Wednesday, May 15, 2024
This morning was our earliest and best morning ever. We knew we did not want to miss our taxi or our flight home, and everyone was really motivated to get out on time. We woke up at three, and by 3:40am, we were packed up and ready to roll. There was a bit of confusion with the taxi situation (it’s not easy to schedule a 7 passenger van at 4am), but eventually we were able to get two taxis to come and get us at the temple and take us to the airport.
Air travel was pretty much a breeze. We checked all of our big backpacks onto the plane, so there wasn’t much to worry about.
We had a good flight from Madrid to Frankfurt, a reasonable layover, and then another pretty easy flight from Frankfurt to New York. It’s always a process coming back into the country through JFK, and the customs and security always seem to take longer than I anticipate, but we had plenty of time. There was a bit of confusion about flight delays, the departure time was a moving target for a while because of the weather, I think. But soon enough we were back in the air and headed for Jonesville.
When we arrived, we went and got our backpacks, and then took a shuttle to a short-term parking where our friends had left our Sequoia earlier in the day.
By then we were pretty hungry, so we found a Wendy’s and got some food, and then drove home.
We arrived home just around midnight and found a welcome home sign from the ward, a house that our renter had left spotless, and a stocked fridge and pantry that our friends had taken care of for us. It was the best welcome we could have hoped for.
This trip has been amazing. All told, we’ve covered
10,450 car miles
10,000 plane miles
3,467 train miles
513 hiking miles
That’s a total of 24,430 miles.
Just to put that into perspective, the circumference of the earth is about 24,901 miles. So it’s basically the distance equivalent of traveling around the world.
We also visited 10 countries, and slept in at least 62 different beds. That’s an average of a different bed every 2.5 days for 155 days. We visited 15 LDS temples and we went to church in 11 different LDS congregations. We saw the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the British Museum, Big Ben, the Rijksmuseum, Heidelberg Castle, St Mark’s Cathedral, St. Peter’s, the Roman Colloseum, the Sagrada Familia, the tomb of St James, and countless other monuments, museums, and churches.
We made new friends everywhere we went, and none of this would have been possible without the generosity of those friends and family who helped us along the way -- either by offering a place to stay, or helping identify one, or buying some of our granola or salsa, or keeping an eye on our home or cars, or helping take care of church and department responsibilities, or sending us a Venmo in the perfect time to cover a meal or a treat. We were also sustained at all times by well-wishes and prayers.
We’ve learned so much and grown so much, and now our thoughts turn to how can we share what we’ve learned in the future. I’ll continue to share photos as I am able to process them, and I’m trying to think of how to get down what we’ve been through in a book. Of course, if you have any questions for us about pilgrimage, sacred travel, the Camino, train travel in Europe, or anything else related to this Grand Adventure, don’t hesitate to reach out.
We love you all so much, and there will never be a way to fully express our gratitude for the ability to do this.
