Michael Binkley Embarks on a Year Abroad

It has been a long-time dream for Michelle and I to live and work abroad for a year, and we are finally executing the plan. We have said goodbye to our cozy home in North Vancouver, BC,  Canada and are on our way to the UK and Europe.

My blog will shift a little to reflect our journey, and I hope you enjoy following along. We are traveling as a family, taking our two dogs, Mylie and Munro with us. We’ve packed our life into 5 suitcases and two backpacks. We refuse to fly Munro in cargo of a plane, so we are getting to the UK by surface. We are driving across North America to New York City, New York, USA and there we will board the Queen Mary 2 for a trans-Atlantic crossing.

Michelle’s sister drove us across the border to Bellingham, WA, USA. The border guard was a little confused with the 5 of us, but we crossed without too much fuss. After picking up our rental car (a nice GMC Acadia), we packed ourselves into it, bid Michelle’s sister goodbye and started east.

The drive through Washington state, the Idaho panhandle and western Montana was a very pretty drive. Large dramatic skies and we scuttled under a thunderstorm in Butte, MT. Already, ideas for new paintings are swimming in my head.

We stayed in Coeur d’Alene, ID the first night, a lovely lakeside town that absolutely has public art down to a tee. We could not walk more than one block without seeing a discrete piece of art – wonderful. Vancouver could take a lesson! Pictured (l-r) is a giant sundial, lakeside drain grates, abstract wood figures and giant metal dandelions gone to seed. The latter moved gently in the evening breeze.

Tonight, we are in Billings, Montana before heading for to South Dakota.