Smiling faces back in Australia as we camp at our property in the Blue Mountains

It’s a great life on the road, that’s for sure, but it’s also wonderful to go home to our family and friends after being away for many months, catch up on what everyone’s doing, hear their stories and share some of our own.  There’s many hugs to share, excited voices, laughs all around, all great fun we had been looking forward to and really loved.  And of course, there’s the newest member of our family, our beautiful granddaughter.  It was great to be home again!

Could this be the quintessential Aussie scene? Sheep grazing on dirt with only a dead tree to keep them company

We spent a month in Sydney between the South American and European legs of our journey while Tramp enjoyed his Atlantic cruise from Montevideo to Antwerp.  The irony of this month ‘at home’ was that our family home was actually rented out so we had no true place we could call home.  Instead we took up the offers of many of our family and friends who invited us into their homes for a few days at a time, enjoying their hospitality and the extra time we had with them to make up for lost time.

Always good to catch up with my mates in Cronulla – we used to be a running group that occasionally had coffee, now we’re a coffee group that occasionally runs

The place we spent the most time was at Abby’s home in their southern NSW home where she was continuing her long-term project of training her parents Anna and Carl on how to raise a beautiful little baby girl.    We loved our time in their granny flat, watching her daily parental training sessions and at the same time getting free tuition in how to be grandparents.  I must say both parents and grandparents were loving the experience and by all the beautiful smiles, happy disposition and playfulness of Abby she’s enjoying it too.

The three women of my life – Julie, Anna and Abby

We also used the time to reconnect with our favourite place in Australia, our property on the other side of the Blue Mountains.  On two occasions we stayed there, camping of course, and loved the time around a big fire with the beautiful mountain escarpments all around us and our kids and their partners with us.  It truly doesn’t get any better than that!

Our happy place – breakfast around the fire at our property

We were joined at breakfast by some of the locals who took no notice of us

More familiar Aussie wildlife – a friendly wombat wanders through a paddock on our family property

There were piles of administration tasks and other action items we had to catch up on, such as doctor’s appointments, Insurance renewals, dealing with taxes, getting Russian visas (what a pain!), paying bills, the list went on and on.  There are some things you can’t avoid even if you try to jump out of the rat race and hide yourself for an extended period in the wilds of South America.

A highlight moment – all nine of us together for a great night of reunion, celebration and fun

Inevitably our time came to an end and we had to start making our way to Antwerp to pick up Tramp.  We detoured, as you do these days in the global village, to California to spend a fabulous week with my mother and sister.  We had a great time exploring some of the highlights of the Monterey Peninsula and it was fun to reconnect with some of my childhood haunts.

The four of us had great fun in the week Julie and I spent there on our way to Europe

The Monterey Peninsula features a stunning coastline, including the famous Lone Cypress growing precariously on this rocky outcrop

Not rocks on the beach – these harbour seals have a busy schedule each day, sleeping, resting and then sleeping some more

A special feature of harbour seals, besides their cute faces, are all their different colours and markings

When socialising and sightseeing catches up with you the only way to deal with it is giant margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant

All too soon we were back at the airport and starting our three flights from San Francisco to Frankfurt, all the while sad to be leaving but excited about the next leg of our Follow the Sun journey.  Look out Europe, here we come!

My home town of Salinas is said to be the Lettuce Bowl of America. Here the field workers are harvesting romaine lettuce straight from the field to the Costco boxes

A young speckled deer looks up from her grazing in our family’s home backyard