During our Albanian travels we met a few cyclists who told us they had experienced difficult riding in Montenegro, mostly because of the highways and fast drivers. So we decided to skip some of those parts and take a bus from Shkoder, our last stop in Albania, to the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. A friend we met in Gjipe told us we had to go there, that it was very romantic. That’s pretty much all we knew when we got on the bus, and as with so much of our trip, we were happily surprised with an incredible place. First, the bus ride to Kotor was a joyous trip through a beautiful country. Laura especially was taken with Montenegro. Green mountains and gorgeous coastline. We were bummed to have to skip some of it, but definitely want to return to explore more of it someday. 

As we passed Budvah, a surreal looking beach spot beloved by vacationers, we thought about getting off the bus there because it seemed so awesome. But we decided we’d had plenty of beach party time in Albania and stayed on the bus until Kotor. We are happy we did because the Bay of Kotor is magical and we got to spend a few days there. We actually were only planning on one night in Kotor itself but we changed it to two immediately when we arrived. We had no idea it was even a popular tourist spot, but the big cruise ship clued us in right away. Despite the crowds, the old walled fortress and town are a delight. The bay is beautiful and we had the best time walking up the fortress walls, kayaking in the bay, and checking out the old town. We snagged a room with a sweet old lady who spoke no English but was a dear and fed us grapes (that were hanging around her terrace) for breakfast. 

We reluctantly left town after two days, but were stoked to bike around the edge of the bay, a chill coast side ride for a couple of days, and eventually over our first international border on bikes! Albania and Montenegro borders had both happened by bus, so we were stoked to get our first bike border crossing under our belts. It was a brutal ride with some good climbs but as we sailed into Croatia we were beaming. 

The beaming didn’t last long because we had more climbs to conquer. It was pretty rough so we decided to skip the last 10k of climbing and catch a boat  into our next destination – Dubrovnik! 

We were able to catch a boat pretty quickly from Cavtat to Dubrovnik. The guys who worked at the dock hilariously just threw our bikes on top of the boat and went on their way. The sea was rough so everyone on the boat was worried that our bikes would fall off, but we all (bikes included) made it safely to old town. 

We spent four nights in Dubrovnik, an awesome and ancient walled town on the Croatian coast. The first couple of days we explored marinas, parks, and beaches in the area, briefly stopping in the old town to discover what would become an everyday obsession – spinach and cheese bureks, an amazingly delicious pastry we haven’t seen anywhere but Croatia. Another day we decided to forgo the many options for pricey Game of Thrones tours and made our own based on web research. We spent the day visiting sites where the show films, which also happened to be some of the best spots to visit in town anyways, so it worked out. We walked the fortress walls early and checked out some really neat old parts of the town, stopping in several museums and bars along the way. We also learned a lot about the fight for Croatian independence and the breakup of Yugoslavia, including attacks on Dubrovnik itself in the early 90’s.

Dubrovnik is a beautiful place with so much to offer in terms of history, picturesque architecture, and a gorgeous surrounding landscape. But after dealing with throngs of tourists for several days, we were fine with leaving. It’s a place we would definitely go back to though, because there is so much to explore, including several nearby islands and other fun day trips that we missed this time around.

Time to move on to the rest of the Dalmatian coast.

Kotor to Dubrovnik

Somewhere along the Camino Laura decided that exercise and the outdoors were pretty good organizing paradigms to our travels.  With that in mind, we decided that maybe we would try our hand at bike touring through Europe somehow.  As we were meeting friends in Greece we started eyeing ways of acquiring bicycles in Athens and then, due to Schengen visa limitations, we would leave the area as quickly as possible and to stop the clock of our ever diminishing time in the Schengen region.  That meant taking a bus from Athens to Albania.  With this vague plan in mind we got back to Athens from Crete and hit the ground running looking for bikes and the necessary equipment we would need for touring up the coast.  After two frantic days of running around Athens on a bike equipment shopping spree (on a serious budget) we had acquired the bare minimums for putting this phase of our travel into play.  The bikes we bought used from a bike rental agency in Athens and they are some seriously trustworthy beasts.  (Laura has run over goats, dogs, wild boar and one small ox and the bikes just kept on trucking.)  We bought some panniers for the luggage, some dry bags for our camping equipment, some bungees to lash it all together and then we were on the next overnight bus to Albania.  We had our first run-in with the ole “no possible, problem, problem” schtick at the bus station that first night because of the bikes and gear, but Laura handled it like an old pro insisting “No Problem, No Problem” until the rides were loaded up and secure. 

