It is strange to go back and fourth between living in a house, trying to enjoy and participate with a community and living full time on the road for months at a time. It’s nice to have a place to go to regroup, deep clean everything and spread out a bit. Take a long shower…maybe even a bath! We can never join sports or most activities knowing we will take off for months again soon. I’m always pondering and trying to balance what’s best for the kids, they get to see and do so much because of our full time RV life experience. However, they also miss out on things like playing sports, and the joy of a good regular friend to hang out with. I wouldn’t change all the wonderful fun and family time we have experienced. But I also feel the clock ticking away on our time with my girls in the home. They will be highschool age soon and I want to give them all the opportunities possible before they have to start adulting. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully stop living part time on the road, but I sense a long break coming soon. They want to give public high school a try and school sports and they miss our church when we are gone and their youth group and friends. I was worried buying a house would lead to less and less travel…and that is exactly what it has done. For better or worse.
So….where was I? 2020. Right. The Crazy 2020. I don’t like to talk about the pandemic much. I think we get enough of it everywhere we go, on the news, as we put our mask on to enter a grocery store. I was dissapointed to find that when some of my favorite shows started back up, the CO-VID pandemic was in them as well. Well, however controversial, we got our fun and adventure in-pandemic or not. I covered the spring and summer travels in my previous post. We came home in late June for a wedding and and some other commitments. We enjoy home for a little while, but I find a month or two in, I get the travel bug and start plotting when and where to go next! I have always wanted to see Maine, especially in the fall. Over the past couple years we have made some close friends that live in Maine, so it was time to go visit them and finally see Maine in the perfect time of year! In my last post I wrote about the first part of 2020, so this one will focus on the remainder of the year’s adventures.
We hit the road late at night after a wedding in late September. We like to leave at night, it works for us. Often we only get an hour down the road before heading to bed but we have found it is much smoother to leave at night and wake up already on the road the next morning. We pointed it North-west and chose the route that brought us through Eerie, PA. We took a lovely lunch break at Presque Isle State Park then took the opportunity to go to our new favorite Brewery, Eerie Brewing Company where we discovered our favorite beer. Soleil Shandy, yum! Stop in if you are ever in the area!
From there we completed the drive to our friends beautiful home in Gorham ,Maine. A small town about 13 miles west of Portland. We parked on their property, along with another family’s class C and had such an amazing time of fellowship! Although earlier than usual I’m told, our timing was absolutely perfect and the leaves were just beginning to change when we arrived. We got to be there for the whole change as the trees transformed into their famous North West Fall magnificence and when we left two weeks later, there weren’t many left leaves left on the trees! Unbelievable beauty.
We thoroughly enjoyed our two weeks in Maine, eating fresh lobster, visiting the beach, picking apples from the orchard and enjoying friends and beautiful scenery.
We also took the opportunity to head up to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor and absolutely loved it! It far exceeded my expectations. We were only there for a weekend and we definitely hope to stay for longer next time!
We decided to spend another week seeing somewhere new before heading home. There are still several states missing from our sticker map in the north east, so we chose Rhode Island. We left our friends in Maine and headed down the road to Burlingame State Park near Charlestown, RI. This state park campground was enormous! Although many of the amenities were closed due to CoVid and off season, it still turned out to be a lovely place to stay while we explored some of Rhode Island. (Although you can always find an overnight parking place for free, we find it to be very difficult to find longer term boondocking spots anywhere near the east coast). While we were here, we did one of my most memorable family days out ever! We took a ferry from Judith Point in Narragansett to Block Island. Block Island is a lovely little island 13 miles off the coast of RI. It is small enough to see most all of it in one day. We rented bicycles and spent the day riding by the ocean, exploring this beautiful little place. It was off season for visitors so we felt like we had the island to ourselves! We visited farms, lighthouses and possibly my favorite little private beach of all time. I highly recommend visiting Block Island if you are ever nearby!
