Planning the Trip

It's hard to believe that it has been six years since we spent three months in Peru.  Asa was in kindergarten and Eli in second grade.  It's also hard to believe we are going on 16 years in Vermont. Although Vermont is a beautiful place and we have created a rich life here, the itch to travel and experience new things is always present. Fortunately, we have been lucky in our professions to have the opportunity to nourish that desire.  At Johnson State College, Brad can apply for a sabbatical every six years.  So, this past November he started the process.  In thinking about what would enrich the Outdoor Education Program, he landed on three main areas: a rock climbing certification, continuing to investigate how to embed an immersion semester into the degree program and continue to build relationships internationally in order to expose students to international experiences in the field.  From these goals, two different trips were born. Lots of the big rock climbing is out west and since Brad would need to spend time logging hours on the rock- a cross country trip with climbing areas for our destinations made sense. For the international piece, South America seemed most reasonable for JSC students: it is affordable, offers incredible outdoor adventure opportunities and provides immersion in very different cultures- Ecuador fit the bill for this.  In February, the proposal was accepted, I applied for a leave of absence and the planning began.  Since Eli would be entering his freshman year, we decided it was easier to pull them from school for a full semester and apply for home school status.  Also, we realized this would be the last time to do such an extended adventure with the boys, college awaits Eli in four short years! We divided the five months (August- December) into the two different trips.  August- mid October we would spend traveling to California and back and tickets for Ecuador were bought for October 26th- December 14th. Now we had to wrap our head around planning for two totally different trips. We took out a map of the US and pinpointed the major climbing areas around the country. Since the boys are not huge rock climbers, we would carry our mountain bikes and spend time riding while Brad logged the climbing hours. Originally I investigated spending the time in Ecuador volunteering, but it turns out volunteering is NOT a cheap endeavor for a family of four!  After reading a few journal entries from crazyguyonabike, I discovered two different families that bike toured in South America with their two boys about the same ages as Eli and Asa.  If they could do it, so could we! This is how we would spend our time in Ecuador! The ideas were there, we now just needed some details...