We awoke in a new country at four in the morning as the party goers were headed home from the clubs in their Porsches and Land Rovers. (Wait, where were we?!) One of the nearest towns across the border and near the coast was a town called Sarande and its known for its beach party scene.  We made our way down to the water front to watch the sunrise and see the beautiful ocean front town come to life.  After a morning on the beach making the best of it we finally made our way to our AirBnB.  Our host was a sweet older woman, and despite the fact that we didn’t understand a word of the rapid fire Albanian she was volleying at us, she made us feel extremely welcome.  We had opted to spend a couple days in Sarande to get our bearings and do some actual planning of the trip.  After a couple of really nice days there and feeling like we somewhat knew what we were in for we hit finally hit the road!

The morning we left was a doozie of an introduction into what the future would hold for us.  Sarande, being on the coast is at sea-level.  That meant that the very first kilometers that we had to deal with were heavy city traffic straight up a hill!  After a couple of arduous kilometers we finally crested the ridge behind the city and the first of Albania’s incredible views and downhills opened up before us.  That very first downhill is one that neither of us will forget any time soon.  That day was the first of many grueling hot days with plenty of elevation.  25 kilometers later we made a west bound turn down to the beach we were camping at that night and had the first of many AMAZING coastal downhills.  The feeling of seeing the blue Ionian Sea down below us as we raced down windy turns was one that we started to relish.  We arrived at the beach only to discover we had missed a turn and were at the wrong beach!  No matter, we asked one of the beach bars if there was camping nearby and they graciously offered their beachfront as our evening’s campsite. 

The next week was filled with more of the same, thigh-burning uphills followed by downhill sections that felt like we had wings.  We camped on some incredible beaches and were dumbstruck by the beauty of the coast, the friendliness of the people, the inexpensiveness of the food and drink and the ease of which we were taking to our new mode of transport.  One beach, Gjipe Beach,  we had to hike the last 2 km down to.  It was at the mouth of a surreal canyon and had some of the most amazing water and a great international crew of travelers working at the eco campsite that was the only bar and accommodation for miles. To be sure there were some heinously difficult moments of pushing the bike up 10% grades through the heat but somehow it was all worth it. 

Toward the end of the first week we opted to take our first ride in a vehicle to summit the Llogara Pass as it would have been far too much effort given how heavy our bikes were.  The next day we enjoyed 12 kilometers of downhill and entered a flatter less dramatic section of Albania’s coastline.  It was still a beauty to behold and bike through but it was somewhat more “normal” bike touring.  We fell into a nice schedule and saw some incredible sights (camped at ancient Roman ruins) and enjoyed seeing the Albanian countryside.  Two weeks and almost 400 kilometers after we had begun we were in Shkoder, Albania and from there took one more bus to Kotor, Montenegro.

The intention of going to Albania was initially to get out of the Schengen region as soon as we could and do some “practice” touring for what we thought was the main event (Croatia).  It turned out to be some of our favorite moments (and cheapest!) of the journey.  We both agreed that Albania was definitely going to be put on our list of places to return to as we barely scratched the surface of things to see in the country since we had stayed near the coast.  While the country still lags far behind much of Europe in a lot of different ways, and we started to get a sense of the struggle that Albanian’s face in the day to day due to their economy and governmental structure we both felt that the warnings and admonishments against traveling there were somewhat overstated.  Albania is a beautiful country with awesome people that are incredibly surprised by seeing two Californians traveling through their country and they’re eager to prove the naysayers wrong.  Falimenderit Albania!

Albanian Adventures!

That means hello in Greek. It took us forever to memorize some simple Greek phrases, and then of course by the time we did it was time to leave.

After returning from Ireland, we spent a few more days in London getting ourselves together for what seems like a vacation within a vacation. A good friend of ours Christine was going to be in Greece around the same time as us, so we had been planning a Greek island beach trip with her for a while. We eventually settled on Crete, a popular destination among Greek vacationers. We decided to fly into Athens and meet up with her there for a day of touristing before taking off to Crete.

