Elise, Third Grader

Here we are, back where we started. Many folks have asked us, “Didn’t you find any places during your year that you would love to live?” The implication, of course, is, “Why did you move back to DC, for the love of Mike!” We found lots of places we enjoyed: Southwest Harbor, ME (not in winter), Charleston, SC (not in hurricane season), San Antonio, TX (not in summer), Tucson, AZ (same), San Diego, CA (as expensive as DC more or less, plus fires, cataclysms), Portland, OR (little too not sunny), Ashland, OR (not a lotta jobs), Estes Park, CO (tourist destination more than town). We liked all of these places for many different reasons, but we learned that the Washington area — despite its terrible traffic and high cost of living — has many things going for it: the four seasons (not the hotel), three hours to the beach, two hours to the mountains, the Smithsonian (among numerous other cultural landmarks), good schools, lots of jobs (I only need one of them though), and most importantly family and friends.

Elise started school on Tuesday, so the rhythms of suburban life have begun. We have a contract on a house that is walking distance to Elise’s school and Danine’s parents. It’s a five-minute drive to church and the grocery store, ten minutes to everything else you can think of. I like routine and I’m looking forward to settling into one. Our trip will act as a filter for life here, encouraging us to slow down and live relatively simply. We’re still trying to sell the Airstream, but I can picture us owning another some day. That’s about it for now.

Blogging a bit about our transition back into the “real” world seemed like a good idea — maybe not so much for you, the reader, but for us, the transitioneers. We’ve been home for three weeks now. Boy. What an adjustment. I did some temporary appraising work for my old firm, but now I have to start looking for an actual job. Appraising is a bit slow right now to go it alone full-time. I’m hoping to do appraisals for a couple of clients and go back to an IT job with a salary and an office and a commute and spreadsheets and memos and maybe even PowerPoint. I’ve been talking with a friend about his company, which seems to respect family and doesn’t have the culture pervading many tech firms. That is, it doesn’t equate long hours with productivity, but may actually (could it be?) equate actual results with productivity. That’d be keen.

We are also looking for a house, although, admittedly, that’s hard to do when you don’t have any income. We are working hard to stay in Falls Church and within the boundaries of Beech Tree Elementary. The house we sold practically backed up to the school and Danine went there when she was a kid. We went to the welcome picnic and met the principal (we’re impressed). Elise is gearing up for school — literally: the amount of gear required has greatly increased since I was in third grade. The supply list specifically indicates that students may not have wheeled packs. This implies that such packs may be necessary due to the mass of learning accoutrements the students will be lugging. Don’t worry, though, I believe that students may attend free pilates classes to build up the necessary core body strength to handle the load without permanent injury or hampered growth.

The trailer is still for sale. We moved it out to Stephens City, VA (near Winchester) to the home of our friends John and Kelley. They have a lovely home on three acres with an apple orchard across the street and mountains in the distance. I got to drive the Airstream between trees and through the front yard to its parking spot beside the house. We’ll miss it, but at least the trailer has a really great view.

All of these things keep us busy, but not the hiking, exploring, learning kind of busy we have gotten used to. It has been good reconnecting with our community of friends and family since we’ve been back. We even took a vacation already! To the beach with Danine’s family. It was pleasant, as always. I think we are both looking forward to going over the blog and living vicariously through our past selves. We want to convert it into some albums for us and, heck, maybe distill some of it into an article.

After 11 months, over 27,000 miles, more than $7,000 in gas, $300 in quarters for laundry, and 35-odd National Park sites (and junior ranger badges) we are at rest in Falls Church, Virginia once again. We lingered an hour and a half past check-out at Big Meadows on Wednesday, but we finally had to leave. Gosh, we sure saw a lotta stuff this year.

Naturally, people want to know what we liked the best, or the least. We can give answers for that, but I really enjoyed the whole thing as a Whole Thing. It was a journey, come what may. I’d love to do it again and make changes based on what I now know, but I don’t regret any of it. We are incredibly lucky to have even left on this year about, had safe travels for so long, and returned home welcomed and supported by our friends and families near and far.

