The Beginning of Our Epic Journey

The past week has been insane. Between our son moving out of his college apartment, us moving all of our furniture to long term storage in preparation for our eldest daughter renting our house while we're away, and tying up loose ends and moving onto the boat ourselves, it has been a highly stressful past week. Countless trips back and fourth from house and marine supply shops to the boat. Gathering of supplies, from food, to office supplies, to bicycles, etc. Organization has been the least of our worries, feeling that most of the organization can be handled the first few weeks after we cast off. Of course, we were supposed to have cast off 2 days ago, but as things tend to happen with a boat, the date for the true "Beginning of Our Epic Journey" has been pushed back to Wednesday, May 30th. or Thursday, you never know.

A sore subject has already sprung up at the very beginning, and that is the subject of our dog. He is a pure breed, pedigree Heinz 57. Or in plainer words, a mutt, but the best dog to have ever graced this world (or at least that's how we feel.) He's 14 years old, stubborn, lovable, and is still going strong, however he has severe hip displacia, which makes the frequent trips up and down the stairs of the boat an incredibly difficult task. After a few days of this we realized that he wasn't going to be able to do handle it. We had to make the executive decision to leave him behind, if only for a short while. We have decided that he will be staying with our daughter until we get to the locks and canals on the northern stretch of our trek. We figure that the canal wall will be mostly level with the boat so that we can simply lay a gang plank out to the side and he can walk across to shore, as it's just the stairs that he has so much issue with. We will of course have to wait and see.

For now we continue to stock up on supplies, and stow stuff where we can find space, and slowly make our way through the daunting task of organizing the entire boat. Enough of the talk, here are some pictures to keep you more entertained.

From the left:

The Captain, George; The First Mate, Ashton; and The Trip Funder, Cathy; The Ship