Home.
That word is kinda magical, isn’t it?
After six and a half weeks, and 16,026 km (9958 miles) of travel, we are so thankful to have finally made it back home.
Since our last email update, we left the Maritimes, visited some family in Connecticut, saw both the Ark and Creation Museums and a total eclipse while driving across the US of A, finally arriving at that special little place we call home.
When we left for our epic road trip, school had just gotten out, crops were growing and canola was in bloom. We returned with only a couple weeks before school starts again and the crops are being harvested!
If we averaged, say, 90km an hour (mostly highway driving, but lots of slower stuff too) then that would mean roughly 178 hours or 7.4 days in the van during the course of the trip.
We are also thankful we didn’t have any major mechanical problems with the van or trailer during the trip. The last couple days, the trailer’s brakes did stop working, but thankfully we were past the really hilly parts of the journey.
We have kept a diary with lots of pictures of our trip on our family blog.
Trip east: www.troyandnaomi.com/2017/07/epic-road-trip-ab-to-nb/
Around the Maritimes: www.troyandnaomi.com/2017/07/epic-road-trip-around-the-maritimes/
Trip west, heading back home: www.troyandnaomi.com/2017/08/epic-road-trip-there-and-back-again/
We were so thankful to be able to complete the whole trip, including the total solar eclipse. I’ve been fascinated by space and astronomy since I was a little boy, and despite having seen several partial eclipses, this was my first total eclipse.
In short, it was awesome, and I don’t use that word lightly. There is a reason that the wonders of the skies prompted King David to write:
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
Mountains are incredible and a waterfall is a beautiful sight, but David talks of the skies proclaiming God’s handiwork. Imagine if he’d had access to a telescope! Anyway, we had a fantastic time viewing the eclipse as a family.
We made it!
Not only was the eclipse strangely beautiful, just the thought of what it takes for a total eclipse to occur points to a Divine Creator. A total eclipse probably shouldn’t happen. I say “probably” because the probability is too small. After all, we are the only known planet that has a moon just the right size and distance to provide a perfect total solar eclipse where the moon just barely covers the sun, allowing the viewer to see the corona and prominences. It also happens to be the only place where there is someone to see it.
The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but it is also 400 times closer, making them roughly the same apparent size in our sky, depending on eccentricities of the orbits. This has allowed us to discover so much about the sun, moon, our own planet and the universe long before we had the technology of modern telescopes and spacecraft. If the size of the sun or moon, or the distance to the moon and sun were off even a bit, a perfect total eclipse would not be possible. Yet, perfect total solar eclipses happen because of this perfect combination. This alone should give us pause as we watch in wonder. But not only are they astounding and awe-inspiring for this fact alone, total eclipses are strange and beautiful and they are wonderful to experience!
I have too much to add for this email, so to see our pictures and video of the experience, head over to www.troyandnaomi.com/2017/08/eclipse-the-shortest-2-minutes-and-22-seconds-of-my-life/
As for my health, the bouts of vertigo and dizziness were a challenge almost every day of the trip. Thank you so much for your prayers for us!
This calendar shows a red x whenever it was a big problem for us.
That is 28 out of 47 days of our trip. This certainly made some parts of our trip much more difficult. Naomi had to do most of the 16,000 km of driving, as well as more work with the kids. I’m so thankful for my wife, who is loving and patient. The problems became a bit more manageable after the first three weeks of travel, but were still pretty debilitating, often requiring at least a few hours of laying down somewhere or trying to sleep in the van. Despite this, we were still able to do many of the big things we had planned to do, including speaking at three churches, but were not able to have as many visits with people.
Yesterday I had another appointment at the Neuro-vestibular Clinic in Calgary where we talked it over for almost an hour with a specialist. We are going to change some medication and try to treat this as a vestibular migraine.
At least having my own bed to sleep in should help me get some rest!
Speaking of rest, did I mention that it was good to be home?