As we took off from Heathrow to Athens, we realized this might be our last big flight for a while given our plans to travel by bike – detailed in our next post – for the rest of our European adventures.

We made it to Athens pretty late and went right to sleep. We had booked an overnight ferry leaving the next night for Crete so we only had one day to tour Athens. We started the next morning with our first attempt to order coffee and pastries. This was our first big trip to a place where we truly didn’t know the language or culture. Although a lot of people know English, or at least broken English, still others don’t know a lick of it. We got around fine, though, and visited the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s Gate in the morning, which sparked our usual discussions about ancient peoples. This of course staying with the emerging theme of our travels – prehistory, ancient history and culture, emergence of civilization, etc.

We walked around some shops and visited the Acropolis museum before meeting up with Christine in the afternoon and going to the actual Acropolis ruins, which was an incredible site and view of the city. After our visit there and some walking around the city and catching up with our buddy, we all made our way to the port and readied ourselves for a nine hour ferry ride. Christine had booked an “air chair” (fancy pants) but Javi and I were on “deck chairs” which just means you can sleep anywhere on the floor inside or out on the deck. We chose the deck. The ferry ride was a totally interesting and unexpected experience. People were everywhere, jockeying for floor space to sleep. A total zoo with little to no oversight by anyone in a position of authority. It’s so exciting and weird, experiencing a different cultural thing for the first time.

We of course barely got any sleep but made it to Crete, “waking” up in time for the sunrise as we came into port. None of us knew what to expect in Chania (pronounced Ha-nya), the town where we booked a place, because we honestly had done very little research. But we were stoked to find a beautiful spot with yummy food, lots of interesting history, and lovely beaches. We spent the week just marveling at how everything really went beyond any expectations we might have had. Christine’s brother joined us later in the week (they were both in Greece for a family wedding), and we had a great time just chilling on the beaches and visiting museums. The Archeological Museum in Chania was amazing and showcased items from the area dating back 5000 or more years. The history of Crete and the Minoan’s is fascinating (“the first link in the chain of Europe”) and we felt like we were truly in an ancient and special place.

We mostly stuck around Chania during the week, but the last day we rented a car and went to the western coast of Crete to visit the beaches of Elafonisi and Balos. Both were incredible but Balos especially blew all of our minds. We have determined it is the coolest beach we have ever visited (sorry Kalaulau). That last day really made the whole trip. Driving around and seeing different parts of the island and visiting the kinds of beaches you see in travel magazines, we felt like we really accomplished a solid adventure.

After saying goodbye to our pals, we had one last chill day in Chania before taking another overnight ferry back to Athens. This time we booked the air chairs.

We spent the next 36 hours in Athens running around like crazy people trying to get everything together for the next huge phase of our trip – bike tour. More on this insanity in the next post.

Just FYI, an Anglophile is a person who is fond of or greatly admires England or Britain and a Hibernophile is a person who is fond of Irish culture, Irish language and Ireland in general. We know you were wondering.

After almost two long months in Spain (and most of our Schengen visa time allotment yikes), we headed out of the Schengen area to the U.K. with plans for travel through England, Scotland, and Ireland. Our good friend Nate has a flat in London where he works, and he kindly allowed us to stay there a while after the Camino while he was back in San Francisco. His place is pretty sweet so it was the best possible situation for us to rest after our long walk. We flew straight to London from Santiago and immediately settled in pretty nicely, watching a whole day of movies on our first day in the flat. Thanks Nate!!

We got to London on July 12, and stayed for a little over a week walking around the city, meeting up with friends, enjoying the crazy good food and just plain CRAZY nightlife. We did our duty as good tourists and hit up museums, parks, etc. Given our fascination with all things mysterious and dare we say occultish, a definite highlight was a tour of the Freemason museum, including a private hang in the absolutely surreal Grand Lodge. However, the freemasons here, including the young lad that gave our tour, would likely strongly oppose our use of the term occult to describe the ultimately benign (at least on paper) group.

After some serious chill time at the flat, we peeled ourselves away for an amazingly fun adventure in Scotland and Ireland!

