We Made It! NC, VA and MD

North Carolina 

(continued...)

We had a great time Patrick's brother Drew's house with his wife Megan and brother David too. One evening we went out with the rest of the Wildermann gang in the area for dinner and storytelling.  

We stopped at the Duke botanical gardens, the highlight was the NATIVE carnivorous plants. Yep, venus flytraps, pitcher plants and more come from here. Cool.

After an awesome local farm to table dinner we hit up The Moth! After hearing great storytelling on the radio over the years, it was a real pleasure seeing it in person.

We said goodbye, then drove north to VA. Sadly, we didn't get a picture of the sign, ah well. After a great night visiting with cousins Tim and Amy in Richmond, we drove into MD, the last state on our trip.

Here we landed at Patrick's dads house and UNHITCHED! We made it. With all our stuff. Unscathed. Phew.

We will call this home base for the rest of our nomadic time so our trailer will rest here until we move it into our home...somewhere....someday.

But, then we had to celebrate, so we went up to see good friends Jeff and Geeta near DC and partied it up.

Umm....Amy really just has to brag 'cuz this was her best bowling score ever. 152! Patrick can't believe his eyes.

And then we went to the coolest Halloween thing. A seriously done up outdoor event with a crazy haunted forest walk with elaborate scene settings, and more. It even included 'live' zombie shooting with paintball guns on a double decker trailer pulled by big trucks in a cornfield.  Now we can add 'shot zombies with paintballs' to the list of things we've done.

Then we headed back to Patrick's dad's house in La Plata, where we have been settling in, resting, and enjoying unpacking a little bit.

Enjoying the backyard. Below, a water snake welcomed Patrick back home in his favorite local park.

And look who made it! Well, most of Amy's plants did. The air plants got eaten by something at a campground in California, but the beloved succulents made it. Many of these were planted from Amy's bouquet and Patrick's boutonniere from our wedding.

The route through VA and MD

And an overview of the whole journey.  6500 miles. Or so.

We'd like to thank all of you who housed us and let us savor your beds and showers: Elizabeth and Jeremiah, Ingrid and Andrew, Peggy, Nanci, Shawn and Anna, Jaime and Raul, Fawn and Stephen, Drew and Megan, Amy and Tim, Jeff and Geeta, and Charles too. Love to you all and to the ones we left back in Wasington. We really miss you.

Oh, and 27 tanks of gas.

 Good thing we like to plant and grow things. That's a lot of carbon to offset.

From here we are planning our next adventures, looking for farms to stay on until we make a trip to MN at the end of the year. Then ....Asia? We'll see what conspires. Thanks for making the journey with us. This concludes our blog. But, stay in touch, y'all!

Week 7: TX, AR, TN, and NC

 

Austin, TX...continued

We went out one evening to watch the plethora of bats emerge from the Congress St. bridge. Unfortunately, the camera could not capture it, so you'll have to believe us that it was really cool. There were So Many. We watched as they kept coming and coming for a good 20 minutes. People watched in groves. Cool that such a big natural spectacle happens every night right near downtown.

The gals. Fawn and Amy have been BFFs since 6th grade. Thanks for the great stay Fawn, Stephen, and Nyah! Hard to say goodbye, but it's time to move on eastward.  But first, a stop in Round Rock, TX for a nostalgic trip down Amy's memory lane She lived here during preschool and elementary school. Yes, folks, if you didn't know, Amy has a little Texan inside her.

Round Rock, TX

THE Round Rock. Wow. Ain't it grand y'all?

Lil' Amy's old house.

We drove through fairly quickly, but enjoyed seeing bigger trees than we had in a few states.

Then, Tennessee, also a fairly quick tour through, but we stayed at a nice forested campground and enjoyed our first taste of the east coast woodlands. Patrick really started to feel close to home here.

 Next stop, great smoky mountains! Then, well it's hard to believe, but we are about done. Maybe I should say "done." Cuz where the 'end' is for us, is hard to say. But I know we ain't there quite yet.

  After a summer that lasted long into October it finally felt and smelled like back to school weather, which really made us miss Pathfinder.

 

Crunchy Leaves! 

The Appalachian Mountains.  This is about as tall as they get in the southern areas.

They used the biggest log around for the bridge.

Cool gourd bird feeders.

Walking around in crispy fall leaves with dry feet  was very familiar, but it's been a long time. 

An old Appalachian apple cellar.

Moss eye view.

 

The ferns here are tiny.

Last camping meal of the trip in Cherokee, NC. Pille family you will surely recognize my bowl.

Groundhog! Amy's first time seeing these guys.

I've seen these in books for years, but never in real life.  A caterpillar that looks like a snake, a cartoon snake.

Out of the mountains we landed in cool-town Asheville, NC where we ate some delicious farm-to-table food (organic fried chicken = num), and then had chai in a snazzy double decker bus coffee shop.

Cool street art...

Then we spent our last night camping, with temperatures in the 30's so ... yeah....we're done. We've only stayed in 2 hotels this whole trip, and we've gotten our fill of tent sleeping and dish washing by headlamp for awhile.

Here's our continued route:

We're in Raleigh now but we'll head up to La Plata on Saturday, which, here with family I guess is just about the 'end' of the trip.  It's been about 7 weeks of camping and staying with friends, and it's great but very sad to be finished.  After more than a decade each in Seattle, we're a little homesick already and it will sink in even more as we start to settle here. 

P.S.
And we finally unpacked the fossils from way back in Fossil Oregon and got a good picture of the best ones.  We looked for about 2 hours, finding lots of little bits of fossils, and a few larger ones like this.  I especially wish that I could spend more time looking now that I'm so far away. 

P.P.S Gas in the east is CHEAP. I'm not sure I ever saw it below $3 in my dozen years in Seattle. Top price was $5.01 for premium in LA. Yowzers. It pretty much got cheaper as we went east.