Bobby alluded to this in an earlier post, but I thought I would add my thoughts.

Our pastor asked me in an email a month or so ago if I was anxious and ready to get home, having been on the road for over six months. I answered that I was looking forward to being home, but not necessarily anxious to get there. I told him that I didn’t feel like we’d been gone that long, but that I knew things would be starting to end when we got up to Washington and then turned around. That happened today.

I realized, as we were driving away from Port Angeles this morning, that we have gone as far away from home as we are going to go. From here on out, every place we go will be slowly bringing us closer to home. We still have plenty of places to go, mind you. We’ll be visiting five national parks in the next month and a half. But each spot takes us slowly east.

No more tide pools, oceans or lighthouses. I love all three. I’ve told you this before, but I could sit next to a tide pool for hours, watching the goings-on and never get bored. I find incredible peace in the small movements in there. I think lighthouses are incredibly romantic. They are sentinels on the coast, out there to protect ships, their sailors and their cargo. I have always wanted to live in a lighthouse on the coast, and I will miss seeing them.

We aren’t going to drive Highway 101 again, either. We have been driving on that road since the beginning of March and today, when we drove through Olympia, it ended. No big fanfare or signs, just a merge on to I-5. 101 takes you along the coast of California and Oregon and around Washington’s Olympic Penisula. It’s the road to be on when you want to see the coast and the small towns that populate it. Convenience-wise, it’s great to be on an interstate again, but I’ll miss the charm 101 has.

We’ve been on this trip for almost eight months although it doesn’t seem like it. And not until now have I thought about this trip actually ending. I knew it was going to, of course. But for the past eight months, all I have thought about is the trip — where we’re going, where I’m shopping and doing laundry, when we are having school. It’s time to adjust the focus a little, even broaden it perhaps. To getting back to Northern Virginia. To eventually finding a new home.

Another friend emailed this week and said that she is trying to prepare for the day we are no longer blogging, safe back at home and Airstream-less. She asked us to think about how we were going to prepare others like her who have probably spent more time than they should (!) following our adventures. I guess this is how. Sharing with you the small (and not so small) things we realize are not going to happen again during this trip. Maybe if we deal with one thing at a time, we’ll all be ready at the end of July.