4 Years on the Road

In April we celebrated 4 years on the road. I love taking the time to look back at our year and all of the amazing experiences we've had. This year we traded the big 37ft fifth wheel for a 16ft Wolf Pup travel trailer. Wow, what an adjustment!

The big RV was like a condo on wheels; two bedrooms with doors that closed, a large bathroom with shower. The new RV has one door which opens to the wet bath, basically a toilet inside a shower. It's so small we never use it as a shower. It has a bunk bed which the kids and I share and a couch for Daddy. It's not perfect, but it serves our purpose. We wanted to sell the big RV while the market was good for it and we needed a smaller RV to easily explore the narrow roads and low bridges in the northeast. We intended to only be in it for less than six months, just until we flew to Spain, but plans changed. Our route took us from Florida up the east coast into Canada's New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before heading back to Florida and then to Las Vegas.

We attended church with Jimmy Carter, stood in the bedroom of George Washington during his stay at Valley Forge, and learned all about Minutemen in Massachusetts. We witnessed the largest tide change in the world at Hopewell Rocks, went clamming in the Bay of Fundy, counted falcons and helped release tagged butterflies in Cape May, New Jersey. We hiked Clingmans Dome in the Smokies, Cadillac Mountain in Acadia, and White Point in Nova Scotia. We encountered a bear with cubs along a trail in Shenandoah. Asher rode a motorcycle. We visited two zoos, multiple nature centers and museums, LEGOland and Dutch Wonderland. Took factory tours of Cow's Creamery and Hershey. We tried raw oysters, discovered we love clams and mussels and fell in love with hot, buttery lobster. We participated as a family in our first Night to Shine event.

We explored 37 National Park sites, 7 State Parks, and 5 National Wildlife Refuges this year!

I attended my first birding festival, The Biggest Week in Ohio, and my first international birding festival in Colombia. I saw 10,000 sandpipers and plovers resting along their migration path on the beach of New Brunswick and brought my total bird species count to 771. Daddy spent a month in Cuba walking the same streets that his father did so many years ago.

This year we added 13 new states- Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,  Delaware, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, plus Washington D.C. and three new Canadian provinces- New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. This brings our family totals to 47 states, 6 Canadian provinces and Japan. The only states we're now missing are North Dakota, Minnesota and South Carolina.

What will this next year look like? Good question! We haven't really decided. You'll just have to watch as it unfolds.