Blogs from Duluth, Minnesota, United States, North America

Geo: 46.7945, -92.0937Long day. We left our Houghton hotel at 9:00 AM and 68 degrees and drove down to the city center to look around a bit more before heading north to see the rest of the Keweenaw Peninsula. After some starts and stops, trying to forge a plan, we drove across the bridge and headed north. The drive was a very pleasant one through small towns, harbors and villages and up narrow roads tight with trees that formed a canopy over the road, creating a tunnel for cars to pass through. I kept my eyes peeled into the woods looking for animals, but did not see any. I remember encountering a bear once or twice in our travels and was hoping to see one today, but it didn't happen.The road went through Keweenaw County, through ... read more

The spending continues as last minute gear and food purchases are completed. Just some fresh food to buy and I should be ready. The trip preparation has been good for the local economy. I packed my pack today and weighed it. Without water and some of the food items (cheese, bread, mixed nuts, dried fruits), the pack weighed 32lbs. It should be around 37lbs with water and additional food items. The trip logistics are getting complex as I will be fitting in a canoe trip during my hike. I have all the canoe gear ready and have a couple of spots picked out where I will come off the trail and meet my canoe trip partners. I am also setting up my resupply packs. My canoe trip partners will be bringing my first resupply. My girlfriend ... read more

The sun was just rising over Crooked Lake as we were leaving the house and the sky had beautiful red colours and as we had a three hour journey a head of us we were on the road early. It was Fall and the trees were coloured along the highway making it a pretty journey. We were headed to Duluth on the shore of Lake Superior. Duluth is is a seaport city in the state of Minnesota and is the county seat of St Louis County. It's the fourth largest city in Minnesota and at the last census had a population of 86,265. Once we arrived at Duluth, Susan knew that I have a passion for lighthouses and suggested that go visit the lighthouse before we take a walk along waterfront in Duluth. Hence we bypassed ... read more

Just a quick update for anyone interested in keeping up with what we're doing. We have an apartment leased out for our first 90 days in Guatemala! The website for the apartment is http://www.casaxelaju.com/apartment-5/ . It looks absolutely beautiful and we've had really good interactions with the owners. They have an office located right in Minneapolis so it's been super easy to get a hold of people. We also have been able to email with one of our future neighbors and she seems really excited to take us out and show us the town when we arrive so that's pretty exciting! Roger has gotten his shots and I will get mine in a few weeks. We've just been crossing things off the list (like - dental check ups, eye exams, etc--things that we should get ... read more

It's official! We bought one-way tickets to Guatemala City. Roger and I are leaving September 21st for however long we want, probably around a year. We're leaving it open though, just in case we love it and want to stay longer or we hate it and decide to go somewhere else or return home. Who knows? Since we have our first concrete set of plans, we figured we'd start up the blog while we're still in Minnesota. We knew we'd have one while we were down there, but it might be nice to share the planning process with interested folks too. So right now we're going over lists of the million things we have to have completed before leaving (like visas, possible doctor visits, an apartment, loan paybacks, etc) and working as many hours as possible ... read more