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Bridges, Bays, & Beaches
When planning a route back to NC for the holidays, our goal must have been let’s see how many bridges we can take. And to visit Assateague Island National Seashore. We crossed the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and took the Bay Bridge (Highway 50 from Annapolis) to the Delmarva Peninsula. Delmarva is an acronym for Delaware and the Eastern Shores of Maryland and Virginia. Our first stop was our first Harvest Hosts location – Outstanding Dreams Alpaca Farm. I had been wanting to use Harvest Hosts since we first started RVing in 2017. It is an agrotourism program that gives RVers a free alternative to spend the night and an extra…
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Fall In The Northern Neck
By mid-September, we were starting to feel like locals. We had our preferred grocery store and could get there without using GPS. Even Michael was starting to be able to identify all the invasive plants because I pointed them out along the roadside everywhere we went. The weather was more enjoyable and there was an explosion of yellow with all the Tickseed, Crownbeard, and Golden Rod blooming. On the Refuge, my main tasks were new ones – mowing (not just mowing, but also driving the mower around) and water sealing a massive amount of woodwork at the most visited tract with John and Ivy. Lauren and I also started doing…
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Summer In The Northern Neck
Yeah, we had never heard of it either. However, this peninsula, bordered by the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers in northeastern VA is a great example of the kinds of new places that we hope to get to know during our US travels. We arrived at the beginning of August and were welcomed by Hurricane Isaias. Thank you, 2020, for continuing to induce anxiety about our decision to live in a structure not secured to the ground. Our NOAA weather radio (I knew we would need one of those) waking and alerting us that we needed to seek shelter from a tornado in the area. Our home…
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Virginia Is For Lovers
The ad agency that created Virginia’s iconic tourism slogan claims its origin is that regardless of what you love – mountains, beaches, history – there is somewhere for you to visit in the state. I also like the theory that the slogan references a landmark civil rights case, Loving v Virginia, that legalized interracial marriage in the Commonwealth shortly before the slogan first appeared. We happen to love Virginia State Parks, at least compared to NC State Parks, which is our current frame of reference. Our absolute favorite is Grayson Highlands in the Virginia Blue Ridge where we have camped and hiked multiple times. On our way to the NWR…
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Two False Starts
Maybe the blog should be renamed Mary and Michael MISadventures?!? We officially moved into our motorhome on March 1st, 2020. The same week that the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic arrived in NC and became a lot more real (to us). Our original plans were to be with family in Western NC for a couple of weeks before heading to Charlottesville, VA to celebrate our friend’s Ph.D. defense along with other friends that were going to visit from California. Michael’s parents were also going to visit for a weekend of Shenandoah hiking. We would then head to the Outer Banks where I would be volunteering at Cape Hatteras Natl Seashore until mid-July. But…
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The Backstory
How did we get here, living and traveling full time in a 250sqft house on wheels?! We’ve always loved to travel. We realized early on that we were happiest when we were out experiencing the world around us, particularly nature, so we made that a priority. The main problem was that there never seemed to be enough time. After using 2 weeks of vacation time on an international trip almost every year there was no time left for exploring our own US of A.
