December 2018 – Chase the Big Dream

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

Airstream Travel Adventure - Devil's Island Lighthouse

The Apostle Islands are 21 islands off the coast of Wisconsin on Lake Superior. Rock formations, sea caves and hiking are our plan for this stop as well as enjoying the charming little town of Bayfield, Wisconsin which is the launch point for the Apostle Island boat tours.

This is the first time we are staying at a first come, first serve campsite and we are a little apprehensive. We are not really first come, first serve types. We are reserve in advance types.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Airstream Travel Adventure - Pictured Rocks — Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

We left Mackinaw City to drive the quiet roads across the Upper Peninsula (or the UP as the locals call it) to Munising, Michigan and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior. There was no traffic, really few cars. A very quiet and easy drive. We are looking forward to this stop as we have seen stunning photos of the colorful cliffs, that look like they are dripping with green, black, red and gold paint. We have to keep correcting ourselves as we want to call this place “Painted Rocks” as opposed to “Pictured Rocks”.

We originally planned on dry camping at this stop but, after the annoying midges actually squeezed through our screens in Mackinaw City, we switched to a full hook up campground on the shore of Lake Superior. With a name like the Munising Tourist RV Park we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but we had a stunning lakefront spot and electric, sewer and water. Elle stuck her finger in the lake; it was ice cold; there would be no swimming here! But who cares, the views were simply amazing (and not a midge in sight, of course). We wished we had more than two nights here. Our spot was right on the lakeshore. This is what we imagined when we were planning this trip – the Airstream parked on the edge of a lake, looking out at the water, listening to the waves lapping against the shore.

Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island

Airstream Adventure Travel - Mackinac Island — Mackinac Island

We drove north from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore up to Mackinaw City, Michigan. The highlight of this stop was going to be our day trip to Mackinac Island, with it’s horse carriages, old fort and lovely old hotels and beautiful shoreline.

It was a peaceful drive that took us less than 3 hours. We arrived by noon and, after we set up camp, we decided to go out to lunch. We enjoyed simply outstanding fresh, wild salmon sandwiches at the Bière de Mac Brew Works on the outskirts of Mackinaw City. To Elle’s dismay, we opted not to eat at Weinerlicious despite the enticing giant hot dog on top of the building!

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Airstream Travel Adventure Great Sand Dunes Our next stop is Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Empire, Michigan. There are stunning water views on our drive to the park. We drive right along the lake and it’s a shimmering blue green color. Really beautiful. This is the stop of climbing giant orange sand dunes and taking some beautiful scenic drives.

We camp in the park at the Platte River Campground, which has an electric hookup but no water or sewer. It is a pretty campground in the woods with lots of trees and spacious sites that are not to close to your neighbor. This is our first time ever camping without water and sewer hook ups. Soon we will be dry camping (without any hookups) but this is our first test. We come prepared with our water tank full, which was completely unnecessary, as we could have filled up on the way in. Continue reading “Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore”

Niagara Falls, New York (and Canada)

Adventure Airstream Travel Niagara Falls – our first stop official stop on the trip! One year in our Airstream traveling all over the United States. We were excited, and just a little nervous. A whole year of travel. We had never spent that long traveling, much less in in our Airstream. We had really only travelled in it a handful of times before we left, mostly some long weekends and then one 8-day trip to Maine. We are also relieved to be finally on the road – the exhausting mad dash of preparing to leave was finally over! We pulled into our campsite, hooked up, settled in and patted ourselves on our back – we were on our way! Continue reading “Niagara Falls, New York (and Canada)”

Homeschooling

Roadschooling Homeschooling So we decided to spend a year traveling the United States in our Airstream with our five year old daughter Elle. What an adventure… but what about school? It was time for kindergarten…

Neither of us have a teaching background so I started searching the internet for homeschooling curriculums. I didn’t want anything internet based because we weren’t confident that we would have good internet connections, especially in the National Parks. And I wanted to make sure that Elle was able to enroll into public school when we eventually settled down somewhere. What I eventually settled on was Hooked On Phonics, Handwriting without Tears and Singapore Math. Then we would supplement this with the Junior Ranger programs in the National Parks (and other NPS sites). I’ve discussed all these programs in more detail below.

In addition to us reading to her, Elle listens to a huge number of audiobooks – favorites are anything by Beverly Cleary and the Box Car Children Mysteries by Gertrude Chandler Warner (there are over a hundred of these so we have not yet run out!).

Finally, we are tracking our progress across the country on a giant map so Elle is hopefully picking up some U.S. geography!

