by Carmen

After months of planning (Yes, months. This trip has caused me more planning than our year abroad.) it was finally time to hit the road.  Packing a van for 6 people to camp across the country proved challenging.  It became apparent that we would not be able to fit everything inside.  A quick call to a friend luckily resulted in a soft rooftop container that we could borrow to contain our 6 sleeping bags and 3 of our sleeping pads.  With careful placement of everything in every available space we were able to fit all our stuff and keep all the seats available for human use as well.

We packed the night before our departure and went to bed.  Our second daughter was away on an Appalachian Service Project and the plan was to meet her group at their final campgrounds before their return to Texas.  The meeting place would be DeGray Lake Resort State Park in Arkadelphia, AR, just west of Little Rock.  Even weeks ahead I had not been able to make a camping reservation at this resort because we would be arriving on 4th of July and everything was booked. Fortunately for our trip, however, that caused me to find the Army Corps of Engineer Campgrounds website that was eventually the source of many of our camping choices.  We found a tent spot at Caddo Drive on the same side of the lake.

Day 1

After a quick breakfast of oatmeal and with all the excitement that comes with leaving for family vacations, we piled into the van on Monday morning and took off.  Mapquest estimates the trip at 7 hours 36 minutes and 475  miles.  We wouldn’t be stopping at any colleges on the first day. It would just be direct driving.  The girls had a plan to pass around knitting continuously as we drove and change colors at each state line so that in the end the size of each piece will reflect the size of the states we passed.  They set to work as we got on the highway.  Leaving on a holiday meant traffic was minimal.  However, it also meant cops were shooting radar at nearly every mile marker so we had to pay attention to our speed.

Leaving Texas is always a feat in itself.  If you live in central Texas, you’ll know it is nearly a day’s drive to get out of your own state.   Nevertheless, after about 6 hours we managed to cross the state line from our own sun scorched and drought suffering state into Arkansas.  For anyone driving north on I-35 who needs to make a rest stop, I highly recommend stopping in Waco just before the bridge at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame.  They have a public restroom, travel information, a nice place to picnic along the water, interesting historic graveyard and, of course the Hall of Fame.

We made it to DeGray Lake in the estimated travel time (give and take for stops and eating) just in time to pitch our tent in the first rain we Texans had seen in 8 months.  This is a new tent for us.  We had pitched it once at home for practice but putting it up for the first time in the rain was a bit stressful.  In the end we got it up but because it had been stored with the windows open and it has a netting roof, there was substantial water let in before we could get the tarp in place.  We quickly realized we should have brought extra towels for situations like this.  Of course, as soon as we got the tent up and reasonably dried on the inside, the rain stopped!  We were able to set up our camping stove and cook up the ratatouille and some rice from the cooler for dinner. The girls then took a quick swim in the lake and we headed toward the dam to see the fireworks.

The lake was pretty and the fireworks well attended.  We then returned to sleep.  The Caddo Drive tent camping area at DeGray Lake is somewhat tightly packed.  We were quite close to neighbors.  Being close to your neighbors on a holiday like 4th of July isn’t ideal.  There was quite a lot of noise that night well past midnight but we hunkered down and tried to sleep.  Luckily for the girls they were so tired they fell asleep anyway. My husband and I weren’t quite so lucky.  If I were to re-plan this trip I might not camp on 4th of July as I value getting rested when I’m having to drive.

Day 2

The Appalachian Service Project was scheduled to leave the park at 7:30 am.  We weren’t able to get ourselves packed up that quickly so we had to drive over to get Sophia before packing.  We found the group, exhausted but glowing from their experience, and after many tearful goodbyes returned with our daughter.  With one more suitcase, sleeping bag, sleeping pad and human being we set out for our second day.

Our first stop was to be Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.  Those of you looking for a similar trip might also consider Hendrix College in Arkansas which is another liberal arts college praised by Loren Pope in Colleges that Change Lives.  From Arkadelphia to Rhodes is about a 3 1/2 hour drive.  Because of our late departure we didn’t make it to our scheduled tour on time and had to call ahead to let the college know we’d be late.  The Rhodes admissions office was very kind and we were able to have a later tour.  We were all highly impressed with what we saw at Rhodes. The new library was especially beautifully designed (see post featured photo). Walking through the campus you had the feeling that someone had taken Oxford University and plopped the buildings down in Memphis. The girls liked the discussion style format of classes.  The admissions office knows how to put on a good show, projecting your name onto their large screen introductory video and serving custom made cookies with the Rhodes “R” in icing as well as southern style peach iced tea.  I have to say, as I write this now from Connecticut and after having seen several more colleges, no other admissions office has equaled Rhodes welcome to their visitors.

