It's been awhile!
As the headline says, we've purchased a motorhome, something we'd considered and discussed for years, and are now beginning to travel around the US and find new adventures. In the year we've been away from the blog (has it really been that long?!), we spent time with our families in the US last summer before returning to Playa del Carmen. We thoroughly enjoyed our first winter in Playa and were expecting to love it just as much the second time around. The restaurants were still fabulous, the weather great, the people lovely, and the dogs of Playa Animal Rescue every bit as adorable. But as a number of construction projects popped up close to our apartment, the near-constant noise started wreaking havoc on our mental health. Mexico is not quiet, and we certainly knew that going in, but we had particularly bad luck in our choice of locations as none of these new condo projects had begun when we signed our lease. So, after six months, we decided we'd had enough of that! We considered alternate locations in Mexico, but as anyone who has read this blog for awhile knows, we love and need our road cycling. Playa had a few places we could ride, but many areas of Mexico have more limited options: roads and traffic can both be bad. So, once again, the US, with her many bike-friendly paths and roads, beckoned us home. We flew into Florida and purchased our tiny house on wheels, a 2007 Newmar Baystar, after seeing it online. We named her Pearl. We spent the first couple of months at a campground in Florida, doing some renovations, waiting out winter, and adapting to tiny-house living. After all the downsizing we've done over the years, it wasn't all that tough to get used to (whew!) We also did plenty of cycling, since the campground was within a couple of miles of the wonderful West Orange Trail and the South Lake-Minneola Trails, west of Orlando. We were pretty much in heaven. In March we hit the road to western North Carolina, where we picked up some of the things we'd stored with my parents, and did some more RV projects while visiting with my folks for awhile. Now we're really on the move! We're starting to meander across the southeast and stay at public campgrounds run by the National Forest Service and Corps of Engineers. Prior to this, we'd mostly stayed in commercial parks, which deliver amenities but are often short on privacy and nature. We are loving parking Pearl in the woods, taking long walks and hikes, riding our bikes on the rural roads, and exploring the US, one small town at a time. So, we thought we'd start the blog back up to share some of these places with you. We hope you enjoy it, and perhaps it will even inspire your own adventures.
10 Comments
Cat
5/11/2016 01:57:03 pm
WOW!!! So glad to see you back. I was starting to worry about you guys. Happy travels!
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Emily
5/12/2016 10:48:15 am
Thanks for sticking with us even through an extended absence, Cat! We're just fine; I just got a bit burned out on blogging for awhile (and lazy too!) I am going to try to keep the posts a bit shorter and simpler and not try to do so much that it becomes a burden. Our internet is sometimes limited at the more remote campgrounds, so that will be a must. :-)
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Robin Sanchez
5/11/2016 08:01:03 pm
What a beautiful life! Love to you!❤️
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Emily
5/12/2016 10:48:55 am
Thank you, Robin! We are indeed fortunate and try never to forget that. <3
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Emily
5/12/2016 10:50:56 am
Hi Allison! Traveling in a motorhome in the east is not without its share of challenges, that's for sure. Many of the roads were just not built for large vehicles! We are actually looking forward to being out west again, but that may not happen this year.
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Mike Mitchell
5/12/2016 09:21:17 am
Glad your back online! We met briefly at the lazy crochet and I have been enjoying your blog since then. We have talked for years about touring the country in a motorhome, so bring it on!
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Emily
5/12/2016 10:45:53 am
Hi Mike ~~ Looks like the spell-checker got you. LOL! Thanks for stopping by!
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David Christmas
5/12/2016 01:07:58 pm
Good plan, Emily and Barry! Happy riding and looking forward to future blog posts. Pearl looks like a great home base
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Emily
5/12/2016 06:19:02 pm
Thanks David! We're pretty excited about this lifestyle; have been wanting to try it for so long, and now we're wondering why we waited. Hope you are doing well!
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Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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