Monday after leaving Washington, DC we traveled to Gettysburg, PA were we are staying for 2 nights. The campground we are staying at is actually on part of the battleground. Monday when we arrived we setup the motorhome and then headed to the Gettysburg Visitor Center to try an determine what we should do for the short time we will be here. I must be honest, I had no idea what happened in Gettysburg other than it was some type of Civil War battle. That is one of the things about this journey is that we don’t plan much in advance (we don’t have much time to really). We figure it out when we get there.

At the visitor center we sat through a “free” 30 minute overview of what the battle was about and what there is to do at the battlegrounds. Since our “sightseeing” budget is pretty tight we had to make some decisions and the fancy 20 minute movie and museum wasn’t going to make the cut at $28 for the 4 of us. So we decided to pickup at 4 hour long movie about the battle of Gettysburg and watch it that night. That way when we toured the battlegrounds we would have some clue of what happened. We also passed on the guided tours.

After visiting the Visitor center we took the kids to the playground for a short period and then came back in to start the Gettysburg movie. I knew if we didn’t start it early I would be out cold and miss the ending.

Tuesday morning we got up and worked until about lunch time. Then made the 1 mile drive to the start of the “Auto Tour” of the battlegrounds. This is a 15 stop free driving tour around the over 1,300 monuments scattered around the battlefield. Seeing the movie really helped as I could better see what happened and where on the battlefield. If I remember correctly there were something like over 50,000 killed or wounded in this battle. They said the smell from decomposing bodies was so bad residence had to stay inside for up to 2 month because the odor was so bad. It is hard to even imagine what it must have been like to be here when this was actually happening.

During our Auto Tour the kids were working on completing the needed paperwork to get their “Junior Ranger” certificates. They worked really hard answering all the questions needed to get this. We also picked up a National Parks Passport for the kids to collect stamps from all the parks we hope to visit over the next year.

This has definitely been a quick stop but we feel we have a good overview of the area and can move on. Tomorrow we leave here and take the short drive over the Lancaster, PA for a 5 night stay in the Dutch Country. I’m pretty excited about this and it should be a good stay. As usual I know nothing about the Dutch Country so it should be educational for all of us.  We will probably try to drive up to Hershey, PA to see if we can get a tour of the Hershey Chocolate plant.

We actually do not have anything planned for our next stop after Lancaster. Our thoughts were to hit Wilmington, DE but there are not a lot of campgrounds in the area. We will try to have something confirmed by the end of this week as we leave Lancaster on Monday. As always, thanks for following us.

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The first stop on our tour began last Monday when we left Dunn, NC and headed North to Washington, DC. The drive here was pretty uneventful and luckily we made it through DC with the motorhome just fine. We are actually staying in a small campground in Lothian, MD about 20 miles from DC. It is certainly not a fancy campground but it was about all we could afford on our budget. It has Wifi so all is good:)

Tuesday we hung out around the campground and worked most of the day trying to get caught up with our office. That afternoon we took the kids over to the pool for a couple hours of family swim time. Heavy thunderstorms came and we had to call it a day at the pool. We worked at night to plan our first trip into DC.

Wednesday we made the journey into the city. It was Carson’s first time on a metro train/subway system. He was so excited. We first went to the Smithsonian castle welcome center to get information about the different museums. While there I asked Carson what to do if he was to get lost and couldn’t find Polly or I. His response was to “Stop, Drop and Roll” Oh well, some how I think he had his response to emergencies mixed up. We decided to do the Natural Museum of American History first. We spent all morning and most of the early afternoon there.

