We pulled out of the driveway last Friday, after a nostalgic final wander through the house that my parents built 40 years ago and that has been our home for the past three years. For a few minutes, I was immersed in a cascade of memories, made more poignant by the knowledge that we would […]
Happy New Year, dear friends! I was reading over my New Year’s post from last January (The Sacred and the Profane), and I can’t come up with anything better than that. Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem about mindfulness and the hilarious sentiment about bucket lists holds just as true this year as last. And honestly, I […]
In my last post, I left you and myself with the delusion that the transition from our home on the bay in Florida to our new tiny house in North Carolina was going to be relatively painless. Well, our buyers reneged, just before the inspection. It turns out that the woman was overwhelmed by the […]
The past three weeks have been grueling. Preparing a house for sale is never fun, but it’s especially terrible when it comes on the heels of a four-and-a-half month road trip. As I mentioned in our last post, we were not anticipating selling the house right now. We barely got the trailer unloaded before we […]
I‘m curled up on our comfortable sofa with my coffee, enjoying our expansive view of the bay, listening to the cheerful song of the Carolina Wren and the wind as it rustles through the palmettos. This has been my morning routine for almost three years now, ever since we found ourselves unexpectedly transplanted to the […]
I realized a few days ago that it’s been more than a month since I’ve posted a blog. As I’m writing this, we’re in Michigan, with a fabulous view of Lake Huron and Mackinac Island. This has been an excellent summer, filled with all kinds of adventures in the beautiful Great Lakes region. And we […]
Towering 630 feet over the city of St. Louis, Gateway Arch rises gracefully from the banks of the Mississippi River. There is a timeless quality to the sleek, stainless steel design—it perfectly embodies the spirit of exploration, just as it was meant to do. The arch is, undeniably, the iconic symbol of St. Louis. But there’s […]
When we left Florida in mid-June, we knew that a heat dome was headed our way, and that we were going to be driving straight into it. We briefly debated rerouting our trip. But there wasn’t anywhere within a reasonable distance where we could escape the heat. “How bad can it be?” we asked each […]
I grew up in the Jim Crow South, when segregation was the law of the land. Although I was a child, I have clear memories of “white” and “colored” drinking fountains. On a bus trip downtown—I was less than five years old—I remember a Black woman being told by the driver to move to the […]
As of last Sunday, we’re on the road again. We’re heading north to Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, which is pretty much all-new territory for us. As always, it required supreme effort to break free of the gravitational pull of home. It doesn’t matter how much planning we do, or how far ahead we start the […]
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If you enjoy hiking, biking, kayaking, birding, art, music, quirky towns, good food, and good friends—you'll enjoy traveling with us. Join us as we explore the backroads of North America—we love company and comments!