For all of our worries, we had an easy trip out of Mexico. The boarder patrol didn’t even ask about Grizzly and all of a sudden we were back in the States. Chuck from
Pura Vida dropped us at the Motel 6 (the only hotel that actually welcomes pets) in Tucson, Arizona just after noon on June 2nd. Still reeling from the previous days of work and shell-shocked that we were suddenly in the fast paced States, Chris wondered aloud if we should send out a report because he wasn't ready yet to be barraged with cell phones. I said, no worries, we'll just leave our phones off and return calls when we're rested and ready. So, out went a SPOT report and were immediately surprised when the hotel phone rang shrilly and it was Chris’ father Dave who had done some detective work from the SPOT report and found us! Welcome Home!
The next afternoon Chuck picked us up again and we headed to Phoenix where he deposited us at the Radisson. We spent two days in luxury here thanks to Priceline.com. While there, we put SPOT out on the balcony to send a report. For some mysterious reason the report never went out (this has happened a few times previously, probably the OK button wasn't fully pushed). More importantly, however, SPOT had a little vacation out on that small balcony as we sadly forgot him there. So many times on the boat one of us would look at the other and say, “did you bring SPOT in?” and immediately run up on deck to find him, hours after the most recent report had been sent, still blinking away at us. We were worried that taking him off the boat might be a mistake, and this worry proved founded… But never fear, he was found by the cleaning service and mailed to Chris' rafting company in Idaho from the hotel. I managed to talk Chris into taking him along as he guides down the Middle Fork and Main Salmon this summer. So this summer we will all be able to continue to follow Chris' track in the wilds of Idaho via SPOT, and hopefully there will be no more SPOT-centric misadventures.
We have heard that SPOT has been very helpful in soothing worries of those land bound that care about us, and we tried to send out near-daily reports from
Tao. One downfall is that the SPOT website only displays the past 7 days of reporting so if you are interested in a longer term map of where we have been, I want to remind you that while on board we also sent winlink position reports (although less frequently than SPOT reports) via the HAM radio and you can check the past several months of those positions by clicking here:
http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionreportsDetail.aspx?callsign=KI6MTD. Keep checking back to the blog this summer we hope to upload several posts on our reflections of the past 7 months of adventuring as well as updates on our current whereabouts and future cruising plans. Let us know if you have any questions about our journeys and we'll try to post answers.
For all of our worries, we had an easy trip out of Mexico. The boarder patrol didn’t even ask about Grizzly and all of a sudden we were back in the States. Chuck from Pura Vida dropped us at the Motel 6 (the only hotel that actually welcomes pets) in Tucson, Arizona just after noon on June 2nd. Still reeling from the previous days of work and shell-shocked that we were suddenly in the fast paced States, Chris wondered aloud if we should send out a report because he wasn't ready yet to be barraged with cell phones. I said, no worries, we'll just leave our phones off and return calls when we're rested and ready. So, out went a SPOT report and were immediately surprised when the hotel phone rang shrilly and it was Chris’ father Dave who had done some detective work from the SPOT report and found us! Welcome Home! 
The next afternoon Chuck picked us up again and we headed to Phoenix where he deposited us at the Radisson. We spent two days in luxury here thanks to Priceline.com. While there, we put SPOT out on the balcony to send a report. For some mysterious reason the report never went out (this has happened a few times previously, probably the OK button wasn't fully pushed). More importantly, however, SPOT had a little vacation out on that small balcony as we sadly forgot him there. So many times on the boat one of us would look at the other and say, “did you bring SPOT in?” and immediately run up on deck to find him, hours after the most recent report had been sent, still blinking away at us. We were worried that taking him off the boat might be a mistake, and this worry proved founded… But never fear, he was found by the cleaning service and mailed to Chris' rafting company in Idaho from the hotel. I managed to talk Chris into taking him along as he guides down the Middle Fork and Main Salmon this summer. So this summer we will all be able to continue to follow Chris' track in the wilds of Idaho via SPOT, and hopefully there will be no more SPOT-centric misadventures.
We have heard that SPOT has been very helpful in soothing worries of those land bound that care about us, and we tried to send out near-daily reports from Tao. One downfall is that the SPOT website only displays the past 7 days of reporting so if you are interested in a longer term map of where we have been, I want to remind you that while on board we also sent winlink position reports (although less frequently than SPOT reports) via the HAM radio and you can check the past several months of those positions by clicking here: http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionreportsDetail.aspx?callsign=KI6MTD. Keep checking back to the blog this summer we hope to upload several posts on our reflections of the past 7 months of adventuring as well as updates on our current whereabouts and future cruising plans. Let us know if you have any questions about our journeys and we'll try to post answers.
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