Friends and Freeways

One of the great things about this trip is that it gives us a chance to slow down and take the time to see old friends when we are “in the neighborhood”. As we have started working our way up the east coast over the past week, we have gotten to reconnect with old friends that we have not seen in a while. Some we have not seen in a year; some we have not seen in ten or more. As we continue along our journey, we have plans to see friends we haven’t seen in almost twenty years!

I think we can all relate to the fact that life gets moving fast and it becomes really easy to lose touch with the people that you used to be close with. It’s funny how quickly you can reconnect when you see those old friends though. They may look different, but they look the same. They may have grown up, but they are still that same kid at heart. You may have not talked to them in ten years, but it feels like you could continue the last conversation you had with them. Old memories shared with old friends provide an immediate connection to your past and your youth. Seeing them makes you recognize how you’ve become older but somehow you feel younger again.

We have also really been moving over the past week and packing on the miles. We have not stayed in any one place for more than two nights and most only one. We have also mostly been dealing with the familiar. We have been in Virginia for most of our trip so far. We have moved up through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey but these are all still places we have either been or our we have been visiting with friends. We have been in pretty familiar territory.

We have had plenty of fun with the familiar though. After we spent some time with family in Roanoke, we camped at Devil’s Backbone brewery for a couple of days where I ran trails and cleared spider webs for any other hikers that day. We traveled on and we stayed up late laughing our butts off with great friends, we went boating on the Potomac with our best boat friends where Archer and I had the biggest shark tooth pull of all time, we pulled the Airstream on the interstate through Washington, DC in less than ideal traffic conditions, we learned a bit about campground electrical current, and we enjoyed numerous incredible meals cooked by old friends we were visiting.

Familiarity is fun in a comfortable sort of way, but are excited to move onto the next leg of this journey and into a bit of the unknown. We are starting to make our way into states none of us have yet been to and further into the Northeast than any of us have been. We will see some friends, but that will become much less frequent. We will spend the next five nights “off the grid” dry camping with no water, sewer or electricity hookups. Thank goodness that this heat wave should be subsiding. Wish us luck!

Side note: We have been asked a couple times if we had a map of our trip, where we are now, etc. So, we have now added an interactive map to our “THE JOURNEY” page. You can get there from the link at the top of the page.