We said goodbye and quickly exchanged our college search hats for our tourist hats and headed over to Graceland!  The home and burial place of Elvis Presley and his family, Graceland is one of those “must sees” for anyone passing through Memphis.  Honestly, it is a bit pricey, and with a family it wasn’t without a wince that we decided to go ahead and see it.  But luck was with us that day.  As we walked towards the ticket office two women gave us 2 adult passes they weren’t using saving us $70!  Sometimes the force is with you.  My husband and I had seen Graceland about 20 years ago.  Since then the tour has improved with a complimentary audio tour with excerpts from Lisa Marie Presley.  They have also opened the racquetball building and moved many of the costumes and museum pieces to the mansion side from across the street.  Our German exchange student particularly enjoyed getting to see Graceland and we each had our favorite rooms.

It was then time to head to our next camping spot just passed Nashville, Seven Points.  Memphis to Nashville is just over a 3 hour drive.  We also had to stop for dinner along the way.  This is where Mapquest failed us.  As we neared our destination, it was clear we were in a residential area.  In fact, as we came to the exact address we were sitting in front of a small bungalow home in central Nashville.  Luckily, the copy of our reservations from the Army Corps of Engineers also had directions to the campground and it became quickly apparent they were quite different.  We got back onto the highway, followed the second set of directions and made it to Seven Points – just in time for rain!

As we pulled into our site after 9 at night we found another family in our place.  It seems a lot of people come into campsites late and take spots without reservations.  We were fortunate that this family agreed to move without any problem, so we went straight to the showers while they dismantled their tent.  This time we were prepared for the rain. Our windows and doors had been zipped shut and we had folded the tarp into the tent so that it covered the roof.  We raised our tent with minimal water entering and went straight to bed.

Day 3

Seven Points was a much nicer campground, more private and quieter than the one in Arkansas. We had a lovely spot on the lake and woke up to ducks who enjoyed some of our old bread.  We wished we could have stayed longer but we had a lot to do and see so we packed up after breakfast and hit the road for North Carolina.

The road from Nashville to Asheville passes through the Smoky Mountains.  It’s a beautiful route along I-40.  In about 3 hours we found our next sightseeing destination, the Biltmore Estate.  Anyone passing near Asheville really should stop at the Biltmore.  Although pricey (pricier than Graceland) it really is an amazing place and a place you could tour for the entire day.  Built by George Vanderbilt in the early 1900′s, the Biltmore is a magnificently kept estate and probably the closest thing the United States has to European chateaus and castles.  Do see it if you ever have a chance.

Knowing the Biltmore would take us many hours to tour, we had nothing else scheduled that day.  We saw the home, the gardens, had an ice cream and moved on to our campgrounds in the evening after a quick stop for groceries.  We arrive at our campground  just east of Asheville at Lake Powhatan and just in time for – rain!  The Lake Powhatan campsites appeared to be geared very much towards rv’ers.  While the facilities were nicely kept with electricity, water and clean bathrooms there was not an appropriate place to pitch a tent.  We made due in our gravel driveway, had our dinner and went on to bed knowing we were in a good position to drive to Davidson College the next day.

by Carmen

I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog since returning from our year in Brazil and Mexico.  Don’t take it to mean that our lives have been quiet though!  The girls have another year under their belts and to my husband’s and my amazement our two oldest have reached the age to look at colleges.

There’s something bittersweet about planning a college road trip.  Of course, there is the excitement that comes with planning any travel, but there is also the sense that this could very well be one of our last trips together as a nuclear family – the realization that future trips may be with one of us missing due to conflicting schedules or new interests that include friends over family.  It’s a special time with a lot of mixed emotions.

That said, I’ve decided to blog along the way and share with you the planning that I’ve done to get this trip to happen so that for anyone looking for a similar experience, perhaps you can shorten your preparation time by following along with us.

Here are the variables for our trip:

1) We’re taking off from our hometown of Austin, Texas and heading east.

