What a treat it has been to spend some time with our families for the holiday season! We flew into Atlanta on December 20 and Bethany’s parents picked us up at the airport to take us home to Abbeville. We were blessed to spend 10 wonderful days there, which included hanging out with some of our favorite people.

Dave’s parents came down to visit the big city and pick us up to return to Nashville. We arrived in Nashville on Friday, then borrowed their car to drive to Memphis on Saturday for the wedding of our dear friends Sally and Pete, where we were also blessed to see many other good friends from Bethany’s college years.

We returned to Nashville on New Year’s Day and have been eagerly making our preparations for the next leg of our journey. We’re headed to Chile later this week! Here’s a rough sketch of what we’ll be doing:

1–Fly standby to Santiago (we start trying on Thursday, and we’ll get on the first flight that has availability). Many thanks to Bethany’s friend Abigail and her dad who helped us get Delta Buddy Passes… what a blessing!

2–Land in Santiago and sort things out. Buy bus tickets to Puerto Montt. That route should look something like this.

3–Take a bus from Puerto Montt to the top of the island to which it is directly adjacent.

4–Put bicycles together at this point, then ride down the length of the island to Quellon.

5–From Quellon, hop on a ferry that will take us through the Chilean fjords down to a port near Coyhaique.

6–Ride North through Patagonia!

We are so excited for the next leg of our adventure to begin… but we are equally grateful that we got this nice, long break to rest our legs and enjoy the holidays with our families.