We have a nephew, Ben, who lives and teaches in Shenyang, China. He has been there several years now. While there he met a woman, fell in love and is getting married on June 27th. She is Chinese and her name is Fanny. We met her in Midlothian when she came with Ben for Christmas in 2013. She is wonderful and she and Ben are great together. I've never figured out how Beatty men seem to find beautiful women who are way out of our class, myself included. We are going to the wedding, but not taking the RV! Imagine that.
Now the original plan for the summer of '15 was to take a ferry from Bellingham, Washington to Wittier, Alaska, spent 3 months touring Alaska then drive back to the lower 48 thru British Columbia and Alberta Canada. A great plan that we are happy to postpone. Rather than take time out of the Alaska trip we have decided to take a tour of China, then go to the wedding, then hang out with my (Bob's) brother and his family. 'll be gone about just under 4 weeks.
There are some logistic items that need to be addressed for anyone going to China. First you need a Visa. But before you can get a visa you need an invitation to go to China and a detail itinerary including cities, hotels, and airline info. This took some work. The invitation was easy as Ben emailed us one. Diana worked long and hard to determine what tour, if any, we wanted. There were spread sheets, emails and phone calls among several possibilities. She work hard on this while I sat back and just agreed to do whatever she decided.
Once that was figured out came time for the visa application. Based on our mailing address in South Dakota, we were expected to appear in person at the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. What, What!? But we found thru our tour company that they use a company that will do this for us. Nice! One issue is that once we filled out the forms we had to mail our passports and all the documents to this company. Once they get the visas, they FedEx it all back to us. Even though we have a mail service in SD it takes a long time for us to get mail. The current arrangement is that when the documents are ready to ship the company will call us and we will give them an address so it can be shipped directly to us. No problem except we are not sure when the documents will be ready or where we will be at that time. Fun stuff.
Now another item that needs to be addressed is different than for most people traveling. When most folks go on a trip they leave their house and then come back to it. We have to figure out what to do with our home, the RV. It would also be convenient if the RV were in the same city we fly from and back to. Huh! We are flying from Seattle for a variety of reasons. After some work, (not as much as Diana's work) I found a place near the Seattle airport for a great price. We will be able to leave the RV at the campground and plugged into electrical power. This means we don't have to empty the refrigerator and shut the RV down completely. A big help. Additionally we can leave the Jeep with the RV and take a cab to and from the airport. This saves a boat load of $ on parking fees. Happy time!
We'll try to keep you updated with addition posts as needed.
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