The Trip Begins
After months of planning and prepping the day finally arrived, on my birthday of all days, for us to pull out of our driveway and onto the road that would lead us in search of 70-degree weather. As we pulled out of the driveway it was 20 degrees, much colder than our target temperature.
Our first night had us spending the night at Myrtle Beach State Park so we could celebrate my birthday, which we did. The temperature dropped down to 30 that night but we stayed “warm and toasted” as our oldest granddaughter once said.
Next on the journey was a trek off the highway in search of a place to walk by a river. That trek nearly got us stuck in our van but we managed to make it back to a paved road and keep heading south. This leg of the journey ended at the Georgia coast with us spending the night boondocking at a Cracker Barrel. That’s where the journey will continue next week.
During this week we also solved our need for better internet connectivity while traveling by getting a Verizon Hotspot and the prepaid unlimited data plan. So far that has been a great addition to the van. I’m creating this week’s blog while connected to it and it’s just like being at home. We’ve watched whatever YouTube, Hulu or other streaming as much as we’ve wanted without worrying about using all the data like we have on previous trips. It makes it feel just like home even though we’re living out of a van on the road.
But, It Just Feels Different
It does. It feels different… to have no deadline… no reservations… nowhere you have to be on any given day or hour… just free to literally go where the road leads you. Every day starts out with a conversation of “where do you want to go today”. We’ve now started tweaking that conversation to say where do you want to end up a week from now, which makes the planning of the route and camping sites a little easier to accomplish. But, it’s hard to put into words just how it feels to have that kind of freedom. You see, we’ve been on many long trips in a camper, even a 6-week trip in our van to Acadia. But, each of those trips had reservations and things marked on the calendar that required us to be back in NC by a particular time or be in the next state by a certain date for a reservation. So it seemed we were always hurrying to get somewhere so we could relax. Now, it’s just never hurrying to get anywhere and the relaxing is just part of the normal every day life. The only stress so far is adjusting to this lifestyle of freedom, but we are making strides to get to be pretty comfortable with it so far.
We’ll continue to update this BLOG as we continue this journey in search of 70-degree weather. It’s a great problem to have don’t you think?
Watch the episode here:
VAN TREKKING lifestyle 