Notes from the travelers, hooray! We are still here, still trucking, still weird.

core/paragraph

medium

large

thumbnail

medium_large

1536x1536

2048x2048

core/image

We find ourselves these days in the fine state of Vermont. We are really taking our time and drinking in the states we are visiting and it has been a really good change. Despite the fact that we are "taking our time" in many ways, the beginning of this leg of travel did involve quite a bit of hopping around and travel more than we would have liked. As we made our way through PA and NY and up into Canada to see Niagara Falls, we definitely moved more frequently than we would have preferred, but we did manage to restrict our travel to shorter distances to stay in the "regions" we were visiting- and that helped. But, once we got up to Upstate NY and into VT we have been able to slow down a lot more, which has been a relief.

We are still playing with our travel pace, and it seems like it might be a never-ending task to try to understand just what works for us. In the previous camper there were many factors that impacted our travel that are different in this new one.

image of a travel trailer parked between trees on a sunny day with a black truck in the foreground

First, the old camper was smaller and less complicated to hitch up and park again, so it wasn't a huge deal to move frequently because there wasn't a lot of set-up involved. The new camper is way more complicated and way bigger. Once this beast is parked there is a lot of hesitancy to move it.

Second, the old camper was smaller, and begged for much more "outdoor living space" so that we could spread out our living space. The new camper is so big that we can all literally be in different rooms at certain times of day, and as a result, for better or worse, we spend much more time inside, causing our outdoor space to matter a lot less. The change of scenery is nice but not usually as necessary as it felt in the previous camper. If a campground isn't the best, it doesn't really matter much because we can avoid it.

Third, we are starting to understand how our mindset towards our nomadic life impacts our experience of it. The beginning of this adventure saw us as a family desperate for a change, so we headed south and west and we saw a lot of new things. In the first six months of travel we covered ground from Ohio to Texas and all the way up to the Southern part of Oregon. We visited a lot of National Parks, we took a lot of pictures. We did, in short, what a lot of travel families seem to be doing. But then we got tired.

The pace was too fast and we were desperate for a little consistency and ended up parking in New Mexico from May-November before it finally got cold enough to migrate again. We had a really different winter too, with more travel than i- the first year. Instead of parking for 4 months in Hill Country, we left with the New Year and kept moving, but more slowly. Instead of moving 2-5 times in a week as we did while traveling through California we had less ground to cover and booked longer stays, up to two weeks in length and meandered across the Gulf Coast before turning North to Ohio for the early spring.

After 6 weeks in Ohio, as I described in the last post, we decided to keep to this slower pace as much as possible. And still... we got tired, about the time we hit the eastern side of the Adirondacks. Alex was tired of driving, I was tired of planning, Ben was tired of New York, and all of us where wondering when the heck it was going to get warm outside? There was a lot of tired, grumpy, frustration in the camper and once more, as it happened in Northern California/ Oregon, Alex and I found ourselves asking- do we want to be doing this? Do we want to stop? Do we want to live in one spot again? If we do--- where is that place?

In the beginning, travel was for us a means to an end--- figuring out if full-time travel worked for us, understanding what we wanted from "home", and most importantly, trying to understand where we wanted home to be. When we were travel weary in Northern California, we talked about buying land in Southern California to live off-grid and homestead, and we did buy land in New Mexico to learn about off-grid living. When we were in New Mexico, we began shopping for small homesteads in New York State, where gardening and small farming seemed so natural, and wondered why we felt a pull back to the Northeast. We have since concluded that the familiarity of the landscape is what interests us in this region.

We love New England and wanted to move to Massachusetts about 4 years ago when it wasn't even remotely an option for us. But, there has always been a pull to explore this area in the camper and figure out if we really like being in the area (as close to full-time as we can get). So, we again, found ourselves shopping for plots of land, properties with houses, asking what would we want from a stationary life? Would we be stationary full-time or migrate in the winter? I still don't 100% know the answer to every question we have asked ourselves, but we have concluded one thing: We are Lake People who like mountain views. That's it. It's not that complicated, surprisingly.

We like to hike, swim, kayak, boat, bike... and we like to do those things in nice green landscapes. So here we are, in Vermont, in view of Lake Champlain with a backdrop of the gorgeous high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains and I can't recall a time when we have ever felt less desire to move. We are due to leave (after a 20 day stay here) and head North to the Burlington area on Sunday and we are already pouting about it. So... we did it! Yay? We figured out where we like to be and that's good, but it's also frustrating because we aren't in a position to act on that right now, and we aren't entirely sure what we want to do with that knowledge. We just got the new camper and truck, we have bookings through the end of the year and plans early in 2023, but yet, here we are.

We are contemplating some options for how to handle this "realization" of feeling very at home in this area and desiring to cling to that. For now, the plan to travel remains. Tentatively, our plans at this time are to go east into New Hampshire, maybe do some day trips sans camper into Maine (we really wanted to go to Acadia, but I don't know if we care enough to commit to a 6 hour drive to see it.) I don't know why, but Maine just never tops our list. This will be the second time we are up in New England and kind of "whatever"-ing Maine. Last time we blew it off for more time in Massachusetts, this time we are blowing it off to return to this exact campground in Western Vermont. Then, after another good long stop here we are going to meander south and then west toward Ohio to tie up some loose ends before we go south for the winter again. But we are really taking our time and leaning into a desire to be here in Vermont.

After that? As of right now we are on the waiting list for a seasonal lot next year in this region. We are feeling right now like summer is a good time for us to just park it and have fun. Maybe next year we will buy some kayaks or a boat to put in storage during the off season and do the bulk of our travels October-April. The winter season (no matter where we are) is kind of terrible, so moving around helps ease the strain of waiting for good weather to return again. And then, maybe next year we will be able to get a true grasp on where exactly our "home" might be. Maybe we will even find it. The beauty of being in this area is just how easy it is to really get around to different cities/towns/states. We are literally 1 mile from NY, 45 minutes from MA, 77 miles from the NH state line... there's a lot to take in and a lot to enjoy. We have the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains, the Taconic Mountains, the White Mountains, endless lakes and of course every quaint and pleasant little New England town along the way (not to mention Canada to our Northside.)

This is a really good area to go deep on some experiences and connect particularly to the history of the area. We took the kids to the Fort at Crown Point just last week and we expect to visit Ticonderoga sometime this year and discover even more as we explore (and study the American Revolution for homeschool). And that's really what we want more of, it seems. We aren't traveling to check off lists anymore ot to go out and find specific sights and photo-spots. We are trying to live a normal life where we want to be. That's been a really big and important shift for us.

There are no goals anymore other than to enjoy what we are doing and do more of the things we enjoy doing. The mileage doesn't matter, neither does the number of new states, national parks, fancy hikes, or fancy campgrounds. The romantic view of traveling full-time has worn off, for sure, but the love we have for being able to be flexible and respond to the needs and desires we have as a family is only growing more and more. We feel so grateful for our ability to have this experience and to discover these truths about ourselves and to have the chance to go after them. We couldn't be happier in the big picture. Sure there are hard days, there's frustration and expenses and stress that go into it, but that's just life in general. We don't really feel like we have more of that than any typical homeowner might have, it just manifests differently. But month by month and year by year we get a little better at recognizing and identifying what is or isn't working, why, and how we can course correct.

Without a doubt, the one thing will always be true about us though... we are travel people.