First, a train to Edinburgh in Scotland. Wow, that city is so neat. It looks like a medieval Harry Potter land (and indeed is where J.K. Rowling wrote the story). Dark towers, narrow winding alleys, and of course the imposing castle all make for a very cool backdrop to the pub hopping we did. We managed to get in a good urban hike up to the top of Arthur’s Seat for amazing views of this coastal city.

After a few days, it was time for some more serious hiking. Apparently, we didn’t get enough walking in Spain so we decided to do three days along the West Highland Way. We had heard about this walk back in 2013 on our Camino trip, and Laura had always wanted to make it happen. The whole thing takes about 7-8 days but given our time limitations (and the cost – this ain’t Spain anymore), we just did three.

This hike was INCREDIBLE. It went well beyond our expectations in beauty, toughness, weather, and just the general awe-factor. We got two great weather days, a real treat, and one super rainy day. We felt very lucky. We did long days, one day was a good 20 miles (!), but felt in pretty good hiking shape still (and had much lighter bags) so it wasn’t too bad. We ended in Fort William, and had an extra day in this nice highland town.

You literally could hear bagpipes on the wind and see castles everywhere we went in Scotland. A really magical and beautiful land that was tough to leave. But after a week, it was time to move on to Ireland.

We flew into Dublin from Glasgow on Friday and spent a weekend touristing and catching up with an old friend of Javi’s from his original 2006 Camino. It is always nice to get a local to show us around the city, and Steve was a very generous host. On Sunday we picked up a car and commenced our Irish road trip across the country. We went to Glendalough south of Dublin and then moved on through Kilkenny to the south west coast. Again, like Scotland, Ireland just surpassed any expectations we had and was just the most amazing place. The hits just kept on coming.

Ireland has a ton of ancient stone circles so we did a little tour of a few of those magical spaces on Beara Peninsula before settling in a nearby hostel. Beara was a really beautiful part of the area, split between Cork and Kerry, that was not nearly as touristy as the rest of that part of the coast. We then did the obligatory Ring of Kerry drive and the Cliffs of Moher, which had a lot of tourists but for good reason. Both places had a major wow factor and were just gorgeous. We got super lucky with the weather and rarely got rained on. The Irish west coast is just plain nuts, it is so lovely it’s hard to comprehend it.

After a pub hopping night in Galway, we made our way back towards Dublin, but not before stopping in for a night’s rest at a rural farm and a visit to the Ireland Scarecrow Festival in Durrow.

Good times all around, it was certainly sad to end such an amazing trip but we have our sights set on GREECE! Before that, though, it’s a few more days in London.

Walking into green hills and mountains after the meseta was a delight. And it felt pretty surreal to be coming into the last third of our walk. Gratitude and excitement (and lots of silliness) was filling our days.

We took our third and last rest day in Foncebadon for unfortunate reasons – Javi got food poisoning. Being sick all night in a crowded hostel is pretty terrible, especially because they kick you out early so they can prepare for the next round of pilgrims. We were stranded for a bit in the morning not sure what to do because Javi was feeling too ill to walk, but (very) luckily a cute little hotel across the street had an open room that morning and let us check in at 8 am! A private room and bathroom was just what Javi needed to get some rest and recover. Whew. Thank you El Trasgu de Foncebadón!

After that incident we took it easy to the city of Ponferrada, where we started the Camino in 2013, and moved slowly through lovely mountain towns like Villafranca del Bierzo and O Cebreiro. We had some painful memories of our last trip up O Cebreiro, one of the bigger climbs on the Camino, but we felt so much more prepared this time and it was actually a pleasure.

After that things started to become a blur as time moved more quickly, and the path became more crowded with new walkers. Most people actually start the Camino in Sarria, the last place you can start for it to “count” (aka you can get the certificate of completion from there).  We started to meet some of the new faces and although we preferred a less crowded path, the energy of the new folks was pure excitement (and a lot of surprise at how physically tough it can really be).

We recognized a lot during this phase since we had been there before, Javi twice. Sometimes memory can be a funny thing, though, and we often found that things weren’t at all like we remembered. But it was neat to have those very fond memories of our family trip come back to us.

