From Charleston, SC, we continued our way south through Georgia into St. Augustine, FL. We pulled into Anastasia State Park right along the Atlantic coast and set-up camp for two nights within a sandy jungle — easily our favorite campsite thus far on the tour. Noel also became a big fan of this set-up because from every vantage point she could spy on birds up-close and even spotted those infamous little Florida lizards for the first time in her cat life.

To break up the long drive from Delaware, we spent a night in Cabela’s parking lot in Garner, NC. The next morning while we were getting ready to drive the last three hours to Charlotte, we got a knock on our door. As much as you can prepare for nights spent in parking lots by calling ahead and speaking to management to ensure that they allow overnight parking, you still kind of brace yourself for a knock on the door by some sort of official.

Visiting Arlington on Veterans Day was particularly special because it is the final resting place of all kinds of people with all sorts of service experiences. You go in knowing this but nothing can possibly prepare you for its size and scale. You hear and read statistics but you aren’t often faced with a visual of it all.

Right on the border of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we found our little end-of-summer sanctuary. It was mid-September, the warm days were fleeting, and I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to my favorite season. With some spare time before the state project, we drove through rural New Jersey to get to the wilderness of the Delaware Water Gap.

We began our time in Connecticut nestled near a beautiful field of sunflowers. Those are words I can’t say I’ve ever expected to type out, but it’s true and we have photo-evidence to prove it.

Tyler and I have often noted how different this experience would be without Noel. When we shared the tour with our families, one of their responses was wondering what we were going to do with “the cat.”

After spending a couple nights in a holding pattern in parking lots at a Cabela’s in Maine then a Walmart in New Hampshire, we finally packed up the car with drinks and snacks for the road and a hour or so drive later, we found ourselves already in Portsmouth – 68 miles later! We didn’t even get a chance to start eating our Peanut Butter m&m’s. Sad, I know.

After over a year of planning, countless emails, pitches, grant applications, conference calls, and meetings, the day to hook up the Airstream and hit the road arrived. Our journey to our first state project in Vermont included a pit stop at Niagara Falls to kickstart our new nomadic life on the road.

As amazing as it is living and working on the road, it can be quite exhausting. Living in an Airstream makes you think about things you may have taken for granted previously: location to sleep/where to park the trailer, water consumption, water waste, electricity, waste disposal – aka the stinky stuff. One thing we don’t have to worry about anymore is if we’ll be getting a good night’s sleep.