I’m an ocean person, through and through. When we first considered Asheville, I was skeptical. Could I spend a few months in a town so far away from the ocean?
It turns out that yes, yes I can. It doesn’t hurt that we’ve seen two bears in the mountains since we’ve arrived (bears being my favorite animals). I think I could spend a lifetime learning how to photograph this beauty.
(Photos: Behind the wheel, about to leave Salem; Packing the Van; Sunset in Boston the night before we left)
We had big plans of hitting the road running with a travel blog and regular updates. Although we arrived in Asheville on July 1st, the transition has been a bit of a bigger one than I anticipated. Here’s my full disclosure: I’ve been writing, but not anything I’ve been proud to share. In an attempt to push out that funk, I’m updating and backdating entries, providing just a glimpse of what our travels have been like.
Please excuse any sloppy grammar or a lack of eloquence around my word choice- these first few posts here are blog posts in the truest sense of the word, and reflect the hectic nature of the first few weeks of our digital nomad existence.
After almost 17 years living in Massachusetts and 5 years of home ownership in Salem, MA, Justin and our two cats hit the road for a year of being digital nomads in our (new-to-us) VW campervan. Selling our home and leaving brought about a million emotions, many of which I’m still processing. But, it’s time for an adventure.
Day one on the road, and we made it almost halfway to our first destination (Asheville, NC) when the van started shaking like Apollo 13 re entering the atmosphere.
Already emotionally depleted from the final push of packing and leaving, I was pretty over it. After debating a (cost-free) night in the Walmart parking lot or a splurge on a hotel, we hunkered down for the night with the plan to get the van looked at in the morning.
Next morning, J drove off with the van to get it looked at. I was fairly certain I’d never see him again, but I was also a little too exhausted to care…
It’s worth noting that at this point in the trip we actually have two cars – we weren’t able to sell Subaru Sally before hitting the road. Not a problem, we figured two cars meant we’d have a backup vehicle if something went wrong.
Only… when I turned the key in Sally on Day Two, vehicle number two wouldn’t start.
That’s right, day two of a year long road trip and we’re already down two cars.
Epilogue: Turns out one of the van’s tires had separated, so it’s a good thing we stopped when we did. Four new tires later, and the van is ready to rock and roll. And, thanks to the magic of AAA, the Subaru is also back up and running. Turns out the battery had been painted over to protect it in shipping, and that was causing a bad connection. We scraped the paint off, had it jumped, and the Subaru is ready.
We spent a few days in York, PA with friends – and got to Asheville only a few days later than anticipated. The important part was we arrived all in one piece – and we took advantage of a slightly different travel plan to spend the night camping (with the cats) on top of a mountain in the George Washington & Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.
Grabbed from a Facebok post: Movers just asked if we were moving to start college. I’m just sitting with this information as we trust these folks to carry and pack all of our worldly possessions.
Edited to add: one mover just tripped over a box and did a full flip. He informed me he was “too busy looking at me” and forgot to watch where he was going. Also, they tried really hard to rip my favorite chair in half because they were convinced it broke down into two parts. (It doesn’t.)
