All shook up

I write this from the banks of the Mississippi River, in West Memphis, Arkansas. It seems that it's taken us a while to get here, just over a week, but it has all been a good time! After driving away from my mom's house in suburban Philly, PA, we drove down south, out of the snow and spent the night in Lexington, VA. This is the home to Washington and Lee University, nestled between two mountain ranges, the names of them escape me right now. On the way there we watched the snow disappear until a nice bit of rain took over the highway and obscured our view of any scenery. Using our "Healthy Highways" book we found a sweet local co-op in Lexington where we stocked up on some food for the next few days. Our first RV park was actually attached to a truck stop, quite noisy and we have learned a lesson not to visit a truck stop/combo RV park again! It rained all night and the next morning, giving the inside of the van a nice cake of red mud from the dogs and our shoes!
  We continued on our way to our next stay in Fletcher, NC which is close to Asheville. We met some really nice people living in the campground, a family with a 3 year old and 7 month old. Sorrel and Parula quickly made friends with Mick, the 3 year old, and played with him in the giant sandbox/playground for many hours during our two day stay there. We checked out downtown Asheville, which is very "local business" oriented and very vegetarian/vegan happy, which we liked. We ate a late lunch at a great vegetarian spot called the "Green Light Cafe". The next morning we got off to a bit of a slow start and had lunch with my friend Chris and his wife Lea in Asheville. I met Chris on a NOLS course in Wyoming in 1999 and we both lived in AZ at the same time for a while and went on several (epic?) backpacking trips which included some altitude sickness, wolf carnage, life-threatening flash floods and scarily close lightening strikes. Yipes! It was great to see them and hear how much they love Asheville and take advantage of all the mountains have to offer. It definitely seems like a nice place, but being in the midst of all this land makes me yearn to be closer the the ocean!
     I met a really nice man at the RV campground in Fletcher, as he and his wife were departing. He told me that he and his family (he is currently a retired doctor) packed up a VW pop-top bus and drove from NY to Alaska and back when his daughter was just one year old. He told me it was a great time and was happy to see us on our travels, reminding him of his trip long ago. It is great to hear stories from all different kinds of people along our travels, I am quickly realizing that the RV travelers have a lot of travel bug in them, which James and I both have been infected but have just started exploring as a family!
   Our next stop was Nashville, TN. We were aware that the forecast was calling for rain, so decided to do a night in a hotel. Once I actually saw what the weather was calling for I was very glad we chose a solid roof over our heads. Apparently the Tennessee valley was in a severe weather warning (including where we were currently located), severe thunderstorms that could lead to tornadoes were a strong likely-hood. Even though I missed the van for the night, I sure was glad that we were snug in a big building for the night!
    We departed a bit late this morning due to some laundry mis-haps at the hotel, but avoided more storms and downpours by leaving mid day as well. With new wiper blades on the van we got back on I-40 for as long as we could handle it, for about 5 hours, which got us to West Memphis, Arkansas. We found the Tom Sawyer RV park on the internet with little hope that we were going to find anything between Memphis, TN and Little Rock, AR (apparently nothing comes up between these cities, and looking at the map there isn't much going on around those parts!). This RV park is quite a hidden little gem. We drove through some broken-down neighborhoods, industry, over the railroad tracks and back a bumpy windy dirt road, out into the plain on the banks of the Mississippi. I heard tree frogs earlier this evening, a sound I won't even think about hearing until May in Maine, and Sorrel was very excited to see a barge going up the river shortly after we arrived. Tomorrow I am curious to see what Arkansas has to offer, I have never been here before, only heard a few things about Texarkana (which appears to be a cross between Texas, Arkansas, and Louisianna). I only remember seeing roadsigns pointing to its direction when in Northern Louisianna a few years ago for a wedding....
       Arkansas's modo is "the Nature State", of which I was unaware of before today, so I am very curious to see the "Nature State" via I-40 and maybe some more camping here tomorrow!

First little bit

We departed Sunday around 11 am, we had hopes to leave much earlier, but alas this did not happen, and never does. I had high hopes at the beginning of the day that we would make it all the way to Pennsylvania, but quickly realized that this was not going to happen. We stopped for lunch in Portland, even getting food "to go" we still took an hour stopping. This trip is very familiar to us, as we have driven many times to visit the Piersons in CT and on down to my family in PA. The hour of 5 pm came upon us quickly, and we were very close to the Hartford area. We surprised James's Aunt Nancy with a phone call and shortly there after arriving in her driveway to set up our traveling camp for the night. Thanks Nancy!

Guppy reading to the kids

Walk along the River with Skip

The next morning we were on our way, again not really getting on the highway until about 11. A short time later, before getting out of CT Parula started puking in the car. She got to about 6 vomits before we arrived at my mom's house in PA (poor drained little girl!). She was wiped, and we had a dinner of miso soup and seeing Guppy (my mom) really got her spirits up and she was back to her happy self the next day. We got to go on a nice walk with my dad, Skip, on Tuesday along the Schuykhill (skOO-kul) River and have spent some great time with my family, including a trip to the "Please Touch" museum today with my sister and my
                                                    niece, Paige.

Carousel at the Please Touch Museum with Katie and Paige

Nickel, age 20

It was also very nice to see the Nickel, the cat that is now my mom's, but she was originally my 10th birthday present. So now she is almost 20 years old, and just a figment of what she once was, all fur and bones, and this is probably the last time I will get to see her. It was a very sweet thing to spend time with her! She sought James out every night for a special Reiki session from his healing hands....the animals definitely know who to go to!



Tomorrow we will embark on the next stage of our adventure, into the realm of the unknown. We don't have any family or friends to stay with south of here, and only places to discover. Sorrel expressed his dislike of sitting in the van all day on day two, so it shall be interesting to see how this goes. Perhaps we will need to travel a day, explore the next, then travel some more. I'm sure we'll figure out a groove to make this work for us all. One thing that I do know is that I'm ready to see the ground! It snowed the first two days of the trip so far, both in CT and in PA, and we left Maine to a knee-high of snow still in the ground. I am ready for some ground!

So off to bed and on south, maybe Virginia will be our next stop, we shall see!

Preperation

It is Monday night and we are hoping to leave Sunday (February 20). The ultimate goal is to be open minded, drive south away from the cold north, and then west. The camper van will be packed, kids in their car seats, dogs on their sheepfur beds on the floor. We will visit family in the northeast on our way south in CT and PA, and then continue on through the Great Smoky Mountains, through the deep south (well, deep to a northeasterner), and then on to the desert west. Perhaps we will find a new place to live, perhaps we will find out that mid-coast Maine is where we shall live. We will make our way back to Maine, hopefully with an idea of where our future shall reside. Along the way I will attempt to post on this site to keep our family and friends updated on our travels and discoveries. If you live anywhere along the way and would like to have a big van in your driveway for the night, let me know! We will be well equipped with fridge, stove, and beds as part of our wheels- gas guzzling food eaters. At least we won't be forced to compromise on greasy road food, which I have really come to loath in the past few years. Today is Valentine's day and our fridge at home is beginning to empty, the chickens are going to the neighbor's house tomorrow, and the basement is finally insulated. And so the cleaning and packing shall begin....