**We are super late…we know. We have been busy with work, and moving ourselves back across the country! But I promise we will be back to our regular programming!**

At the beginning of the month Owen and I were staying with our good friends Hanna & Thomas in Tuscon, AZ. It was the starting point of our two thousand mile journey back home to family for the holidays.

Ripley riding towards the fog, Somewhere in Texas

We linked up with our great friends Jorge & Jessica of Live. Work. Wander with a plan to caravan back to the east coast. Along the way we wanted to check out Big Bend National Park and everything else southern Texas has to offer! The only catch was that Owen and I were totally swamped with with work as we headed into Texas, a place that is not known for their amazing cellphone coverage.

We stopped in Marfa, Texas for a few days where we worked at Tumbleweed (a coffee, ice cream parlor, laundromat combo) and camped out at the Marfa Lights Viewing area by night. Maria is a really cool place, that is hard to put your finger on what is really happening there.

Moving further east we made it to Terlingua a town that can be described as a ghost town that still has inhabitants. We settled in at a RV park with a heated club house. I think the camp ground host got a kick out of us because every time she came over to check on us we were working, doing puzzles, all while Jorge was reading us erotic novels aloud…

Finally Big Bend National Park. Our plan was to traverse the park via a 50 mile 4x4 road…despite the fact that we are 2 wheel drive. We had been told that it was pretty tame and a great way to see the southern portion of the park that follows the Rio Grande River. Our first night we made it just a few miles in before calling it for the night. We woke up the next morning to start the rest of the drive and had one of the best sunrises in recent memory. All was well until we came to a patch of mud that turned out to be over 1/8th of a mile long and a few feet deep. The only way to make it to the other side was to put the peddle to the metal and hope for the best. We SOMEHOW made it to the other side only to discover our back CV joints were totally seized up.

Turns out that our boots on both side ripped open allowing mud, rocks, and water to pack into the joints. With over 30 miles until the next paved road we were left to our own devices to make a repair to get us back for a more permanent fix. 8 hours later we had removed both bound CVs unpacked, cleaned, repacked, built “new boots” and reassembled everything back onto Stanley. The new boots were made of two zip lock bags, duct tape, electrical tape, and zip ties! If it was not for Jorge and Jessica we might still be sitting on the side of the road because they had the skill and grease to complete the repair.

After getting back on the road we went straight to Austin, TX where Stanley was immediately sent to a shop to replace the boots as well as fix our clutch which also was ruined by the mud! A week later we were on the road home to Orlando where we spent our Christmas surrounded by family!