That afternoon we started walking to the Washington Monument when we noticed a lot of activity over towards the Holocaust Museum. There were police cars everywhere and the roads were blocked. We asked someone to discover there had been a shootout a couple hours earlier. News crews were all lined up broadcasting live from the scene. As we continued walking we were tracking what had happened with CNN on our phones. We finally made it to the Washington Monument and decided to not go in and just view it from the outside. We next stopped at the World War II Memorial for a few minutes and continued on to the Lincoln Memorial. A few pictures and a quick snack and we were off to the Vietnam Memorial. As you can imagine everybody was exhausted by this time. The whining from the kids was increasing by the minute. We then headed back down in front of the White House when we meet the little black squirrel. This was the friendliest squirrel I had ever met and would come up to the kids and let them touch it. The kids wanted to feed it so I reached into our camera bag to get some crackers and I started feeling something climbing up my leg. The squirrel was attached to the back of my shorts I guess going for the food. It was pretty funny. After several minutes we moved on towards the metro station. We stopped at a Starbucks for an iced latte and crackers for dinner. After riding the Metro back to Suitland station we headed out of the parking deck only to realize that they don’t accept cash to pay for parking. I’ve traveled a little bit in my life and have never seen a parking garage that didn’t take “money”. We had to go back to the station and purchase a $10 Metro Card to pay for our $4.50 parking fee. What a scam!!

Thursday we spent the day at the motorhome working again. In order for us to continue traveling we have to keep our business running as smoothly as possible. We did make a trip to WalMart and the grocery store for our weekly food gathering.

Friday we went back into the city. We went to the Museum of Natural History and then walked over to the front of the White House as close as we could get. It is a little hard to go to Washington, DC and not feel the power that the office of the President must have. It must be a tremendous amount of responsibility. After leaving the White House we went to the National Air and Space Museum. As with all the museums you have to go through security to check for weapons. The couple in front of us went through the bag scanner and it was clear that the Security Guard did not like what he saw. They scanned the bag again only to find a knife. The guy that owned the bag dug in and pulled out about a 10″ kitchen knife. You should have seen the look on the guards face. I was actually surprised that the guard only took the knife from the guy and gave him a very strong warning to never try that again before letting him go on in. We finished up the day at this museum and then headed back to the campground.

Saturday we spent the day working again and researching our next destination. We booked campgrounds for our next two stops and researched going to New York City the end of June. In order to travel for a year we have to stick to a really tight budget. After doing some research we figure it will cost about $1,500 for about 4 nights in New York City. There are no campgrounds in or near NYC. So we will have to pay to park the motorhome somewhere, get into the city and then pay for a hotel in the city. We would also have to board Bella during this time. We can stay in a campground for a week for about what it will cost to stay in NYC for 1 night. So at this point it looks like we may have to skip NYC unless we can find a cheaper way to do it.

Saturday night we went over to the Chesapeake Bay Beach and had dinner at Abner’s Crab House. I don’t really like crabs but Polly does. And I guess you cannot go near the Chesapeake Bay and not have crabs. So Polly ordered 6 whole blue crabs to experience the disgusting process of dissecting a crab for the little meat that it has. People that know me know that I don’t even eat chicken on the bone because it is just to much trouble. Imagine sitting their with a knife and hammer trying to get a mouthful of crab meat. Even Polly agreed that it just wasn’t worth the effort. Anyway, the crab meat was good and so were the hush puppies. After dinner we drove over to North Beach and walked down the boardwalk and listened a few minutes to the band play. It was a nice relaxing night.

Sunday we got up early and headed to the National Zoological Park. We decided to drive there instead of taking the Metro. Luckily it was a Sunday morning and traffic wasn’t bad. I am not a big Zoo person as I have been to several and they all start to look the same. The kids enjoyed it but were very tired and hot by the time we left. After the zoo we headed back to the motor home to do laundry and get ready to leave on Monday morning.

We have had a great time in Washington, DC. We have learned several things while hear that we will use to make the rest of our trip better. For one we can not be in vacation mode every day. After a long day of sightseeing we are exhausted and really need the day after to rest and work on the business. So out of a week we can really only do about 3-4 days of sightseeing without burning out. We have also reinforced our need for Wifi at the campgrounds we stay at. We use the internet non-stop for work and planning our next stops. Depending on our Verizon data plans just want cut it all the time.

So, where are we now? We left Washington Monday morning and are now in Gettysburg, PA were we will stay for 2 nights. We will then leave on Wednesday and go to Lancaster, PA for about 5 nights. We have not planned any further than this yet. Most likely our next stop will be Wilmington, DE. We are trying to hit every state as we head North.

I know this has been a very long blog post and i will probably try to do mid-week updates in the future to shorten them up. Thanks for following us and if you have any ideas on how we can stay “cheap” in NYC let us know.

