Untiitled.........help.

so i have a lot of ideas in my head for what to title this post with

sooo hard to choose one soooo i am leaving it up to you

help me title this

so jer came home on thursday and says to me.....hey you want to go camping

i say hey sure...we have everything we need but the right food

so on friday while he is cutting down some of the branches off the trees in the front yard i am packing the van with all the supplies

while he brings the branches to compost i got grocery shopping

we have some great lunch of eggs and toast

after lunch we take off for a camp ground at a lake about an hour and half away

of course not leaving until my motion sickness child gets his meds

we get to the town just out side of the lake and notice some really dark(as in black) clouds

jer tells me to check weather on my phone

turns out calls for 70% chance of thunderstorms and a tornado warning

OK not camping there

now where to go

well away from the clouds

so we keep going in a different direction

we come along to this town and i am hey there is a camp site really close by here

so that is where we decided to go

but we turn down a wrong road for a while sooo that was more driving

finally we got on the right track

got to the campground

it was lightly raining but no black clouds and just a forecast of light rain

we got a really good site, close to the beach and bathrooms.....it was great to finally be there

we start set up....not a lot of stuff considering we were only staying for one night

we pull out chairs, BBQ, and tent

pick a spot for the tent

took a time out for bug spray

spread out the tent and got ready to put the poles in

one pole broken

POLE BROKEN

what do we do...even tape may not have worked

it took jer another 10 mins staring at it to come to the point of it was really broken

what we do?

look at each other

decide to go to the beach a bit(we promised the kids after all)

pack up

go to PA and try to go have supper and a movie in PA

the kids played at the beach and in the water for about an hour or more

they loved it

we packed up everything but the tent(it is in a garbage bin) and changed the kids and were off

oh but we took a shot at getting our camping fees back.....yup sure did but not park fees which makes sense

we snacked on the way(i went grocery shopping after all)

stopped to see if cars 2 was sold out and it was

stopped at mc donalds for a small snack/ supper

and to home we went.

friday we spent more time in the van then not almost.

it was a gong show, but at least we now know that our tent is shot and we need a new one

and at least we weren't with other people that we would have to ditch

i do have pictures but i misplaced my camera recently :(

they will come as soon as i find it

Travel in Africa

Ok Sorry it has taken so long to get this all done. I do have two small kids and a lot going on. I also miss Africa and sometimes that makes me not want to write about it....don't know if that makes sense.

This is a travel post. We did a lot of travelling in our van within 3 countries. Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

In our travels we came to a lot of different things. Like there are some VERY nice roads and then there are some VERY bad roads. We also found out that Zambia now has radar....who knew.

We saw a lot of things we expected to see but we also saw a lot that we didn't expect.

We saw a lot of people on bikes and walking. We saw a lot of road side stands.

This was one that we saw going from Lusaka to Ndola....we actually stopped here to pick up a watermelon. We gave it to a family that we visited...which we found out later that the lady of the house didn't like watermelon....lol. Opps.

This is a furniture store in Ndola. Yup outside. Some of them had tarps laying close by for the sudden rain.

In this pic you can see the sign to our guest house that we stayed at in Ndola....we drove by this lady and her roasted corn stand at least 2 or 3 times a day. I wanted to try it but found out that it is not sweet corn like we have here....sooo yeah no thanks.

As we were driving somewhere, can't even remember where, but we saw this truck. My dad moves houses and both Jeremy and I have driven a pilot truck with a wide load sign on it. I had to get this picture.

Can anyone guess what this is????

Yup you guessed right. A tire shop. Some have a sign, others just has a pile of tires. So look like they move location daily, others have half buried tires as a boundary around them.

I saw this truck full of people and by this time it had not been the first one, but this time they were all singing and making noise. Jer's parents said that it must be a funeral procession. Singing and wailing in morning.....wow they were loud....my feelings were very mixed.

Haha we saw a lot of women carrying stuff on their heads....sooo cool....but this is a picture of two guys that both have something on their heads....never thought I would see it but I did.

A full truck

Lots of fruit stand on the side.

Veggies too.

Jer got his drivers for emergency just in case...but he took up the offer to drive for a little bit anyway. It was a ridiculously bumpy pot holey road. I think I may have almost hit my head and Jers mom was sitting in the back just about getting car sick. Glad he did it tho.

Can you guess this one???

Sure you can, its a car wash. This was actually a pretty nice one. They can range from just a couple of buckets of water and soaps and some guys to a tin covered area to park with a nice wooden sign. This one is in the middle sign written on the cement and there is more than one guy.

This at a border crossing. Baboons are everywhere.

I used the bathroom once at a border crossing. The THEE most disgusting bathroom I have ever used.

Another furniture store....this time no tarps.

Ok so these goats had no one looking after them.....but they stayed in a pack and stayed off the road....it was soo crazy to see them.

A close up of a women with a HUGE basket on her head.

The main goal in this picture was to show you how they carry their kids until they are like 2. But it is really a pretty good picture of some of the huts that they live in in rural villages. Oh and do you see what the mom and baby are wearing ....it is like 20 C ....that is what it is right now and my kids are wearing tank tops and shorts.

These are charcoal bundles. They had them sitting here to sell. We saw people walking and riding bikes with them....we even saw a guy on his bike with like 4 or 5 bundles some how attached to his bike....it was crazy.

Cattle truck.

car wash

plowing the field.

Tallest building in Zambia.

Some other info that is interesting

-when stopped by the police you get out of the car to talk to them other wise you get in trouble.

-there are no emission standards.

-we would NEVER buy a used vehicle there.

- I thought it was rude to take a picture of the guys that sell things on the street....literally at a stop light walking between cars....we closed our windows then.

This is an experience I will never forget. I know that I have probably missed adding a bunch of stuff I wanted to add, but oh well.