Category: Doing more

3rd quarter 2022: WheRVe we been?

Remember that time we left Maine in August and drove all the way to southern California for our pumpkin patch jobs that started in September? That was in 2019, and although the line on the map below makes it look like we’d perhaps forgotten that 3-week endurance test, we most definitely had not.

This year we made a similar diagonal, from Nova Scotia to New Mexico, but took closer to 6 weeks to do it.

We is smarter.

Being a little more pressed for time than usual, I’ll jump right into the maps and a quick sampler of our 3rd quarter travels. We’re currently in Albuquerque for the 50th Annual International Balloon Fiesta, volunteering with the Escapees Boomers, and our training/crewing schedule is going to have us keeping unusual hours. Hello to 4:00 a.m. wake-ups, afternoon naps, evening glows, and the sights & camaraderie that will make it all worthwhile.
From July to September, we racked up 8 US states, 5 Canadian provinces, and 6019 miles — only as measured directly between overnight stops, not all of which are on the map — on a jaunt that took us from MA, NH, ME to NB, NS, PEI, QC, ON to MI, WI, OK, NM.
We put way more miles than that on the truck, sometimes with the camper on, sometimes without, as we ran errands and visited people at each location.
(Map does not reflect actual routing.)
Just for giggles, I also made this very rough map of the counterclockwise loop we’ll have completed by the time we get back to San Antonio next month. We took off in Road Island in late April, and will return almost exactly 6 months later. It’s been a lot — in a good way.

Slide Show 1: NH & ME

  • In NH, we spent a night at the base of Mount Washington …
  • … visited Littleton, home of Pollyanna (I didn’t know either) …
  • … and hiked up to the Galehead Hut on the Appalachian Trail. Tough climb! (But not as tough as Mt. Washington, which is why I said no to that one.)
  • In ME, we spent a night on a horse farm …
  • … went on a hike with an old friend from our Norfolk days …
  • … ate lobster in many mouth-watering forms …
  • … and visited The WoodenBoat School in Brooklin. Tim was one happy guy, and I think a flame’s been rekindled.

Slide Show 2: NS-PEI-ON Canada

  • In Nova Scotia, we spent our 30th anniversary on a whale watching tour …
  • … wearing the same size full-body flotation suits we could have worn the year we were married. #brag
  • There were no bad water views in Nova Scotia.
  • See?
  • See again?
  • And of course we ate Digby scallops in many mouth-watering forms.
  • The Confederation Bridge took us to & from Prince Edward Island, which now ranks amongst my favorite destinations.
  • Again, no bad views, and we lucked out at two different waterside provincial parks.
  • Arch 1
  • Arch 2
  • Incredible skies…
  • … and sea life sightings …
  • … and an hour with Beach Goats (worth every one of my 10 Loonies) …
  • … and a Harvest Hosts farm with the best hosts ever!
  • Before crossing back into the US, we swung through Ottawa and visited Maman …
  • … and PM Trudeau. (Okay, he wasn’t there, but I definitely looked.)

Slide Show 3: MI-WI-OK

  • On Michigan’s UP, a friend let us stay on her family’s lakeside slice of heaven — so nice, we stayed twice!
  • We visited Kitch-iti-kipi, the miraculously clear Big Spring …
  • … and went for swims in both Lake Superior & Lake Michigan.
  • We went on a boat tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore …
  • … and spent a week camping in The Porkies (Porcupine Wilderness SP).
  • Labor Day brought a picture perfect weekend with friends in WI …
  • … followed by 2 weeks helping a cousin kick the ball forward on finishing the interior of his pole barn.
  • You know it’s a big job when a scissor lift is delivered.
  • Oh, and look who came over to read our flag one morning. Own less, do more, Bambi!
  • Last stop before Albuquerque: Tulsa, for a weekend with Andrea & Shawn, friends who’ve come off the road to live in a real house for a while.

Where to next?

After our gig here at Balloon Fiesta, we’ll head toward Sedona, AZ, for a week of volunteer preservation work with HistoriCorps at Crescent Moon Ranch. We’d first heard about this organization last summer, and immediately signed on for an October 2021 project in Oregon, but it was canceled on short notice due to excessive wildfire smoke. When the Sedona project popped up for this fall, it took all of two minutes to decide that the detour would be worth delaying our return to Home Base San Antonio by another week.

So yes, after that, we’re back in central Texas for the winter, for the usual visits with family & friends, all the winter holidays, and the doctor-and-dentist-go-round. We’ll also move out of Road Island (~150sf) and back into Tex (~320sf), and won’t that feel all kinds of extravagantly spacious!

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.

