Merry Christmas and Happy 2026!!!!

It's Christmas!!!!! Hannah (and sometimes me) always love Christmas.. there's presents, Christmas trees, family gatherings, cod fish cakes and snow... so what's not to love about Christmas. For this year,, I was telling Hannah, I haven't been back home (due to work and such), and I have been looking forward to this trip.

Our jeep (named Jeepy) is nearly 300,000 miles (and 25 years old). While it is still in relatively good shape, it's a bit drafty while on the road. You can feel the cold air coming in on the passenger's side, so we made sure to stock up with travel blankets, snacks, drinks, and we are on our way North! We had to stop at Portillo's (https://www.portillos.com/index.html) on our way because we missed the Italian Beef Sandwiches. It's just as good as we remembered :) 

Mom's Christmas tree was so pretty! I enjoyed the festivity it brings to the room, especially, this year because Hannah and I were late in putting up our Christmas trees (yes TREES - we usually have one in the living room, and a smaller one upstairs) due to just overwhelming amount of work. There was a sense of comfort with the familiar routine of Christmas - pasties and fried chicken, snowy walk around Fumee Lake, cod fish dinner at Aunt Lisa and Uncle Jim's place, family games, present opening, Friday Fish Fry C&R, Champagne (on the New Year's eve countdown) and Black-eye pea on New Year's Day.

We love (and who doesn't) a white Christmas! And white Christmas we had! There was a snow storm on Christmas Day, and it was magical!

Here is where 2025 became a memory! Happy 2026 everyone!

First long trip with Koru - cave diving adventures

Work has been getting in the way of enjoying Koru. We went camping at Pottawatomie County State Lake #2 (Pott #2) which is about 30 mins drive from home for a weekend. It is easy to take all these things for granted, and forget that there are beautiful camping spots within an hour from home! However, Hannah and I are itching about doing a longer trip with Koru. 

Along came the opportunity! We had planned to go cave diving in Florida AGAIN, and we decided to camp with Koru along the way, rather than staying in AirBnBs. After all, this is one of the reason for buying a teardrop, so that we do not need to spend tons of money on way-to-expensive AirBnBs. So we loaded up Koru with all the essentials (it took us so much shorter time than loading up the car with cooler, food and drinks, and all the dog and diving essentials), and we were on the road!

Camping in Koru is VERY NICE! After the challenge of backing Koru into the camping site (which I am getting better at after each try), we set up the kitchen, make a little supper and we can just relax and enjoy the nature. And when the night comes, we make the bed in seconds, and we are in bed. It is absolutely great to be lying in bed, with the heat on (when it is cold outside), and watching the stars as we dozed off into dreamland. A plus was Hannah's glowing nails in the pitch dark camping site 😍. Note to self - we need a have some sort of app where we can have records of where we camped and our reviews - because I cannot remember any of these when it is time to write the blog!

 

Although camping with Koru on the way to and from Florida was a blast, cave diving was not really too successful on this trip. Hannah was experiencing ear equalizing issues on our first dive, and had to call the dive early. She was experiencing a bit of vertigo, and it wasn't any fun for her. However, the fun thing that came out from the dive was that we had our first sighting of the otters at Peacock Spring!!!

Site: Peacock Olsen Sink

Duration: 52 mins

Max depth: 20.4 m

After the first dive, Rye started to feel sick - he wasn't eating and was throwing up his food. So between Hannah's ear, Rye's tummy and also (probably) my laziness, we didn't dive for the next 3 days. During the 3 days, we just relaxed, enjoy the company of friends and ate oysters!

Finally, everyone felt better on the forth day, and we decided to do a long, staged dive at Madison Blue! It was not exactly swimming weather (it was cold), so other than a few swimmers, we had the whole place (including the Madison Blue Cave) to ourselves. It was a long dive, which lasted almost 2 hours. Instead of going through the main lane to the sign board, we went through the "rabbit hole",  and hopped over to the main line at the sign board. The amount of gear is getting bit much and heavy - there's double 104s tanks on our back, a AL80 tank on our side, lights, regulators, and there isn't much "estate" on our (especially Hannah's) torso. It was a nice long dive, and at the end of the dive, both Hannah and I were exhausted... hmmm... maybe, time to explore using DPV for longer dives in the future 😃

Site: Madison Blue Main Line

Duration: 117 mins

Max depth: 24.0 m

Koru

Koru (pronounced "kor-roo") is a Māori word meaning "loop" or "coil," representing a spiral shape from a newly unfurling silver fern frond, symbolizing new life, growth, strength, peace, and continuous change, and is central to Maori art and culture. It also signifies new beginnings, harmony, and the cycle of life.

Ever since we moved back to US in 2016 after our life in New Zealand, we have been thinking about the time we spent traveling around NZ in our campervan. Hannah has since then been researching on what campervan and options we can get, and after a long going to-and-fro between having a campervan and a tow-behind camper trailer, we were going to make a decision between two teardrop RV -NuCamp and Vistabule. The reason for the teardrop is because we didn't really want nor need a huge trailer, and having a small teardrop to replace our tent camping seems like a very good idea! We rented a NuCamp a few years ago, and although we liked it, I think both of us decided that the Vistabule is for us.

Fast forward 9 years later, an opportunity presented itself! There was a "sale" at Vistabule, and they also launched a financing option, and furthermore, they are very close to making the 1000th unit! So, after a quick deliberation, we went ahead and placed our order for a Vistabule.

The rationale is that 1)we have been spending too much cost doing AirBnB every time we traveled to FL for cave diving; 2)the Vistabule will make use get out more often (camping, enjoying nature, relax); 3) getting up from a Vistabule is definitely easier on us after a long run (we are using this as a motivation to start our ultra-race again).

The company is super responsive, and we were kept updated at every stage of assembling our Vistabule. An on September 24, 2025, we drove to Minnesota (Vistabule factory) to pick up Koru (Vistabule #969). We were super excited, with me having a tint of nervousness because I don't really have tons of experience with driving a trailer. Trust me - I have learnt all I can from YouTube videos on how to reverse a trailer :) 

Our first night was spent near the factory to ensure that we can get help from them if needed. All's well, and the next day, we were en-route back to Kansas. Driving was relatively easy, without really too much differences in terms of gas consumption, but reverse is DEFINITELY something I need to get some experience in. I was really glad that there wasn't really too many people watching me when I was trying to reverse out of the tight space after filling the butane cylinder - well, it ended well with the butane-filling guy reversing it out for me!

Meanwhile, Hannah and I are excited about new beginnings with Koru. Keep an eye out for our new adventures.