2) We’ll be camping along the way as much as possible to save money. Camping for us means tent camping.

3) We’ll have 6 people in a Dodge Caravan family van on our way up and 5 on our way down. (my husband doesn’t have enough time from work to travel both directions so I’ll be single mom for the return).

4) In addition to my husband and myself, we have 3 daughters.  The two in question will be an incoming senior and a junior.  We’ll also have our 10 year old daughter and a 17 year old German exchange student who are coming along for the sight seeing opportunities.

5) Our daughters are primarily interested in small, liberal arts colleges so that’s where we’ll be stopping.

6) In the middle of the trip we’ll take a week break to stay with family on the Connecticut shore.

Here’s what we’re taking:

1) On top of the van we are strapping 6 sleeping bags and as many sleeping pads as will fit (probably 4) in a soft container.

Inside the van -

2) Remainder of sleeping pads.

3) Bag of 6 bath towels

4) Bag of 6 sheets because nights will be too hot for sleeping bags in the south.

5) Zip lock of shower supplies

6) 3 flashlights with batteries

7) Camping lantern

Large tent

9) Two burner camping stove top

10) Kitchen supplies including one pan, one pot, one french coffee press, silverware, reusable dishes, reusable bowls, spatula, sharp knife, two larger bowls.

11) One medium cooler with one day’s supply of fresh food. (We will hope to make 2 meals each day and buy one out).

12) One roll toilet paper in case the campsites don’t have any.

13) 2 propane tanks for stove top

14) Collection of cds and dvds chosen by kids.

15) Map of US colleges, the Fiske College Guide and Colleges that Change Lives book.

16) Self created college visit evaluation chart so the girls can record their thoughts.

17) Binder containing all itinerary for trip.

18) 2 laptops (1 for my blogging and trip information, the other so that our oldest daughter can Skype with her calculus tutor.  We would take 1 laptop but my microphone has kicked the bucket).

19) Each family member will have one carry on size bag for clothes and a smaller bag of things for the car.

So – stay tuned and I’ll share with you how things go.  I’ll be uploading information on the campgrounds, wifi situations (as I’ll be working along the way), points of interest, colleges and road conditions.

And we’re off!

Ricardo recently made a connection with a member of Lonely Planet’s Long Haul who had written a post that seemed to strike a chord with the readers there.  He kindly agreed to adapt it for our blog and we’re pleased to present it to you here.

Most of the time on lifestyle design and travel enthusiast blogs you’ll find a lot of cheer leading for stuffing your 3 shirts in a backpack and taking off to never look back.  This is very different and comes from someone who has lived the life so many of us are interested in.  It’s something to think about and we feel it’s only right to present as many different experiences to you as possible.  Many thanks to Trespassers W for allowing us to use his post.

[adapted from a post by the author on the Lonely Planet’s ‘The Long Haul’ forum]

I used to find The Long Haul’s tagline ‘Don’t know if you’ll ever make it home?’ rather romantic sounding. Actually, I still do. Images of being a citoyen du monde, or a devil-may-care drifter, or member of the jet set, what have you, it’s all exciting sounding. But after just a few years of living overseas, doubts about those rosy interpretations are beginning to creep in. Like many that post on this forum, asking how they too can flee their current lifestyle, I idealized life abroad. But reality is more complicated than I anticipated.

This post is not a complaint, more of a growing realization of what I’ve got myself in to. I’m the equivalent of someone who goes out for a twenty mile hike wearing wingtips and is surprised to find that they have foot issues at the end of the day. Certainly I don’t want to grumble; we are here because we want to be. We still have a house back ‘home’ and two cars (well, more like 1.5 cars by now) are stored in the garage. We could easily return if we wanted to. What’s keeping us here is simply that we want to stay more than we want to move back. So is there a problem?

China (where we live) is not an easy place for a foreigner to make into a permanent home; the difference between cultures is large, it’s hard to integrate, the environment can be demanding. We’re making good progress, studying the language, the children are in public schools, we’ve got driver licenses… but it’s unlikely to match the sense of belonging we would have in more western environs for quite a while. On the one hand, the challenge of living here is part of the appeal. Every day is an adventure. However, I’m finding that the cost of losing a home doesn’t go away just because the benefit of life here is so great. The cost and the profit, the gain and the loss, sit there next to each other, each to be felt in their own ways. I’m sure in time this place can become a home, the path towards that is clear: make friends, become a part of the community, and so on. But the more exhilarating the cultural leap, the hard those steps are to make.