We generally spend 4 days a week on school but we don’t have four specific days – it just depends on what fits for our schedule that week. The one thing thing that is non-negotiable is school has to be held in the morning. In the afternoon, Elle is tired and has trouble concentrating and it is fun for no one. Continue reading “Homeschooling”

Our First Tow

Airstream Adventure Travel After a few weeks of driving the truck back and forth to work to get used to its size and feel it was time to pick up the Airstream. We were quite nervous about towing the Airstream home and getting it into our driveway. We arrived for our 2-hour orientation and the dealer walked us through how everything on the Airstream worked. We tried to absorb the two hours of non-stop information. We were completely overwhelmed. As newbie RV’ers, the 2-hour orientation left our heads spinning. Then the dealer hooked our 20-foot Ford F250 up to our 30-foot Airstream and wished us bon voyage. At that point we were pretty sure we could not replicate the hook up, we had no idea how to unhook (thank goodness for YouTube), and we were thinking that they should have driving school before allowing us to learn on the fly how to drive a 50-foot rig in real traffic (we had a 2 ½ hour drive to get home). Somehow, we managed to get off the lot and on to the busy interstate without hitting anything. Continue reading “Our First Tow”

Our Big Red Truck

Airstream Travel Adventure
After suddenly finding ourselves the proud owners of a brand new Airstream Flying Cloud, we were happily envisioning our new life traveling the country. Then our salesperson inquired when we wanted to schedule our walk through and pick up. Pick up? A pick up would require a tow vehicle, which we did not have. One major purchase had pushed us right into another: now we had to buy a tow vehicle able to handle a five ton load!
Continue reading “Our Big Red Truck”

Choosing the Airstream

Airstream Adevnture Travel We began looking for an RV when we first seriously started considering this adventure. And we knew what we wanted – a comfortable home for a year on the road. However, that was really the extent of it. So we started doing research on the internet. We determined that we needed:

- our RV to be 30 feet or less because it seemed that was a good size for National Park campsites, any longer than that was going to be difficult to fit into campsites at some National Parks.

- two real beds – we did not want to have to turn the kitchen table into Elle’s bed every night! That seemed not only a hassle but we did not want to have to leave the main living area when she had to go to bed every night.

- to have a car with us – we did not want to end up driving our RV every time we needed to run to the grocery.

- something fairly new – we are NOT handy people and we had had no experience RVing.

The next question: Class A motorhome (like a bus), Class C motorhome (truck cabs with direct access to the living area), a towable travel trailer (like an Airstream) or a Fifth wheel (a travel trailer that extends over the truck bed). Continue reading “Choosing the Airstream”

Our Story

We quit our jobs, sold our house and hit the road for a year with our five-year-old. We are either having the adventure of a lifetime or throwing away good jobs and a nice house only to live in a tin can! We will tell our story and you can be the judge!

In many ways we were living the American dream. We married relatively late in life after having both invested many years in the rat race. Our time was largely engulfed by commuting and work, punctuated by occasional travel (which we both loved). We were lucky enough to be blessed with a beautiful, healthy baby girl and we continued working with daycare incorporated into the mix. However, when Kay’s father passed, it inspired us to revisit our family goals and reconsider how we wanted to spend our days and years going forward. We wanted more time together, more time with our daughter. We wanted more fun, more adventure, more freedom. So . . . we decided to reboot our life, starting with a year-long trip around the United States to see our National Parks, then settling into a more family-oriented life in a place that will maximize our quality of life.

Step by step, over a two-year period, we turned our vision into reality. First, we created a detailed financial plan, and determined that we could leave our jobs. Kay left her job first as we began the slow unwind of our current life.

Then we created our one-year trip itinerary, which detailed the entire 400-day trip, complete with desired RV campsites, travel distance and time between stops, and key local sightseeing highlights not to be missed at each spot. It was quite a challenge to hit all the National Parks and nearly all 48 contiguous states on a route that minimized extreme weather and did it all in 13 months!

Next on the list was determining what type of RV would become our family home for a 12-month continuous period. What an odyssey that was for people who had never set foot in an RV. After much searching, we ended up with a 30-foot Airstream (see our post on the subject) and we love it – it was the best choice for our family. Once we purchased the travel trailer, we had to buy a vehicle that could tow it away from the RV dealer’s lot! Several weeks later we had traded in our navy-blue sedan for a fire-engine red F-250 diesel truck. We were getting dangerously close to uprooting our life and living our dream.

The next step was choosing our launch date. Since we had a preschooler who was rapidly approaching kindergarten age, we knew that we should go sooner, rather than later. We originally discussed June 2017. It was optimal as Elle was four-years old and the trip would be completed before she started kindergarten. We wrestled with the decision, then finally decided we would give ourselves a Thanksgiving deadline. Thanksgiving came and we decided we weren’t quite ready. We put our trip off a year. Our family and friends assumed we were never really going… it was just a dream that we were going to spend forever talking about.

The following year we had saved a little more, we found reasonably affordable private health insurance and houses seemed to be selling in our area, so we took a deep breath and gave ourselves the green light. The day after Thanksgiving we called the realtor and put our house on the market… and it sold three days later. We could not believe it. We took this as a sign – this trip was meant to be! Plus, we had nowhere to live so… this was it… the trip was happening!

There was just one thing left to do. Kay had already stopped working, but in April 2018 DT followed suit and on May 31^st, after attending Elle’s preschool graduation, we pulled out of her preschool parking lot in our big red truck towing our silver Airstream and that was the official launch of our BIG ADVENTURE!

Airstream Travel Adventure — This is it – us leaving on our big adventure!!!