We also took the opportunity to walk a little ways along the Cliff Walk in Newport, RI. This neat path is along the ocean and goes by lovely historical mansions. It is a great way to see much of the famous architecture and grounds. Another day I took the boys to Providence to visit a Children’s museum. Lastly, I took all the kids to Coggeshall Farm in Bristol, RI. This neat place is meant to recreate the daily lives of tenant farms on a salt marsh farm, focusing on the 1790s. There we got to visit old farm buildings and equipment that demonstrated more of this area’s rich history. We spent the remainder of our time relaxing at the campground, visiting local eateries and playing on the nearby beaches.
We returned home to Ohio after that. It was mid October already and we had a month to regroup before we headed to Florida to spend thanksgiving at Jon’s mom’s house and visit the Florida Keys for the first time!
One of the cool little day trips from our house that we did was The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, KY. The Ark is a lifesize depiction of Noah’s Ark and an amazing education on biblical times. The art and research of culture and history is truly incredible. If you go check this place out, don’t plan anything else that day. It is a time consuming activity. Be prepared for a lot of reading. I would need 2 or 3 days there to really consume the information available without my head spinning! They also have one of the best playgrounds I have seen.
We left our house in Ohio in our home on wheels in late November and pointed it south towards Florida. We parked in our usual spot in my Mother in Law’s backyard in Daytona and spent a couple weeks soaking up the sun in Florida. It is always wonderful to be riding bikes and skateboards in the winter in shorts! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration and we got some good beach days in too.
We left Daytona the first week of December to go see the Florida Keys. I have always wanted to see the Keys and they did not disappoint! It was colder than we would have preferred the week we went, but still one of my favorite adventures we have done because of the cool things we saw and did. We had a really hard time finding parking because everywhere is so booked this time of year and because of the amount of people we have. A couple friends of ours flew down from Ohio and joined us for the week so we wanted to be near them. Finding a place to stay dictated which part of the Keys we stayed on. We ended up at Tropical Cottages in Marathon, FL. They let us park and stay in our RV on site and our friends stayed in a cottage for the week. We did not have any hookups and ran off our solar for the entire time but we were just so thankful to have a spot! The cottages were nothing fancy but they have a great outdoor hang out area with a tiki bar and Marathon is centrally located making it easier to drive to both sides of the Keys.
From our spot in Marathon we explored some really cool places. There is so much to do and see in Keys it is hard to pick and choose! Everything gets expensive when you have a family of 7! So after checking out all our options, we decided to go to the Sea Turtle Hospital and the Dolphin Research Center. The Turtle Hospital was right there in Marathon and was an amazing educational facility. We got to see dozens of different sizes of sea turtles. Some injured that will live there forever or go to another facility and some being rehabilitated to be released back into the ocean. This place has done a wonderful job of caring for these creatures and educating visitors.
The Dolphin Research Center was soo awesome! We got to see dolphins and sea lions in training. They are such magnificant creatures. The dolphins are so smart and full of personality! They are so fun to watch and it was a great education of how they are trained. This place was definitely a favorite for us.
The men gave kite surfing another shot, we hung on the beach, the kids did some snorkeling. We visited some great playgrounds, rented Jet Skis (one of my favorite things!) ate unlimited crab legs, and took a drive down to Key West to walk around and visit the Southernmost point in the US. Most importantly, we got to spend time with some great friends and made family memories. It was an awesome trip and I would love to go back to see more!
We left the Keys but before heading north to Ohio, we stopped at Everglades National Park. We took an airboat ride which is supposedly necessary to really see the area. We also sat through a little educational alligator/crocodile presentation that was super fun.
By now it was mid December and we were ready to head home for some downtime and enjoy a quiet family Christmas with just us in our house in Ohio. Maybe the first Christmas that was just us!
2020 was a year to remember for the entire nation, maybe world. For our family it was a year with tons of adventures and new places. It is a joy to look back and be reminded of all the family memories made and fun places we have seen since purchasing our travel trailer in 2018. Even though we don’t live in it full time anymore, we make the most of every opportunity to travel and see family and new places. However, we also enjoy spreading out a little in our house and being part of a community in Ohio. God is good.