It has been awhile since our last post…what in the world have we been up to? Well, we’ve been busy! Here is a bit of what’s been going on….
Since our yurt moved to it’s new home at Earthlands, we’ve been temporarily homeless. While this has caused some inconvenience and stress, the upside is that we have gotten to spend some wonderful time with dear friends here in New England who have graciously hosted us in their homes. And, thank goodness we also have Vannie, our trustworthy VW camper van, which has been our gypsy home on wheels. Welcome to our gypsy life.

Our remaining possessions crammed into a 10 x 15 foot storage unit, we have found homes for everything that wouldn’t fit or that no longer served us via many hours on Craigslist, Ebay, and Freecycle. Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff! We have less than most Americans we know and it still took so long to downsize our stuff!

We also attended a wonderful festival we go to every year called SpiritFire, where we enjoyed 5 hot days of connections with good friends, along with a healthy dose one of our favorite activities: live drumming and dancing. This was sorely lacking on our sailing trip and we felt recharged by our connections with the land and people at Spiritfire.
I also spent a few weeks in my original homeland of South Dakota and Minnesota visiting my family and some old friends. It was a packed time of reconnecting with blasts from the past, and I also got to visit one of my very favorite places on Earth, the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is one of the farthest places in North America from the ocean, but it has a similar vast quality of peace and spaciousness found at sea. And it has more spectacular thunderstorms! I got to witness quite a few of them moving across the wide open prairie, including one storm that featured a brief tornado that touched down a bit too close for comfort! (this hurricane is getting a bit too close for comfort too!)
While I was away Captain K got some quality time with his sister, and spent a lot of frustrating hours working on his car. We have had endless hassles with cars ever since we got back to land. Even more than boats, cars seem to be black holes that suck up money!

In the midst of all this, I have been working as much as possible in multiple states doing performances, gardening, and painting. No noteworthy photos of the gardening and painting, but here is a fun one of one of my recent performances as a “Silver Swimmer“.

And, if all that weren’t enough, we have had the great fortune to spend time with our friends Rich and Mimi from s/v Maffick, who we sailed with back in the Bahamas. They are spending some time on Lake Champlain and we got to go sailing with them on a sweet little 24′ Cape Dory named Snow Goose. We ventured out in 25 knot winds and got to experience big waves on Lake Champlain that soaked us all.

And last but not least, the next exciting sailing chapter is about to begin in…….a bigger boat?!? Stay tuned!

p.s. The Silver Swimmers photo is courtesy of the Berkshire Eagle Newspaper. (photo credit)