To properly tell the story of my summer roadtrip adventures, I must first tell you the story of now. Right now I am sitting in my dope-ass warehouse space in the Worcester, MA area with my boyfriend, AGP. We are building a house on a trailer. A year ago, when I quit my job, a lifestyle like the one I was about to embrace seemed like a dream that was light-years away. It was something I ached for- longed for- cried fat, hot tears for- time and time again. And me being in the not-so-easy-to-satisfy category left me but one option: Quit and see what happens. So here I am, drinking a beer on a snowy Wednesday afternoon because I WORK FOR MYSELF, BITCHES. Just kidding (but not about the beer though). Yea, and sometimes I still cry fat, hot tears for the other things I don't have yet. But if the past year has taught me anything it's that I'll get there.
Oh, I'll get there.
This story starts like many traveling, on-the-road sort of jaunts, with an epic going away party where, as the party was winding down, we sort of just got up from the couch while the sun was rising, waved goodbye to our friends, and peaced the hell out. Adventure time! Like, no really, I quit my job for this experience and I had no set return date. My heart was all a-flutter with the romance of it all.
First stop: Holden, ME. AGP's family has a magical cabin on a lake that you can only get to by taking a boat. It is completely off-the-grid and basically fuels our lifestyle wet dreams. We brought Peter, AGP's brother's Jack Russell Terrier, who kept me company while AGP did some work on the little cabin he built with our friend, Laura. We spent a little under a week relaxing by the water and hiking around the hills.
With Peter in tow, we headed down Route 2 towards our second substantial destination in Morris, NY where we were slated to celebrate AGP's Grandma's 90th birthday at a sprawling family farm! We stopped briefly in Stowe, VT to hang with our buddy, Tim, and after a long haul down Route 88, reunited with the AGP clan plus dogs. We frolicked through the wildflowers, had many picnics, went to the Butternuts Beer and Ale brewery, and got dressed up to party the unseasonably warm spring night away.
The family reluctantly let us power on to our next scheduled destination, which was nearly 1,000 miles and two days away. We decided it was prudent to stay in a motel in Eerie, PA when we nearly wrecked with a bright-eyed deer in the road after the sunset and the next day hauled-ass through West Virginia. We spent the night in Barboursville, WV at the Beech Fork State Park Campground in western West VA, which, while even though the swimming pool was closed for the night (at 6pm??), still offered us lakeside camping, fireflies and wood ducks galore, and decent showers. It was our first night in a tent on what was supposed to be a camping-heavy trip, so we were pretty excited to cook our food over the BBQ and sit motionless in camp chairs as the sun set. (Although, too fatigued to take decent pictures, it seems...)
With breathless anticipation, the next morning we headed west towards Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, which was not only on my bucket list of National Parks, but also where we were meeting four of my best friends for a quick camping expedition before we met up with even more of our crew in Arkansas. How nice my friends are to help me cope with my separation from Boston by joining me in my travels!
Here is the ground we've covered so far:
(Made on Google Maps)
A: Home, Massachusetts
B: Holden, Maine
C: Stowe, Vermont
D: Morris, New York
E: Eerie, Pennsylvania
F: Barboursville, West Virginia
[Stay tuned for more adventures!]
Up next on Go: Arkansas Redux
