We got our first vaccine shot the day after we arrived back in the US. That started our clock for full vaccination during which time we did, well, not so much.

Once we were fully vaxxed we hit the road to see more of the friends and family we’d been missing so much.

That was the end of our first post-vax road trip. We recovered for a bit and then took a much shorter road trip to Deep Creek Lake, MD.

In our spare time, we took up disc golf which I like to call frolf even though it annoys actual disc golfers or maybe because it annoys them.

And we also took a trip to Binghamton, NY to visit the one and only Auntie Lorrie and had some fun family time.

We were also lucky to catch up with many other friends in the DC area and Jon managed to fit in plenty of actual golf, unfortunately there is no photographic evidence. We’re still in catching up mode so if we haven’t seen you yet and you’re around let us know!

We left for yet another road trip, one of what will likely be lots, on August 19th. That one was pretty epic so I’ll save it for another post or posts

After our Townsville trip, in the March/April time frame, the vaccine rollout in the US seemed really promising and the vaccine rollout in Australia was just the opposite. Though Australia has done an amazing job keeping covid out of the country, they are in no “rush” to vaccinate people which is disheartening to me and many other people who have a wide variety of reasons for wanting to actually be able to leave the country and return without getting permission to leave, currently required for all citizens and permanent residents, and paying thousands of dollars for 14 days of hotel quarantine on return, also required, assuming you can even return given that arrival numbers are severely limited. Anyway, I’ll stop my rant before I get too riled up. Thus, our options looked to be staying in Australia until early 2022 if we wanted to get vaccinated here and then travel back OR travel back sooner with the idea that we’ll get vaccinated the day after we arrive. The latter was the best choice for us and we were able to get approval to leave since we plan to be gone for more than 3 months.

With lots of house sitting experience under our belts, to rave reviews I must add, we turned our attention to finding a longer house sit to allow us to transition out of our apartment and then travel back to the US. Jon found just the ticket in a Brisbane suburb, nearly 5 weeks with just 1 dog. A super cute old doggo, Honey. We started selling or donating everything we didn’t have to have as quickly as possible and, once we moved out on April 13th, put the rest on sale. We had a lot of difficulty getting rid of the last few large items, but Jon got them all taken care of one way or another. It involved numerous drives back and forth at an hour round trip to do so, and I am very grateful to him. Jon also found us a top rate rental agent who found us renters as soon as we put the apartment up for rent. They moved in on May 1st and so far things seem to be going well or at least we haven’t heard otherwise!

At some point earlier in the year, Jon committed to doing another house sit at the house we first sat so we knew we needed to be here to do that and through magical luck the nearly 5 week house sit finished just as this one started. Now we’re back with Nelson and Kelsey and all the birds for a week. Once we finish here, we’ll head down to Sydney over a few days, get our required covid test within 72 hours of departure, and hopefully depart on our first flight since January 2020 on May 27th. We loaded up on N95 equivalent masks, hand sanitizer and wipes and booked appointments for our first Pfizer shot the next morning.

We’ll be laying low at my mom’s house until we’re fully vaccinated and then getting out and about to see everyone we’ve been missing so much over the past 1.5 years. We’re going to miss lots of people and things in Australia, but we’re super excited to get back to the US for a good long while.