On the road again with a whole new look and a whole new outlook on the nomad life and the ways it works for our family. Here we are. I hope you're still with us.

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It's hard to even wrap my head around the fact that we are 5 months into 2022. Beginning this year's travel on the second of January primed us well for an action-packed year of travel, but the last 6 weeks have been a crazy whirlwind unmatched even by our sprint of travel through California.

We came "home" to Ohio. After 18 months away we made the trek home, and I would be lying if I said there weren't mixed feelings about it from all of us. We came home for a wedding, for a visit, for wellness visits to the doctor, and most importantly: to pick up our new truck and fifth wheel camper. So a lot of feelings, a lot of stress, a lot of activity as we came in with a long list of things to do as well as a long list of family gatherings, friend hang-outs, and events to attend. But, we came through it on the other side with some interesting perspectives on the whole experience.

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Our first conclusion: We were worried about feeling a tug to stay put at "home" with friends and family nearby... we did not. Not for lack of love of our friends and family or to dismiss the good times we had with them, but we are not home in Ohio. We thought that when we left and it was confirmed with this return. In many ways, it feels good to know it with more certainty now.

Second conclusion: The one-month visit turned into a 6 week stay and it was waaaaay too long. We had a lot to do and that dictated the length in many ways, but because we didn't feel a lot of "warm and fuzzy home-vibes" in this visit, because there was a lot we would have rather been doing or seeing, and because all of our normal routines and activities that fit int he "travel lifestyle" fell to the wayside and really through us off. Future Ohio visits are going to be 1-2 weeks and no more if we can possibly avoid it. Our home is on the road right now and it is really really hard for us to be in one spot for too long.

Third Conclusion: Visiting your roots and pulling back out again feels like ripping off velcro, and it gets harder the more time that passes. Part of this six week marathon in Ohio was due to the fact that deliveries kept getting pushed back, or there was something else to do, or someone else to see, and it "made sense" to just hang out for a little bit longer. Every day that passed, we felt ourselves getting pulled into the rhythm and schedule of the people around us more and more and it kept making it that much more difficult to pull out and move on. As it sits we are still missing birthdays, graduations, baby showers and more that we would be happy to be a part of were we not travelers. But we are. We realized that we just had to leave. It was past time. We got some stays booked out and a sense of direction and it was time to pull that velcro apart and detach again.

We left today. We drove our new truck and our new camper to our first real campground in this new iteration of our lives. Our first stop was in Pennsylvania and it wasn't an accident that the first stop was out of state. We could have stayed in Ohio longer and camped somewhere else, but it wasn't the right move. We needed to get some miles under us and we needed to completely change the scenery.

To be entirely honest, we so desperately wanted a change that we had considered scrapping our idea to do New England this year. But, we talked ourselves down from that drastic change. Instead, the new plan is to do New England, but do it differently. We aren't going to do a mad dash to see everything and cover a ton of ground. We also didn't start by heading south to visit family - sorry West Virginia and New Jersey family... but we are "familied out" for the moment. We need our normal crazy days back that's just us, settling in to our new home and finding our new rhythms. So, we ran away to the north, seeing mountains and lakes and open skies, the places we find ourselves the most. I will be surprised if we see more than PA, NY, VT, NH, ME, and MA this year. We are going to be moving around a lot, but we are going to move within the states instead of through them. Instead of a beeline to get to a specific destination we are just going to float around and land in places that seem like places we might like. No stress. There's not a lot of national parks up here. There's just a lot of history and a lot of beauty, and a lot to experience that we want to experience. So, that's the plan.

After a whole year in the east, I definitely foresee 2023 slingshotting us back out west again though. We already feel the ache in our hearts for the desert. We have also been devastated by the wildfires ravaging our beloved New Mexico.

We are just taking the next step, observing the changes in ourselves and being open to the adventure as it unfolds. We don't have a crystal ball to gaze into, but we do envision this being our journey for at least 3 more years. There's just so much out there to see and do.