Having spent a few days back in the asphalt jungle of Washington, we are surprised at how little has changed and how it seems as if we haven’t been gone long at all. Already the trip is moving out of the present moment and into memory. That’s kind of a shame.

We are planning our working lives again, registering Elise for school, and looking at houses to buy. Just one, actually — and it’ll have to be cheap since we’ve got less money and mortgages are harder to get now. These transitional times can be tricky, but we have managed them before and aren’t too worried.

One thing I’ve found since being back: I am reluctant to take up the stressed out, impatient, impersonal approach to life that is prevalent in the Washington area. Here, if you aren’t doing something you are wasting time. Look busy! Maximize efficiency! Leverage synergies (or something)! Frankly, I’ll just be here in the right lane, taking my time. I prefer it. The trick is to consciously oppose these attitudes, to say hello to the grumps anyway and let them cut in line instead of arguing about it. I feel that if I return to the typical behaviors in this area, I’ll have wasted some of the valuable experience I gained on this trip.

We didn’t receive any big revelations, nor did we undergo any stunning transformations. I know that we have changed, the three of us, in our relationships with each other and with the world around us. I believe the changes are complex, but overall good. I’m glad for what we’ve seen, for the context it provides for our lives, for perspective.

Elise with cousins Katie and Grace

Our peregrinations have brought us to this final spot in Shenandoah National Park. The weather has been rather mild for July, not too humid and not too hot. Only one significant storm blew through on Saturday evening, but it didn’t inconvenience us thanks to the wise and multitudinous preparations of Danine’s sister Lyn. She has taken the Scouts camping enough to learn how to prepare for every eventuality.


Conor and Taylor

Since we arrived, we have had a number of gatherings. On Saturday night Danine’s brother Colin and sister Lyn along with their families joined my parents and us for cooking out and catching up. On Sunday afternoon we set up in the picnic area and many friends and more family came. It was a welcome back party and everyone welcomed us joyfully and warmly. Many who came had followed the blog all year and some we hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Thank you, loyal fans.



Honestly, our time here has brought on all sorts of conflicted feelings. We are good with settling down and reintegrating with the work-a-day masses. The hard part is remembering, say, our glorious progression from the Grand Canyon to Moab or our quiet days from Elk Prairie campground in the redwoods up to the Olympic peninsula. I think it’s the transition we are dreading — not job worries or house worries so much as the great big mental gear shift that has to take place. It hasn’t always been easy being a tiny, three-person community, but it’s what we are used to right now and it’ll be strange to wake up and go in three different directions each day.



Meanwhile, everyone has been — and surely will continue to be — incredibly supportive and we’ve had a great time here at Big Meadows. We walked a little of the Appalachian Trail on Monday with Danine’s parents and Elise’s cousins Katie and Grace. I’d begun to feel resentful of the many people who told us on Sunday and Monday that they had seen bears on the way into the park. We spent eleven months going to places where bears live and saw only two. Then, on Monday evening, a gentleman walked over to our campsite and pointed to the nearby wooded hillside. There, we watched for about ten minutes a small mother bear and her two tiny cubs foraging for insects. All three wandered among the rocks and lifted or knocked over the smaller stones looking for good things to eat. It was marvelous.



Later Monday evening we went on a ranger guided walk through the meadow. We munched on the wild blueberries growing in it as we walked. Throughout the meadow deer were grazing. Scores of deer. Scores! We watched a fawn about 70 yards away run and leap in circles for the sheer fun of it. Each evening next to our campsite a ten-point buck walks and munches grass. White-tail deer are much handsomer than mule dear. I’d forgotten.



The sleeping weather has been great: cool, not humid. However, even the low humidity is still way too high compared to the West. It wouldn’t hurt the park to install some blimp-sized air handlers and dry this place out a bit. Another upside: few mosquitos. Another downside: gnats, gnats, gnats with a capital gee. These gnats are not disturbed by air currents and will even form a cloud directly in front of a blowing fan (to mock us).

