Great news! After house hunting in Spokane, we have returned with the relief of our offer being accepted on a house only 6 blocks from the school where I will teach and where our girls will go. It’s a 3-bed house, about 1400 sq. ft. It’s also got a great yard with lots of trees. Here are the photos from the realty website:
… New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana.
Lou stopped by our house in Helena 2 days ago, before continuing yesterday on his trip. He plans to go north through Canada again (Alberta, BC) and drop down into eastern Washington as he rides the last miles home.
He said the best part of his journey has been the people he has spent time with. That is America, more than the land. He often shares jokes and aphorisms with his acquantainces, such as “Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.”
Lou is a unique man with a story of his own, of pain and healing, of knowing God and how constantly faithful that God is to those who trust in Him and in His son.
He also gave me the shirt off his back (after he washed it) 
which is a favorite of mine. It’s a Harley Davidson shirt, with a quote on it: “Not all who wander are lost.”
I shared with him the poem in the Lord of the Rings (Fellowship, p. 182) that sounds very much the same…
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
Well I figured I better give another update…
Lou has made good time up the east coast of North America, riding from Florida on through Georgia and the Carolinas. Once in Virginia, he decided to go across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge–pretty amazing, he said. He stopped by Jamestown on the last day of May (that month marking the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement) and also went past Yorktown, famous for its connection to the Revolution.
The Delmarva peninsula was particularly beautiful for riding his ‘bike. (What is the Delmarva Peninsula? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delmarva_Peninsula)
From Delaware up through the New Jersey-New York-Boston sprawl (or should I say, “crawl”?) Lou did not cover much ground. He said he did not set foot on Rhode Island once–traffic must have been moving by then–and spent the night in Connecticut. The next day he passed through New England on the way to Maine. He hit some cold rainy weather there, and said that the roads off the highway were pretty windy.
Lou crossed the border into Canada a few days ago, and made his way through New Brunswick to the picturesque Prince Edward Island. There is a new bridge connecting PEI to the mainland, and many tourists visit the small province each year. It is famous to us for the setting of the Anne of Green Gables books, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (a distant cousin of Lou’s). There is a 5th cousin still living on the island who gave Lou a three-hour tour (trivia: What TV show tune repeated the phrase, “a three-hour tour”?).
Lou saw some places where our Scottish ancestors lived in the region, before turning his ‘bike west for the final stretch of his great American road trip. Tune in next time to find out about his further adventures.
Brian
P.S. Remember too that he’s doing this trip for a goal of helping poor families in 3rd world countries (www.firstgiving.com/loucollins).
