Heading home

Well, we have turned another corner and once again headed east.

Heading home.

I remember many journeys and many times of heading home.

I remember giddy excitement of looking forward to being home.

...

It's different this time and I find myself pondering why.

What was it about home that called out to us after a journey? Were there things that we had missed?

If we had been camping, we were probably looking forward to a hot shower - or other comforts of home. Or maybe modern conveniences.

Depending who we had been with, we might be missing people - friends or family - and be anxious to see them.

If we had been gone a long time, maybe we were looking forward to just getting back to a normal schedule. Or maybe we needed to get back to our own doctor or dentist and other services available in our home community.

...

But this time, things are different.

As for the comforts of home...

Well, THIS is home. It has been our home for over seven months now and it really does feel like home. This rig. This tiny house on wheels. It is fairly comfortable - and in some ways more modern than the old log cabin that is waiting for us. In fact, we have a bigger shower in here than in the cabin - so I'm not too excited about that down-grade.

As for family and friends...

Yes, I am terribly excited to see the littles (AND their mommy) and to bask in hugs and songs and laughing all around for days and days. And yes, we are looking forward to seeing our extended families and our good friends and enjoying more hugs and great conversation. But here's the deal. We have been wonderfully blessed to have time with dear ones while out here on the road, too. Time that we wouldn't have had at home. There were great times with two of our daughters and other loved ones. Plus we met new friends along the way as well.

Then there's the matter of our weird schedule upon arrival back in Michigan. We will arrive "back home" in progressive steps - stopping here and there along the way to visit kids and grandkids and siblings and to celebrate a momentous birthday - probably all before we even get "home." I'm actually kind of wondering when I'll feel like we're home. Will it be when we hit the Michigan state line? Or will it be when we get to our daughter's house where the little sweeties live? That's where my aching arms get to finally embrace the little ones that I've been so homesick for and where I can get down on the floor and laugh and sing and play and be silly. In a very real sense, I'm guessing that I will feel like I made it back home at that point.

It's certainly not that I don't want to go home to the log cabin. I bet I'll be pretty excited to get there. It will be fun to have more space and to find stuff that has been packed away in storage. It will be fun for both of us to have our own desk again. And I know that I'm going to thoroughly enjoy my comfy old beat-up couch.

But maybe it's that I don't have to be there in that particular location in order to feel at home any more. I have now felt at home in other places as well as we have been practicing the art of building a life on the road - and a home on wheels.

All in all, I'm feeling pretty thankful. It has been an amazing journey. And yes, there will be wonderful things about getting home - wherever that turns out to be. And then I need to make those phone calls to set up those appointment for dental and medical check-ups! Oh, yes, we also need to pick up our box of mail from the post office and sort through it all.

I guess we'll know that we are home once we begin jumping into all of that "normal" work.

Oh, and when I can get back to my own hair stylist... Oh, yes, THEN I'll feel at home.

Thankful Thursday - a day off the road

We are taking a long weekend here in Lincoln, Nebraska. I have been calling them days off but today hardly feels like a day off because we have been working rather hard - laundry and cleaning and organizing - but it feels so good to be a bit organized again. AND to have clean clothes. Oh, how wonderful.

When we are on the road every day, things tend to get a little mixed up - and not even through any fault of our own. After all, we have to keep things tidy and picked up and put away or we wouldn't be able to move around or function in the tiny bit of floor space left when we put the slider in for travel. I guess the biggest point of disorganization on this leg of the journey has been the jumble of things in the cupboards. I'm not totally sure why they are worse this time than the other previous journeys, but I do know a couple reasons.

The obvious culprit has been the horribly rough roads in Alaska as well as through Canada along the Alaska Highway. Those miles are brutal. I am thankful to have lost only one dish to breakage - after hearing stories from other campers about opening a drawer and finding nothing but fragments of broken glass and even just powder. Yah, yah, I should have known better than bring ANY glass dishes. But, hey, evidently I did know better than some people because I brought only a very few pieces and I normally wrap them for travel.

But even beyond the breakage issue is that things simply slide around and tip over and then slide some more. I think perhaps our pantry was not as full this time which would certainly have allowed more room for things to roll and scoot around.

So the moral of the story is to cut back on the glass dishes and don't forget to cushion the ones we do have. And keep those shelves either full or empty. AND maybe to choose our route more carefully from now on. Like maybe not travel the Alcan again!


As I was saying, I'm feeling very thankful to have a day to slow down and take care of business. And then a couple more days to rest and hang out with dear friends. That feels really good after being on the road for 11 days straight.

I'm reminded once again that we need two kinds of days off - at least. We need days off from our normal routine to take care of business. And we need days off for rest and refreshment. I'm thankful we get some of each today and this weekend.

Campsites I have known

The campgrounds are different. One night we will be lined up with other campers in a grassy field. The next night we might have a lovely spacious wooded campsite with pine-needle-covered trails leading here and there. And then we may revert back to the truck stop style line-up on stony gravel without enough room to even open our slider.

These were in fact our first three nights of this leg of the journey.

But there is one really good thing about these different campsites: the fact that it we only have to step inside to be at home. What a blessing! Especially on nights like this when my body is so exhausted and restless and desperately needs to crawl into my own bed.

So here I go...

At home in the Yukon Territory...

Good night.

Heading north to head south

First night on the road: Mountain View RV Park, Palmer, AK - where Bob was able to explore a gold mine and where we very much enjoyed shopping in a real grocery store with somewhat reasonable prices.

Yesterday we began the journey south - and east. But today we must go north to go south - and still east. We will angle up toward the Alaska Highway today.

We were talking these week with our girls about how different it is in the mountains as compared with the gridwork of one-mile squares that we are used to in the agricultural valleys of Michigan.

So today we drive north so that we can go south.