Craziness

Well, the countdown has definitely begun. We leave in less than a month. In addition to packing everything up and moving it to New York, we are also in the process of planning the vacation. We're planning on not booking places in the US and New Zealand, but that's becoming a bit stressful. We are definitely looking forward to a bit of relaxation in the Outer Banks with our good friends Sarah and Jason. After that, who knows? Hopefully everything will work out!

Scuba

So, Ed and I finished our classroom and pool portion of the scuba certification. We now have to finish our open water dives and we will be scuba certified. Despite being quite sick and our ear drums feeling like they were going to burst, we somehow survived. It wasn't quite as scary as I thought. So, one more step closer to our vacation now. We're planning on completing the open water dives in either North Carolina or in Australia. We'll see what happens.

Preparation

Ed and I have started to prepare for our long awaited vacation starting in May (May 21st to be exact). Ed finished reading all of his scuba readings and took all of the tests. I, as usual, am behind due to procrastination. However, I have to finish soon in order to get certified this weekend (April 20-21).

We have planned our trip to Australia and Fiji in terms of booking hotels and flights. We are starting to finalize our cross country trip details and will then move on to finalizing New Zealand. Seems a bit odd since we will be going to New Zealand after our first leg of the cross country trip. Oh well. Hopefully it all works out.

Our rough plan for our drive out to LA consists of the following:
1. Heading down to the Outer Banks with our good friends, who we will miss dearly, Sarah and Jason on May 21. We will be leaving there on Monday, May 26...hopefully the traffic isn't too terrible.

2. Drive to Asheville, NC. I am really looking forward to this stop and seeing the Great Smoky Mountains.

4. Heading to Nashville, TN to spend some time in honky town. Don't know if that makes sense or not, but oh well.

5. Driving to New Orleans, LA.

6. Driving to Austin, TX. Then on to San Antonio and Dallas. Ed knows which one comes first.

7. Driving to Carlsbad Cavern National Park and White Sands National Park in New Mexico.

8. Heading out to Flagstaff, AZ. Then moving on to the Grand Canyon, where we may hike ~20 miles from the South Rim to the North Rim.

9. After the Grand Canyon, we will drive out to LA to spend a couple days before hopping on a long flight to Auckland, New Zealand.

So, that's about all for now. We'll post more once we have more information...hopefully it will be soon as this vacation takes place in 5 weeks!