The key word in the forum’s tag line is ‘home’. That question, ‘Don’t know if you’ll ever make it home?’ Does this mean: Will I make this place a home? Will I ever return to my original home? Would it still be home if I did? ‘Home’ at the heart of how most of us define themselves, but moving half-way around the world makes the question ‘what is home?’ difficult to answer.

These are good questions to be confronted with, but they weren’t on my agenda when we moved overseas. Obviously the only answer is, home is where I hang my hat (if I had a hat). But that’s a different type of ‘home’ than the one I left behind. I mentioned that one reason to live here is the desire to face new challenges, to extend ourselves beyond what the old home would allow. But ‘challenging’ isn’t part of how I define ‘home’. Maybe it should be. I’m coming to see that ‘home’ is a concept I need to make for myself, rather than trying to see if this place meets some standard definition of what is a home. Some days that’s easier to say than to do, of course. Hence the post here, I suppose.

Is there any point to this post? I don’t think so, maybe I should delete it. Life is good, and if Allah wills and the levy holds, it may even get better. What I am sure of is that I don’t mean this post to dissuade those looking for a path away of their current homes. It’s human nature: the costs of harboring an unrealized dream are almost always higher than the costs of making that dream come true. It’s not logical, but there it is, it’s part of what makes us human. So come on in, the water is fine (just don’t drink it). And be ready to face some questions you haven’t even envisioned yet.

Photo by: My Hourglass

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged in a while.  Ricardo put in a post about Belgium that filled in the space a bit but I haven’t written in several weeks.

Well, I’m going to bare myself before you today and be honest.  I haven’t written because I’ve had a terrible case of writer’s block – and I’ve had it because since returning from Mexico my life has sucked.

How Do You Inspire Others When Your Own Life Sucks?

This has been a huge dilemma for me.  Some people say, “Just write about what’s happening.  People will relate to you and it’s good for your blog.”  That could make sense if you’re a single person and you choose to make that decision about your privacy.  I mean a lot of bloggers do that and it can be really attractive to read about someone’s personal struggles and feel like you really know them in an intimate way.  Believe me, there’s a big part of me that would love to be naked like that.

But my life isn’t that simple.  My struggles involve other people: a husband, kids who are old enough to read my blog, and other family members.  If I were to tell you everything I’d be making choices to destroy their privacy as well and that’s just not right.  So I can’t be as candid as I want.

On the other hand, I’m a really honest person and I find it impossible to cheer about how amazing life is when  I’m not feeling it at the moment. And so the dilemma: how to be real without slapping my whole community in front of the public for everyone’s view?

Why Am I Even Telling You This?

You might ask why I’m even telling you this?  I mean, this is a blog on location independence, travel and lifestyle design. True.  But one thing I know is that as a blogger you have to be living what you’re writing about.  My current life situation is putting my ability to be location independent in jeopardy.  I’m telling you because I’m going to be going through a huge transition that may result in continued nomading or may cause me to have to turn away completely.

In a Nutshell

In a nutshell, since returning to the U.S. it has become clear that I need to raise my income substantially in order to continue our current lifestyle (ie, roof over our heads, transportation, and needs of 2 teens and a 10 year old).  In the not so distant future, I’ll likely be losing access to about 4/5ths of our current family income.  I’ve got to scramble and do it quick.

I’m passionate about remaining location independent and so I’m going to be fighting hard to raise that income in a way that we remain able to live where we want.

The Challenge

And so I’m faced with a challenge.  How to raise my income substantially in a way that doesn’t ruin our current ability to be location independent?

It’s kind of scary.  I’m almost 45, have been out of the traditional workforce for 16 years and the economy isn’t good.  I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen,  and frankly am a bit overwhelmed at the task before me.

For Now

And so, for now, here’s my answer.  I’m going to keep blogging and I’m going to be as up front and honest with you about what’s happening as I can without dragging everyone through the mud with me.  I hope that reading about my attempts might help some of you who are also struggling to make your lives what you want them to be.  I’m going to count on your positive energy when I don’t have so much sometimes.  ….and we’ll see where life takes us!

Photo: Goldberg