WheRVe we been? Our travels 2nd quarter 2022

Well how ’bout that? It’s not often you see my legs sticking out from under the truck (and please observe that they are crossed, so everyone knows that all those swear words are coming from a lady).

One reason is that Tim doesn’t have the same… photographic priorities?… as I do, so there just wasn’t a picture of me in said position until I asked for one.

Another is that a few years ago, he started getting wicked strong vertigo from jobs that involve lying on his back looking up at something close. Seriously. Like, he’s had to roll over and puke on the pavement, and then spend a few hours recovering from the dizziness and nausea. Not fun.

So as situations warrant, I take one for the team, scootch and wriggle my way under truck or RV, and do the best I can while Tim coaches from above. There’s typically lots of ratcheting and wrenching and volatile cursing, way more grime than I care to have touching me, and sometimes I earn bruises and busted knuckles as payment. True love.

In the photo above, I was installing the tow bar hitch thingie that makes it so we can put our bike rack on the front of the truck, instead of behind the camper, where it would block our one and only door. Having to remove the bike rack every time we need access is also not fun.

Why am I explaining this? Because it was the last thing we did in central Texas before we finally got underway in Road Island in April, and I can tell you right now, almost 3 months in, that buying the truck camper early enough to take it out for a test season before next year’s trip to Alaska?

Rather brilliant move.

By which I mean a fair amount of stuff has already broken, and we’ve fixed it. And a fair amount of stuff we’ve brought along has been deemed unnecessary (mostly kitchen items and clothing), but that’s greater than the amount of stuff we didn’t bring along but wish we had, so overall we did fairly well, and we already kind of knew there was no way we’d get it right the first time. Maybe next year.

So how about I get to the map and the whirlwind tour now?

13 states, 2864 miles — only as measured directly between overnight stops, not all of which are on the map.
We put way more miles than that on the truck, sometimes with the camper on, sometimes without, as we ran errands and visited people at each location.
(Map does not reflect actual routing.)

The really cool thing is that 4 of those 13 states completed our RVing map of the Lower 48!

Although we made stops in TX, LA, AL, and TN for quick overnights on the way, our first real destination was VA, so that’s where I’ll start.

Slide Show 1: VA-MD-DE

  • VA: Our friends’ kids are all getting married these days. Open bars help me feel less old.
  • VA: Tim upgraded our off-grid living options with lithium batteries and solar panels.
  • VA: Appalachian Trail day hikes for me; several overnights for Tim.
  • VA: The Big Oops. Gasoline in the diesel tank. Damage confined to our bank account.
  • MD: We’ve got friends who make brick oven pizzas at a winery all summer.
  • MD: Friendship, wine, and pizza make a perfect trio.
  • DE: Our 45th state, in the park where we first took our boys camping in 1998.

Slide Show 2: NJ-PA-CT

  • NJ: Skipped the drive; took the ferry
  • NJ: State 46 offered lakeside tranquility
  • PA: Moochdocked with friends we made at an A Year To Volunteer project in 2021
  • PA: Stayed a little longer than planned, because the fridge required a major repair.
  • PA: But while we waited for the part to arrive, we did the Philly thing.
  • PA: Cheesesteaks too.
  • CT: Our 47th state, and more A Year to Volunteer friends with driveway space!
  • CT: And a dog who rather liked the taste of my coconut curl creme. Oh, Marshall.

Slide Show 3: NY-RI-MA

  • NYC: We took the train from CT into the city for a day. Tim had never been there!
  • NYC: We crammed a lot into our 10 hours, but we definitely need a few return visits.
  • RI: Site 746 in State 48. Done! We hit Rhode Island in Road Island, and could not have planned it better than that.
  • RI: Our Harvest Host farm offered much quieter neighbors than that state park did. Enough said.
  • MA: We spent 4th of July weekend housesitting for friends. Came with a dog!

Where to next?

I’m publishing this in New Hampshire, then we’ll spend a few days in Maine, and then we’re crossing the border to visit our Canadian neighbors, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, for a few weeks. That means we’ll celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary outside the US this year, and I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened since 1993, when we marked our 1st anniversary in France thanks to a US Navy port call.

And there we were, married one year, posing in the hallway of our inn in Cannes.
I was 24; Tim was 27.
If you haven’t read our “how we met” story, or want a refresher, it’s here. You probably won’t need a hankie, but be warned that you might catch yourself grinning like a total sap.

The internet says that this is our Pearl Anniversary, and we’ll be staying in a waterside village in a province famed for its fresh North Atlantic seafood, so I’m thinking that wherever we eat out on July 18? I shall order the oysters.

Close enough.

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.