"You are sixteen minutes late, " our neighbor Christine says pointing to her watch on her wrist. We've turned onto Willoway Drive, first meeting our neighbor Virgil as he was leaving in his new white van. As we stop at the corner and see Christine, we then see friends and neighbors by our driveway.
With the campfire and visiting friends we have a shorter night sleep than usual, but it gives us an excuse to lay-in a little longer this morning. It is a cold one, frost has covered the inside and outside of our tent. Packing-up is a challenge with the tent poles frozen together. One more time we pack-up our gear, heat some water for coffee and oatmeal and head out.
A flat cruise takes us to Horseshoe Bend where we have a second breakfast at the cafe. Then there is one more hill, a gradual climb to the summit. From there Highway 55 drops down into the Treasure Valley. We get our first glimpses of Boise. It is cold. We snake our way into the city following familiar bicycle routes and decide to try and take the Greenbelt bike path along the Boise River through the city center. High waters this spring have washed away one critical bridge though, so our planned route turns into some zigzagging through subdivision. We are amazed how lush everything looks and how much it seems the trees along the bike path have grown. We reach the University and head up Capitol Blvd towards the Boise Depot, the landmark close to our home.
One more stop for photos. We told our friends we'd pull in at two, fifteen minutes late is not bad. As we turn into our street we meet Virgil, one of our neighbors. A little further we run into Christine who lives on the corner. Her exuberance alerts a group of friend who have gathered at our house. We celebrate a safe homecoming with champagne.
We are home. This trip is over.
For us traveling was never about escaping a "real" life at home. We like our life at home. We have great friends, neighbors, a nice house and yard, jobs that we like (most times). It is just that long term travel and work are hard to combine. So we made a choice to leave all this behind and travel. Now we are back and ready to enjoy being home.
In the next couple of weeks we will post a couple more updates to document how the transition into "real" life went. We thank everybody that followed us on our journey and hope you find some inspiration in it. Thanks to the people that posted on our guestbook and thanks to Bill for identifying plants and critters. And lastly thanks to Neil Gunton for running this website. If you enjoy following cyclists on their journeys, or if you are a cyclist who uses this website to post your journal or research trips, please consider donating so it can be sustained.
Breaking camp for our last day on the road. The tent has a layer of ice on it.
George is the guy who cut my Ortlieb handlebar bag in half and welded 4 extra inches depth into it. This allowed me to carry two DSLR's, one with a telephoto lens, vertically inside the bag. The material Ortlieb uses is the same George uses building river rafts.