As we made our way to Santiago, we decided to just stop for one night instead of taking a rest day, effectively treating it as just another night on the Camino, because we had our sights set on Fisterra. The town (also referred to as Finisterre), along with the neighboring town of Muxía, is at the very end of the road on the coast and many folks choose to move on after Santiago and keep walking. I guess we just can’t get enough of it!

Seeing the coast for the first time in 40 days was truly magical. We are both coast and ocean lovers, Javi having lived near the coast his whole life, and Laura living on coasts since she left Chattanooga at 18. It was like we could feel it getting closer before we even saw it. We decided right then and there we would try never be far from the coast for that long during the rest of our adventure, if we can help it. Fisterra was a beautiful place with a fun energy. Finishing our 40 days there was better than we imagined.

We spent a couple of nights there at a nice little hotel, and visited with friends who had made it a few days before. After a much needed fire-making session on the beach, we hopped on a bus to head back to Santiago. Being in a fast-moving vehicle was totally strange. It’s interesting the things that become so weird or fascinating after an experience like this.

Back in Santiago, we spent a couple more days touristing around, attending mass at the Cathedral, visiting with friends, and enjoying our last few days in Spain (!) before we made our next move to London.

We are so happy and grateful that we decided to include this adventure in our plans. It was challenging and long, but the experience of a lifetime to be sure, and something that we will always look to as a major highlight of this grand travel adventure of ours.

The Meseta. Whew. Hot, dry, no shade, early mornings to beat the heat, and late nights of overheated sleeplessness. It definitely makes a person excited for a cold beer. But it’s all part of the experience, and not all bad. It’s basically like walking through Kansas for a week and has its ups and downs (not in elevation), but the ups – like gorgeous sunrises on a cool morning – make it all worth it. Plus one definitely feels a sense of accomplishment, especially as you see the big tour buses roll by, skipping the real hard part.

Our days were long and mostly uneventful during this section. We slowed down the drinking and socializing since it was just too hot to party, plus we were waking up at 6 am so we could get to the next town before the afternoon heat. Locals always told us we pilgrims were all crazy for walking around in that heat. At one point we took an “alternate” route to avoid a lot of walkers, which ended up being something like 20 kilometer stretches with no amenities. But the solitude was amazing, so in the end we were glad for it.

As we neared Leon, we got excited not only because of the end of the Meseta, but because that’s roughly were we had both started in previous trips, so we were coming to the point of recognition. A few more days to the beautiful landscape in Galicia!

We finally made it! We had been discussing waking the entire Camino Frances since 2013, when we walked a portion of it with Javi’s family. And actually Javi and his sister Leti had walked some of it way back in 2006 so it had been on his mind for even longer. When we decided to do this adventure, we made it a priority. Now it was all happening.

We took the train to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France and began the journey on May 30 with 40 days of walking ahead of us. We have smallish but heavy packs for this grand adventure, but we didn’t need all that stuff for the Camino so we had sent a few things ahead to Santiago. Despite this, our bags still felt a little heavy, especially Javi’s. We wanted to take our camping gear, since camping is preferable to us over hostels, so that’s mostly what was weighing us down. But we figured we’d get used to it over time, and we eventually did. Although we didn’t end up camping as often as we would’ve liked, the times we did (7 nights) were great.

In the interest of avoiding extremely long posts (because we could write about our experience on the Camino forever), we figured we would just do an overview of our time on The Way…. (basically it was awesome). One could mentally and physically separate the walk into thirds – the Pyrenees to Burgos, the Meseta (roughly Burgos to Astorga), and Galicia.

The first third was mostly spent getting used to walking every day, working out any physical issues, meeting people and socializing (aka drinking “cañas” ), and being in constant disbelief that this was actually happening. Several folks we met at the outset began getting injuries during this first part, some actually having to quit or take long breaks. We took our time and didn’t push it, and basically just got lucky given that we didn’t really train for this trek. Laura’s feet weren’t doing so hot the first couple of weeks but they eventually toughened up.  In the whole Camino she only experienced one tiny blister, which must be some sort of record.

