Day 0 - Laser(ish) Focus

VACATION STARTS TOMORROW EVENING!...But we can’t think about that right now. Now is finals for our high school student. Now is wrapping up a busy work schedule. Now is taking our youngest to the dentist to get a tooth pulled. Now is the usual laundry and dishes. Now is...well, it’s anything but a vacation. 

After a lovely long weekend, our vacation to-do list is short. This past week we:

• (Mostly) packed the camper. And by "packed" I mean that we threw crap (precious necessary stuff) through the door and hoped it landed well. Fingers crossed! 
  
• Bought non-perishable food. We shop for perishable tonight.
• Fixed a mysterious clunk in the front end of the truck, and other regular truck maintenance projects. 
• Organized and loaded the truck. 
• Cleaned the house (not sayin’ it’s gonna stay that way by the time we leave)
• Put a hold on the mail.
• Prepared my travel Bible, uh I mean binder. This thing keeps me sane!! It has all of our reservations, pre bought tickets, maps, plans, master calendar...basically my brain because yeah, vacation brain is real.
• Registered kids for school next year. Deep breath.

Remaining on the to-do list:

• Perishable grocery shopping.
• Pack our last minute list. These are things we use everyday like pillows, hair brush, tooth brush, coffee maker, etc. (We never did buy a designated camper coffee maker...Which is odd considering the vital role it plays in the success and safety of our trips. Even the kids know that we don’t let Dad drive without it!)

I’m sure there is more, but I like the look of (and feeling of potential sanity) having two things left on our list, so for esthetic (and sanity) reasons, I will leave it at this. [grin] Grin of denial? Perhaps.

Time off

Here’s a funny little story about the common question: How can you two take this much time off work? Or the other version: Are you both teachers? (Actually we’ve been asked a few additional versions that include phrases like "mid-life crisis", "unemployed", and "hippe"...all very legit lines of thinking, but our reality is much more boring.)

Yesterday, all five of us were at a small store buying clothes, ‘cause we were facing some serious nudity on this trip if we didn’t purchase some basics very soon. Matt had just tried on a pair of pants that were too big (no, I don’t like him much at moments like these). 

While waiting for him to find a smaller size, I joked with the sales lady that he might need the bigger size after a month-long vacation. She looked over to where he was standing across the store and said, "Wow. What does he do that he can get that much time off work?!" I laughed and said, "Actually, he doesn’t get any time off. He will be working 24/7 on this vacation. He is the best full time dad there ever was, so he won’t really get a break. Plus, he’s our driver, mechanic, and level-head. Poor guy."  She looked back over at him and said, "Wow." I hear ya sister. Wow. Such a cool guy. 

So yup. This is MY vacation. I just have to navigate...and I’m actually really bad at that, leaving him in sticky situations pulling a 30ft camper. 

He is the reason we can have these experiences. 

2018 Eastern Trip...Yup. We are doing it again.

As crazy as this sounds, we are planning another long vacation. Some of you may have followed our "once in a lifetime" 2016 trip out west. Maybe vacations are like childbirth...You only remember the good parts. Or maybe it really was great. Call it ignorance or call it bliss, but we are seriously doing this...again.

This time we will be gone 30 days. May 31-June 29. The trip needs to be a bit shorter than 2016 because, well, this thing called high school has made a grand entrance into our lives. Grace will be a very active sophomore this coming school year, so the summer is packed with camps, training, and activities.



This time we are headed east. Here are a few highlights of this trip:

• Mammoth Cave National Park
• Smokey Mountains National Park
• Shenandoah National Park
• Washington DC
• New York, NY
• Boston, MA
• Acadia National Park
• Montreal, Canada
• Niagra Falls, Canada

Once again, we will blog each day. This blog has two purposes:

1. It keeps our family and friends up to date on our travels. 
2. We use a site called Blog2Print to print the pages of the blog at the end of the vacation into a hardback book. This becomes our "scrapbook" for the vacation. It ensures we don’t forget the fun little day to day details of a trip this long once we get home. Below are some pictures of our 2016 trip. 

8x10 hardback book with dust cover

Linen cover

The table of contents is 4 pages long!

322 pages!!!

We have a lot to do in the next two weeks! 

Sanity will likely be a complete loss...