Driving with the VOM

This summer we spent a lot of time in vans. Once the VOM team landed at LAX we did the all the rest of our traveling in two vans. One van was rented to us at a very low price by Karyn Sorenson's parents. The other was donated by the Grace Baptist Church of Salado Texas. They drove it out to LA to meet us and we left in Salado. We rented a U-Haul truck to haul our stuff back from Texas to LA - Joyce and I drove back in the U-Haul with one student while the rest of the group rode in the Sorenson's blue van. By my calculations we drove, this just counts driving from city to city, not the driving we did within each place we went, a total of over 5720 miles. That is a lot of time to be crammed together in two vehicles. One of the most amazing things about this trip was that we really had very few personal issues between the students or the leaders. I don't think I was ever on an extended trip like this that had so few personal problems. Here a few pictures from the road from the VOM tour. 

Joyce took this picture of the blue van from the U-Haul while I was driving down Interstate 5 in LA. I like it because you can see the reflection of the U-Haul in the window of the van and the traffic in the truck's side mirror

Joyce thought these rocks looked like "God just randomly dropped his Legos"

We had to get our pictures taken with the saguaro cacti in the cactus forests of New Mexico and Arizona

We got stopped by the border patrol 4 times with the longest one being the 2 1/2 hour delay when the students couldn't find their passports. They also looked in our truck a couple times

Daisy got us a great deal on a one-way rental of a U-Haul from Salado to Los Angeles. We were able to get a lot of stuff into that truck

This is our friend Melody from Carlsbad, California. She was a great host to take in almost all of our students for a night when one of our concert dates fell through at the last minute. All over the Southwest US we ran into great people like Melody who were willing to open their homes up to us. Our students were blessed and I know Melody and all our other great hosts were blessed too.

At the end of the long drive it was nice to get back to California but we were a little sad because our tour was almost over

Joyce and I always enjoyed staying with our little grandson, Milo, in San Diego.