Day 41

Monday – WE ARE HOME! 41 days 10 hours and 54 minutes and 12,266 miles are 25th anniversary trip is official over. Now to get back to the routine. Praise the Lord for a safe good trip. We thank each one of you for your prayers.

Day 38

Friday- We left Goshen about 8:30am and arriving at our campsite southeast of Wooster, OH about 2:00 pm. Tonight we went to the BMA Convention and met a lot of friends and acquaintances. Tomorrow the sessions are from 9am to 9pm so I don’t know when I will have time to post again.

Day 37

Thursday - We had a uneventful trip to Goshen other than a lot of traffic around Chicago where we had bumper to bumper traffic in five lanes going our direction and people weaving in and out. Even had a motorcycle with a rider and neither had helmets driving about 80 mph in and out of traffic. Some people don’t value their lives very much. We had a good time with the Burkholder’s catching up on each other’s lives.

Day 36

Wednesday – We were on the road by 8am and made it to Davenport, Iowa by 3:30pm. Trip went very well and now we are 450 miles closer to home. It is hard to believe that just 8 days ago we left Hyder, Alaska and that it is so far away now, but when I look at the odometer I realize it is 3072 mile behind us. We didn’t even take one picture today. Basically the scenery consisted of miles and miles and miles of soybean and corn fields. We were really missing the seafood from Alaska so we eat supper at the local Red Lobster when we got into town. We are now parked at an RV park at route 80 exit 292 in Davenport and Debra is washing clothes for what she hopes is the last time before we get home. Tomorrow we have a much easier day. We have about 265 mile to Bremen, Indiana where we plan on meeting Larry Burkholder around 1:30pm at his place of work. He would like to show us around before we go to their home in Goshen. Larry and Vanita Burkholder and we became good friends when they started attending Hammer Creek church in the mid 80’S. In March of 95 they moved to Goshen to do 2 years of service with Gospel Echoes. When their term was up they stayed in Indiana so we like to visit them when we go west. For those that are not aware Larry is a brother to Raymond who had our evangelistic services at Shiloh in April. Friday morning we plan on driving to Wooster, Ohio to take in the BMA convention Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Day 35

Tuesday – We got an early start this morning knowing it would be a full day. Went to the Crazy Horse Memorial and got there before anyone was manning the entrance gates where they charge admission by vehicle. There were three motorcycles ahead of us. We had the place mostly to ourselves. The visitor center changed drastically since we were there 12 years ago. For those who don’t know what Crazy Horse is about 60 years ago the Native Americans asked one of the guys that had worked at Mt. Rushmore to carve a mountain so that the Americans would know that the Indians have heroes too. They asked him to carve one of their former chiefs “Crazy Horse” sitting on a galloping horse pointing towards their lands. Crazy Horse was quoted as saying “my land is where my people lie buried” when the US government was trying to put the Native Americans on reservations. The four faces at Mt. Rushmore would fit in the face of Crazy Horses face. This is a very large rock excavation project and that is where my interest lies in this undertaking. Our drive across South Dakota was uneventful. We drove 417 mile and stopped at exit 62 on I-29 midway between Sioux Falls, SD and Sioux City, Iowa. I decided to drop down to I-80 here rather than drive through Chicago on Thursday. Tomorrow we plan to drive to Davenport, Iowa which is about 400 miles.


Progress at Crazy Horse

Typical South Dakota landscape

Day 34

Monday – After catching up this morning with what we thought had to be done we left Billings at 10am. It took over three hours of internet time so as it was. Today we drove 350 mile to Custer, SD and are camped at a site a few miles south of the Crazy Horse Memorial. Today we passed the half way mark from home to Hyder, Alaska so I guess since it is closer home than to Alaska we will come home. We also said good bye to Montana and Wyoming today and since Montana would be our choice to live will set our eyes on PA. We know that the Lord has called us to the work at Reading at this time so we are eager to get home next week and seeing all our friends at Shiloh. We have been gone long enough and miss you all. We are looking forward to seeing most of you on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night of next week. Till then may the Lord bless and keep you!


We saw lots of train cars loaded with coal. We went past a
huge open strip coal mine. Each train was over a mile long
with two engines up front and two engines at the back with
about 125 cars.

Day 33

Sunday - We went to church today with the Swartzentuber’s and had a wonderful time worshiping with the group there. Five of the seven families come from Lancaster Co. so we made a lot of connections in the fellowship time after church and around the lunch table at the Swartzentruber’s. We needed to drive to Billings, MT on Sunday to keep up with our schedule. We finally got off at 4:30 and got to Billings around 10pm. That kind of was what we planned since we were going to stay in a Flying J truck stop for the night so we would have a good wifi connection. Something we didn’t have since Saturday morning and we were getting on behind in our email. We wanted to park after dark so it would be cooler since we didn’t have electric. From Billings we have about 2300 miles home.

Craig & Marita Swartzentruber and family


The harvest is infull swing in Montana