The Camino is a really social endeavor (unless you seek solitude and actively avoid people). It didn’t feel overcrowded (yet) and folks started to form friend groups. We mostly walked just the two of us during the day, mainly because we were always the last to leave our hostel or campsite, but always had a good time hanging out with other pilgrims in the evenings. While walking, we spent long days alternating between a comfortable introspective silence, and singing ridiculous made up songs and just being plain weird. Walking for 40 days can definitely make you a weirder person, especially when you are mostly just hanging out with your partner. Hence the importance of making friends.

After a few days walking, we enjoyed a fun evening in Pamplona but it is definitely surreal to be in a city after walking through rural Spanish towns for so long. When we arrived in Burgos on our 12th day of walking we took our first day off, and many of our friends did too so we had a big crazy night and a chill rest day. We went to the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos with a friend, in keeping with our travel theme of learning about ancient human history. We were absolutely amazed at how cool this museum was. Modern, relevant, well coordinated and curated. And only 4 euros! This was truly one of our favorite moments along the Camino. We learned that the specific area of Spain we were walking through has such importance because of several significant discoveries of early humans.

We moved on after our rest day rejuvenated and ready for the infamous Meseta.

After the Texas celebrations and a brief stint in New York with friends we flew to Barcelona in mid May, our first international destination! We had a few days at a lovely little hostel called Lolita, and we basically just walked around the entire city. Walking around was a good option because we needed to get some prep in for several weeks of walking along the Camino de Santiago, plus we didn’t really want to spend too much time at tourist attractions since we had been to several of those spots on a previous visit. We got some good views and good exercise on Montjuïc, visited the beach, and ate and drank our way through those first few days in Spain.

After that whirlwind mini trip, we moved on to San Sebastián where we would stay for over a week. Laura had signed up for Spanish classes and Javi rented a surfboard for the week. We stayed at a brand new surf hostel and settled into a nice routine. The pintxos scene at night there was wild, with all kinds of yummy delights and party people. We also got really lucky with the weather and had several hot and lazy days on the beaches. As our start date for the Camino was approaching we got a few good walks in (but mostly ate and drank of course). San Sebastián is beautiful and lively, and reminded us a bit of San Francisco – a pretty coastal city with good food, views, nightlife, (mostly good) weather and a creative vibe.

On our last Saturday there we rented a car and traveled south, stopping in Bilbao where we briefly visited the area around Guggenheim museum, and then moving on to the Cave of El Castillo, which is home to 40,000+ year old cave art! It was incredible to witness in person, and definitely fit in with one of our developing themes in our travels – visiting ancient places and learning about human evolution and history. We returned from our day trip with a heightened fascination with ancient cave art and what it can tell us about the development of human culture and civilization.

It was sad to leave San Sebastián as we had developed a nice little life there. Laura was enjoying her classes and Javi his surfing, but it was also exciting to get closer to starting the Camino de Santiago.  In 2013 we did a portion of the Camino with Javi’s family and since then we had been talking about having the opportunity to walk the whole thing. At the end of May we hopped on a train to France to start our trekking adventure to Santiago de Compostella!

We tearfully left our family in Boston (actually I’m not sure the children even noticed, they were busy bouncing on a trampoline, that’s life . . .) and headed out back on the road well rested by our time in a real building and bed but also excited to be getting back into the truck and making our way back south.  Our first stop was not too far away in Narragansett, RI.  Javier lived there for a year and a half and was where he started his graduate degree so he’s got a lot of fond memories of the place. Well, buster you can’t go home!  He was shocked to find that the apartment he used to live in, a converted attic near the beach, had been knocked down to make way for a larger apartment complex. That’s progress. Still Narragansett was pleasant as ever and the weather was relatively bright so it was fun to traipse about, check out old haunts and see how things were going.  We spent a couple of nights in the truck at Fisherman’s Memorial State Park and then hit the road toward PA.