Tuesday morning we went to a ranger talk on birds of prey. Ranger Georgette even brought out two Real Live Birds. Both were owls. The first was a charming Barred Owl. Did you know owls have ears that are asymmetrical — one side is higher than the other? This helps them triangulate the noises made by poor, hapless mice and such. In fact, if you put an owl in a completely light-free room and release a mouse, a healthy owl will find it one hundred percent of the time. That’s ninety-nine point nine percent more often than me. The second owl was a screech owl, which is about the size of a thick paperback book. They don’t screech. Go figure. Did you know that if we had eyes similar in proportion to our bodies as owls do, we’d have softballs sticking out of our heads?



In the humid, langorous afternoon we roused ourselves to go on two hikes. The first was up Bearfence Mountain which requires a rocky scramble to a 360-degree view. Next we joined up with our friends Tom and MJ, along with their son Joe, to hike down to Dark Hollow Falls. The falls were lovely and the water was cool — just ask Elise. She fell in.


MJ and Tom with Danine, Joe with Elise

Tuesday night will be our last campfire of the trip. Tomorrow we drive to Falls Church and begin a new phase of life. I’m sure we’ll be fine, but there’ll be a little bit of sadness as we leave behind this incredible year about.

I’ll write another entry once we are back, so don’t worry.

Our plan was to go tubing on the New River. (Here’s a secret: it isn’t new at all.) Then we woke up. Tubing — that is, sitting or lying in an inflatable tub whilst floating along on the gentle current of the river — just seemed like too much work today. Instead we went into Blacksburg.

Elise had a speaking engagement anyway. Kristie’s son Patrick wanted her to come in and talk to his preschool class. We went with her, but were not needed. She answered questions such as, “Do you have a fire extinguisher?” and traced our route on a big map.

Afterwards we headed back to Kristie and Al’s for a home-cooked lunch. Al biked home and joined us. One of the highlights of living and working in Blacksburg is biking to work and many other places. We spent the afternoon hanging out with Kristie. We went to the YMCA thrift store because they have used books. I bought a hardback copy of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose for two bucks. Elise got an original (1954) copy of a Trixie Belden mystery…for ten bucks! Apparently they are doing a brisk business on Ebay and, thus, even the thrift store is raising its prices.

You may recall, or not, that during the early months of our trip I read a lot of disaster narratives. I’ve read some other things in between, but I’m back to tragedies. I found a cheap hardback copy of Moby-Dick last month (I don’t remember where). A few weeks ago Elise wanted to read it. She read the first page and I read the rest of the first chapter to her. She liked it okay, but didn’t want to hear more on account of the strange, stranger language. I, on the other hand, got hooked. I’m lovin’ it. Don’t ask me why, but it’s a great adventure story and a fascinating character study of the monomaniacal Ahab. I’m on page 230 or so and Moby-Dick has been talked about but not seen yet. In fact, no actual whale hunting has taken place. Of course, I know how it ends.

We plan to end our travels more peacefully. Whatever our faults (they are legion), we are not monomaniacs. So we got that going for us. Which is nice. Tomorrow we drive to Shenandoah National Park. We are going to take the scenic route, the Blue Ridge Parkway and then Skyline Drive.

I just used mapquest to look at directions from Falls Church to Big Meadows in Shenandoah. It looks like it’s going to take about 2 hours to get to us on Sunday if you are coming from the Falls Church area. I had mistakenly put in the blog that it would take an hour and a half. If this distance is too long for you, please don’t make yourselves crazy trying to get to us. Four hours is a lot of driving for one day.

Make no mistake — we would love to see you Sunday, but not at the expense of unhappy kids or tired parents. If you can’t make it, we will see you when we get back. Count on it!

