Bound

The end is near! It's now May, and we only have a little over two weeks left before we return to the homeland. Usually when life experiences near the end, a person tends to feel some extra attachment and nostalgia that comes along with savoring each final moment as he/she progresses toward the last hurrah. Yeah, that’s not happenin’ here. We can’t wait to be back and see people we care about…and the thought of stepping outside for more than two minutes without the risk of sweat running down my crack is quite heavenly as well. Sorry, you probably didn’t need that image, did you? In other words, the Caribbean is beautiful, but we’re excited to be back home (and by home, I mean any place we happen to be at any given moment in our gypsy-esque life style).

As we gear up for our 3,000 mile trip (north and west), I thought I’d share some pics of the Dakotas for the rest of the world to enjoy. Maybe they will even prompt you to hop on your scooter and come visit us this summer!

The first one is Dillon (my brother) riding a bull last weekend at a bull riding camp in the hills. (Note to easterners: Hills refers to The Black Hills located in Southwestern South Dakota. It’s where you’ll find Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, The Sturgis Bike Rally, and Rocky Raccoon…for those of you who didn’t write a 26 page high school research paper on John Lennon, that’s a Beatles reference—“somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota, there lived a young boy named Rocky Racoo-oon”) He (Dillon, not Rocky) set a world record by staying on for 143 consecutive hours. The bull eventually fell to his knees and wrote “Uncle” in the dirt with his nose. Have you ever said uncle in this way? I’ve only seen people use it in movies.



The family picture is one that we took while we were back last September. Apparently I was watching some O.J. classics on Court TV that morning…the Kaeto Kaelin look was going strong for me that day.


The sunset is from a window in my mom and dad’s house. It reminds me how excited I am to actually have windows again. We have shutters with slits that cover our windows down here. You can’t see through these shutters and if you stay inside long enough, it begins to feel like you are trapped in a bomb shelter. We can’t wait for real glass windows with a view of the lake!


The last picture may be my favorite. It’s of my brother’s horse Sparks checking us out over the fence. We’re planning on spending a lot of time on horseback this summer. It’s one of the things I’m most excited about.

Guess that’s all the time I have for now. See y’all soon.