Now, given that we had put roughly 12,000 miles on the truck at this point, and just given the odd looking sight that it is, you would have thought that we would’ve had a curious member of law enforcement stop to check us out.  Well it finally happened outside of Hickory Run State Park in PA.  We were cruising down the highway doing what we thought was the speed limit, 55, when a state trooper pulled behind us and tailed us for what seemed like forever.  He finally turned on his lights and we pulled over curious to see what he’d say.  He came to the window and I think was a little disappointed to find that we weren’t a couple of hippie teenagers with pot smoke billowing out of the cab.  He took our license and registration and then returned to let us know that he was giving us a “warning” for a) not being able to see out the rearview mirror (we had neglected to take down the curtain in the back) & b)  . . . DRIVING TOO SLOW . . . Hahahahahahaaa!!!   . . . apparently doing 55 on Pennsylvania highways is “15” miles under the speed limit and we were impeding the flow of traffic.  Sure buddy.  Anyway, we thanked him for the clarification, promised we’d drive faster and then went on our way.  We were just a few minutes from the State Park and it was a nice change of scenery to the bluster we’d just encountered.

The plan was to stay there a couple of evenings and check out the small town of Danville, PA where Javi had lived when he was little.  The next morning we woke up, checked out an amazing boulder field in the State Park and then headed into Danville.  We had lunch at the river that was near Javi’s old house and then went on a hike in a local park.  We had arranged to meet with a couple of old family friends who took us in for the evening and bought us an amazing dinner.

The next day we were back on the road and were really excited to make Shenandoah National Park our next camping spot.  We drove Skyline Highway to Big Meadow campground and were stoked to discover that they had spaces available and that they were only $17 per night.  We were both so glad that we opted to include Shenandoah on our itinerary because it ended up being, not only one of the best campsites, but some of the best weather that we got on our trip.  While we were there, we enjoyed multiple hikes, checked out some waterfalls, took in some great info at the visitor center and Javi also managed to split open his head during a rain storm.  As he was rushing to get back into the camper when the rain started, he bashed the top of his forehead into the lath on the camper shell and knocked himself on his butt.  While he was lucky to have been wearing a hat, as soon he saw the look on Laura’s face he knew it was a doozie, and as he reached up and touched the spot he hit himself at he knew it wasn’t rain that was moistening his hand.  Once he got his bearings he washed up in the bathroom and realized it wasn’t as bad as it first seemed, no stitches, no bandaids, just some Neosporin and he was back in action the next day. But Laura was a little traumatized from all the blood.

We wrapped up the excitement in Shenandoah and headed to another of Javi’s graduate haunts, Charlottesville, VA. A night out in C’ville was all we really needed and we hit the road one more time stopping in a deluge at Hungry Mother State Park in southern Virginia.  It was a real shame that the weather had entered “torrential” mode because it was our last camping for who knows how long and it seemed like the state park was a real gem.  The next morning we shook off whatever water had pooled up on the truck and hit the open road for what would be the last time.  Our destination was Chattanooga Tennessee and a short week of family, friends and preparing for our leap over the pond . . . but first, Birthdays and Anniversary celebrations in Texas!!!

Once we were back on the east coast we had a long winding road ahead with many stops all the way up to Laura’s sister’s house outside of Boston.  Although we had had an amazing road trip already we both considered this the “meat and potatoes” of the trip.  A great amble up the eastern seaboard, camping, visiting friends, seeing family and stopping in on some awesome cities.  It was all of those things, and in addition, Mother Nature definitely threw us a real curveball making portions of the trip rather difficult.  I guess the old adage is good to remember on the road – “How do you make God laugh? Make plans.”*

We started with a visit to Charleston South Carolina where we stayed with Laura’s aunt and uncle.  Part of this trip was definitely a thank you tour to all the awesome people that had joined us a year ago in Mexico and we were stoked not only on their hospitality, but the chance to visit them on their own turf.  We had a nice couple days in Charleston and our first camping stop after that was at Huntington Beach State Park.

The campsite itself was right next to the beach and was full of awesome neighbors. We had a great setup and had some nice beach weather one of the days. The cold snap was moving in towards the end but we still had a good time enjoying the site.

We also got some education on the Gullah/Geechee Nation, which is a community of descendants of former slaves turned sea islanders stretching from Jacksonville, NC to Jacksonville, FL. Brookgreen Gardens, which happened to be situated right across the street from our campsite, is a unique sculpture garden and wildlife preserve that also educates the public on various issues. We were thrilled that by happenstance when we visited they were holding a lecture on Gullah/Geechee traditions and culture, given by a member of the Nation. One of our goals of travel life is to always be seeking knowledge and education so this worked out great and we learned so much.