Reminiscing

i woke up this morning and went on pinterest, procrastinating cleaning the house and mountain of dishes i have to tackle before dan flies in today from ontario. i only was on for about 5 seconds when a picture made my heart ache for australia. i miss it. not in a way that i desire majorly to be back there, living life, i mean i miss our friends and family over there immensely, i think about them everyday, but particularly i was missing the roadtrip. the photo i saw was a camper van with the sun shining, dirt road, summer hair, so bear with me while i reminisce. we never blogged about our 2 1/2 month drive across the country, didn't even keep much of a journal, so i feel like for me, i want to re-live it a little, share a bit of our adventure and hilarious and scary things that happened along the way.

betty was a beast, she held her end of the deal for sure. we didn't really know what to expect when we would finally meet her in sydney on that muggy day. dan and i had been in perth for a grand total of 2 weeks when we (on a friday night whim) booked flights to sydney for monday morning. we found this van on craigslist with the most enticing ad titiled " the backpackers dream." we flew to sydney to buy betty off of a guy named fraser hunter (whom we never met) needless to say everyone was a little skeptical, but dan was pretty confident in his conversations with fraser that it was a great working van, so we risked it, flew over, took a few trains, walked up and down crazy big hills, in crazy humid, muggy weather with our luggage and guitar. it was quite humorous when we finally reached the end stretch to see betty sitting at the top of a massive hill we had to practically crawl our way up to reach the finish line. it was rewarding, we got the key out of the mailbox, opened her up to find a note on the drivers seat from fraser with a little helpful tips on betty (like how first gear is a little sticky, i left lots of gear in the van for you guys, including disgusting sheets and blankets and pillows. ew. she needed a good clean. she was so filthy. we drove in the rain to find wifi, to find somewhere to get an oil change, and a vacuum, and a k-mart. this is where i started to panic, what have we gotten ourselves into, there is no way this beast is getting us back to perth! i remember this night so clearly, it was pouring rain, we had been up since 4am, driving for the first time on the other side of the road. oh and our navigation system was me with a map. looking back it was hilarious, we would ask for directions and i would try and guide dan to "castle rock" using this map book, it was a bit of a disaster. we finally found a k-mart, bought sheets, blankets, and pillows. found a gas station, made our bed, brushed our teeth in a very spidery bathroom. we were all ready for bed, ready to go find somewhere to sleep, and she would not start, oh man, second major panic attack of the day, i remember looking at dan and saying "what have we done?" we prayed, it started. we found a nice quiet residential street, and slept.