Last night after the community dinner, Elise and I were invited to join part of the group for dominoes. We had never played, but John tutored Elise and I picked things up as we went along. After three rounds she asked John if she could play by herself and at the end of the game, Elise’s score was lower than his! John’s 94-year old mother (who was also playing) told John that he needed Elise’s help a lot more than she needed his! We were playing a version of dominoes called Mexican Train and we had a great time. This morning Elise and I played another round together while we were waiting for our laundry.

Today was another wonderfully relaxing day. We all did chores in the morning and the afternoon was reserved for hanging out. Bobby and I worked on a puzzle and Elise was involved in another sewing project with Ms. Gail. We are all going to miss this group when we leave on Saturday.


Jimmy, the camp host, gives the kids a ride in the golf cart.

Tonight my cousin Kristie and her husband Al came for dinner with their two kids, Patrick who is 4 and Jack (Jacqueline) who is 2 1/2. We see them often at family functions, but it is a rare time that we get to just sit down and talk together. The beers were plentiful and the food was good so we enjoyed them both while we caught up on all the news. Tomorrow, Elise has been invited to Patrick’s class to talk about the trip. She’s a lot excited and a little nervous. We’ll let you know how it goes.


After-dinner sports.


The sunsets keep getting better.

For those of you coming to Shenandoah to see us this weekend:
The weather for Sunday is looking a little dicey. Thunderstorms are possible so you might want to bring some rain gear. Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain, though. All of you can’t fit in this trailer!


Elise reads a bedtime story to Patrick and Jack.

For sale to a good home

When the sky turned black and the thick clouds started billowing towards us from the west, I thought it would be a good idea to put up the awning. The awning on our Airstream is 21 feet long and a great shady refuge on sunny, calm days. When the wind kicks up, however, it becomes a sail that the array of bolts, poles and pins holding it in place cannot hope to resist. At first I started the process casually. I’m used to it now and I have a routine. The last step is to grab a long fabric tab and roll the awning up towards the roof, letting go so the spring takes it the last foot much like a window shade. As soon as I grabbed the tab the wind blew and made the canvas ripple. Normally I like the tab to be straight and flat, but I made an exception and got it rolled as quick as I could. A second later the wind was strong enough to knock over our camp chairs and it brought the rain with it. Whew! With regards to Airstreams, “sailing” should only be used as a metaphor and never attempted in reality.

We drove into Floyd today. No, we didn’t hit anybody. It’s the nearby town. They have a big music festival starting tomorrow and it’s famous as June Carter Cash’s home town, but we just came for sandwiches. You know how we are about food: we eat it regularly. We had another humdinger of an outing — not quite as good as riding the only escalators in Athens County, Ohio. We went to Wal-Mart for the last time. We have always felt our frequenting of Wal-Mart to be a sort of unholy alliance, using their free overnight parking and cheap RV supplies as our reason to go. Those are good reasons, of course. Alas, those reasons are about to end for us. Yesterday I put Shackleton (as we call him), our cozy, shiny home, up for sale. He’s listed in the classifieds on airforums.com. Feel free to buy him.

Already we are angling for ways to get another Airstream and get in a few trips here and there, but first things first. We need to get settled, find a home, and — I shudder to think of it — go back to work.

Highland Haven had a community dinner tonight and, as guests, we were welcome. Since food was involved it was not difficult deciding to go. Elise has already spent hours sewing with Ms. Barbara and Ms. Gail. For her it was, as it always is, a social outing. The folks here are great: incredibly friendly and kind. We have felt welcomed and at ease since we arrived. I won’t talk it up too much because I don’t want it to get too popular. So forget I mentioned it.

My main chore while we are here is reading the daily racing news from the Tour de France. Despite doping scandals and organizational fallouts I love this race. It’s equal parts insane test of endurance, wargame, technological showcase, insane test of skill and nerve, and carnival. Danine is very tolerant of my chore.

Oh my gosh, we are back in Virginia. And I’m not ready to be.

