So this is it. It's been two and a half years of selling the house, sorting through all our possessions, planning, packing, and travel. We've been to Taiwan, half a world away, five times, flown on 51 airplanes, visited nearly a dozen countries, and lived for three summers feeling a bit homeless. I have fallen in love with Taiwan and am sorry to be gone. I've missed the U.S. and am excited to be back.

There have been experiences that made living so far from home difficult, especially my biking accident and Dad's death, but I have grown stronger from those experiences. Living overseas has been magical. Hard, yes. Frustrating at times. But truly a gift as well. Lee and I have grown closer as a couple. We've been challenged by work, by the culture shock, by language barriers, and we've overcome them all. We left Kaohsiung still in love with the place.

But this chapter is over. Who knows, though. I may start this story back up when we travel again. It may be a vacation trip or it could be we pack up once again and head to somewhere new. We'll see.

This is the penultimate night on the road. After two nights in Minnesota we drove for as long as we could, a bit over 600 miles, and spent the night somewhere near Gary, Indiana. Then it was a relatively easy day to my brother and sister-in-law's house outside of Pittsburg. It's been great visiting with friends but there's something especially nice with staying with family. That was a quick recharge then off to our old friends (they're not old but our friendship is) in central New York on Thursday night and Kaohsiung friends in northern New York on the shores of Lake Ontario tonight. Our last night on the road will be with Lee's sister and family outside Albany and then on to Amherst on Sunday. Amherst is where we'll cool our jets while we wait for our apartment to become available at Westminster School in Simsbury. Seattle to Simsbury, about 3700 miles in two and a half weeks of traveling (plus a month of stasis). These world travels are coming to a close, at least for awhile.

Today has been a blissful day of rest and relaxation with our friends Linda and Les. We've spent this Fourth of July eating wonderful food, sitting on the deck watching the wind blow across Lake Shetek, walking the dirt roads surrounded by corn and soybean fields. It's been quiet, with the exception of great conversations and evening fireworks, untaxing, except that we have done some walking, blissful. A day to recharge, learn about the area, spend time with good friends. Welcome to Minnesota.

Rapid City, South Dakota represents bed number nine since we left Kaohsiung two and a half weeks ago. The good side of that is the fabulous people we've visited and the beautiful places we've been. The most recent on that list has been the Black Hills and Wind Cave National Park. I was here in 1980 when I spent a semester with the National Outdoor Leadership School and we spent two weeks caving at Wind Cave. That was a long time ago and not much looked familiar but I remember falling in love with the area and I still feel that way.

The day started out completely overcast but the clouds disappeared while we took the cave tour. Given my dislike of small spaces it's hard to believe that I spent any time in a cave but I have a lot of good memories of that experience and going on the tour this morning was a lot of fun. Wind Cave is known for a rare cave formation called box work, which we saw a lot of.

But the best parts of our day were spent outside. We took a hike a little ways away from the visitor's center and we had the meadows and the stream and the ravines and the woods and the wildflowers all to ourselves. We did see two other people but it was a quick "hi" as we went by and then we were alone again.

We stopped for lunch on a lovely rock along the way.

After that hike we drove to another trail but got waylaid by the coolest animal ever: bison.

We stopped for some pictures of the dozen or so that we saw and then drove a short way only to find the rest of the herd, about 150 altogether. So cool. I can't get my photo program to upload any videos so if you want to see them you'll have to come visit sometime and we can really bore you with our vacation photos. In the meantime I'll show you some more bison. (Bison and buffalo are the same thing but the "proper" name is bison so that's what I'll call them. They were misnamed "buffalo" by the same people who slaughtered millions of these majestic beasts. The least I can do is call them by the right name.)

We did finally pull ourselves away long enough to take our second hike. This one gave us breathtaking views of the Black Hills.

On our drive back to Rapid City we drove by Mount Rushmore but the traffic was awful. No wonder the Wind Cave trails were so empty. Everyone was waiting in line at Rushmore for a parking space. We drove by and looked out the window instead. On the way past the visitor's center there was a place to pull over and take a photo of George's profile. Done.

We added a couple more states to Lee's life list. We drove out of Montana, into Wyoming and across the border into South Dakota. Beautiful, beautiful and beautiful, all in their own way. We passed through rolling hills with white capped mountains in the distance. Drove by mountain streams and herds of cattle. There were ponderosa pine forests and sagebrush and fields of hay. Miles and miles of empty roads with the occasional cars zooming past at 80 mph. That's the speed limit on I-90 out here in big sky country. I prefer a more sedate 72 mph and am happy to pass the few trucks going slower and letting everyone go around me.

As we were going through the northeast corner of Wyoming we realized we would be getting to our destination for the day, Rapid City, SD, with time to spare so when we saw signs for Devils Tower National Monument we thought, why not? What a great decision. We drove about an hour north off of I-90 and found a magical place. It was breathtaking. No wonder the Indians consider the area sacred.

The clouds gathered speed as we hiked around but we managed to be back in the car before the skies opened up. But before that, we started with lunch.

We took a hike that took us through a prairie dog field. They were adorable.

Then the trail headed up towards the tower itself, which gave us fabulous views.

We even saw some rock climbers.

There are a pair of climbers on a ledge on the left side and a person rappelling on the right edge. 

Here's a closeup of the rappeller.

The clouds got darker and we could hear thunder in the distance. Time to head back to the car.

That's Whidbey waiting for us in the parking lot.

We found another place we'd like to come back to. The list keeps growing.