Today we drove from Ohio through West Virginia and into the Old Dominion. On I-77 to get from West Virginia to Virginia you drive through a tunnel. As soon as we got through it, there was the sign: “Welcome to Virginia”, complete with the red cardinal. This year, every time we have entered a state, we read the sign all together and really loud. Today, as soon as we said, “Welcome to Virginia”, I started to cry. Bobby choked up, too. We weren’t expecting to react this way, but I can’t say that I’m surprised. Our arrival in Virginia has crept up on us and its suddenness is unexpected.


Our site at Highland Haven

We are staying in Copper Hill, VA until Saturday at Highland Haven, an Airstream-only RV park. It is actually a co-op. People buy a share in the park and that gets them a site here. They can use the site for the whole season (May to October) or not. If they aren’t in the site, the site can be “rented” by people like us. For $21 a night, we have full hook-ups, wifi, laundry (50 cents a load, both washer and dryer!), use of the clubhouse (pool table, library, social functions) and a beautiful view to boot. It is incredibly quiet. Bobby accidentally scared away two deer from the back of our site this morning.


This bumble bee spent ten minutes looking for pollen on Bobby.

We plan to see my cousin Kristie while we are here. She is a professor at Virginia Tech, about 45 minutes from here. We’re going tubing on the New River tomorrow (a flashback to my days at Tech) and maybe into Floyd on Friday for a festival. But most of all, we are going to relax and just hang out. It is, after all, our favorite thing to do.


Elise with Martha, Hannah, and Nathan

Elise works through a sparkler in the driveway.

Our drive yesterday was not too long and pleasant. Ohio is not hard to look at, when you are driving on the secondary roads. We got to toodle along another piece of Route 50 and saw field after field after field of corn. Thanks to ethanol subsidies, it seems to be the only crop this year, aside from the strawberry fields we saw in California. The farmers are happy because they are finally making some money on their crops. Corn takes a lot of nitrogen out of the soil, though, so they won’t be able to grow corn forever. Some crop rotation will have to be done to keep the soil in good shape.


This luna moth has been hanging around the front door since yesterday.

We ended up in Athens, Ohio to visit some friends from our old neighborhood in Annandale. Dean and Laurie have three kids: Martha (8 1/2), Hannah, (7) and Nathan (almost 5). Martha and Hannah were some of Elise’s first friends and they haven’t seen each other in about two years. The girls played together often — at the playground, the nearby nature center or each other’s houses. Luckily Laurie and I liked each other so play dates were fun for everyone! It has been wonderful to see these girls pick up where they left off so easily and quickly.

They have moved up to Athens so Dean can work on his PhD. in Electrical Engineering at Ohio University. Dean drove us around campus last night and it is lovely. Founded in 1804, it is the oldest college in Ohio and ninth oldest public university in the United States. The highlight of the tour was going into the student center and riding on the only escalators in the county!


Hannah gives her sparkler a whirl.

Athens County is the northernmost county in the Appalachian region. Correspondingly, some might say, it is the number one county in Ohio in terms of number of residents on welfare. There are old coal towns nearby and today after we all went to church we rode our bikes to one. The Plains is about three miles away from here on a rails-to-trails bike path. The destination was a food spot in The Plains, Jana’s Soul Food Cafe. Yum-my. They were only serving brunch today and that was no problem for us. Bobby had a curry tofu salad, Elise had (of course) chocolate chip pancakes and I had a Happy Hill which consisted of fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, red peppers, and scallions covered in melted provolone and cheddar cheese. Yes, it was delicious. Dean shared his sweet potato pancakes and Laurie forced herself to eat her Scrambled Mess, a delicious concoction of scrambled eggs with green pepper, broccoli, zucchini and a side of fried potatoes. All dishes came with a large slab of toasted marbled rye bread with honey butter. Like I said, it was good.


Nathan’s turn.

Tonight the girls are going to see the new American Girl movie while Bobby and I sneak out for yet another date night! I think we’re going to go see The Dark Knight and eat our dinner at the movies.