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Motorhome Sand Castle

It has been just over a week now since we left our home in Fletcher, NC.  A lot has happened over the past week.  Here is a quick review of what has happened.

Last Saturday we headed to Myrtle Beach, SC for our yearly beach trip with my mom.  We have a condo that we stay at so we left the motorhome behind for the week.  This was the first time in about 4 months that we have not lived in our motorhome.

I was happy that my brother and his two kids could come down for a couple nights to stay with us.  We don’t get to see them very often and will not see them again for about 6 months.

The place we stayed at in Myrtle Beach does not allow pets.  So we had to take Bella, our dog, to a pet boarding place.  We did our research and found what we thought was the right place.  We dropped her off on Saturday and then on Wednesday we got a call from a women who said she found Bella walking down the street in her neighborhood.  Bella Had Escaped!!  We immediately started the 30 minute trip to the women’s home to pick up Bella.  To make a long story short, the women had taken Bella home with her and Bella escaped as she was taking a shower.  While we were getting Bella we saw the women keeping Bella riding around looking for her so we chased her down.  Here is the funny part, the women never apologized not even once for letting her get away.  She was very cold and didn’t seem to really care.  Of course we took Bella and found her somewhere else to stay the rest of the week.

We spent most of the week between the beach, pool, shopping, eating out and taking a daily nap.  Very relaxing and the weather was great.

While we were at the beach on Wednesday we had a very nice couple closing on our home back in Fletcher.  So we are now officially without a stick home.  It is really a good feeling to not have to worry about that while we are traveling.  God certainly made that and a lot of other things fall right into place.

As an update on the tire issue we had with our Toad I decided to only replace one tire and hope the other one will be ok.  The grand total was $177.  Not as bad as it could have been.

We are excited that tomorrow we finally start heading north.  Our first stop will be Washington, DC.  We have a campground booked in Maryland about 21 miles from DC.  We will be spending 7 nights.  As of now our plans are to leave DC and travel up to Gettysburg, PA for a couple days then over to Lancaster, PA for a few days. After that we will probably skim the northern part of Delaware as we move into New Jersey.  We are trying to hit every state as we make our way north.

Please subscribe to our blog.  You can also add me as a friend on Facebook and follow our daily post on Twitter. Hopefully time will allow me to start doing some videos from the road.  Below I put together a quick photo slide show to get warmed up.

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This past weekend we took the motorhome on its maiden voyage.  We left Friday afternoon and headed to the Charlotte area.  We actually stayed at the KOA Campground in Fort Mills, SC about 15 minutes from Charlotte.

This was our first long trip on the motorhome and the first drive with our toad in tow.  Luckily I had driven the motorhome around town some so was starting to feel good about driving this big thing.  Never the less, I was a little concerned about taking it into a larger city with heavier traffic.  But I am happy to say it went about perfect.  By the end of the weekend I was feeling like I had been driving it for years.

Probably the biggest improvement that needs to be made is the communication with my co-pilot.  Polly is in charge of helping me backup, in route directions, watching the cameras when changing lanes and looking to see if any basement doors have opened (this has happened serveral times so far). By the time we got home we were working together pretty well.

The reason we went to Charlotte was for the State Chess Tournament.  Zachary has played in this tournament for the past 3 years.  This was Caron’s first year.  Both kids have fun at the tournament and it is a good way for them to get experience in larger competitions.  I am very proud of both kids for showing very good sportsmanship.  The halls were filled with crying kids (those that lost) and upset parents.  We really didn’t care if the kids won or lost as long as they tried their best and didn’t have a melt down.

The weekend was great and it I am very happy our first outing was uneventful. Our next trip will be to see my mom in Dunn, NC in about a week.  This is about 5 hours away which is quite a bit farther than Charlotte.

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Well we have finally done it.  Over the past weekend we moved most everything out of our house and moved things into our motorhome.  Monday night we moved into the Rutledge Lake RV Park . Pretty much the only people here currently are some full time couples.  The RV park is actually pretty nice and we have a really nice lake view.  We can go fishing, the kids can play at the park and we are about 1.7 miles from the kids school.  We are also only about 3 miles from our office which makes everything really quick to get too.

So far everything is going great considering how stressed and tired we are from moving.  We had our first sit down meal Wednesday night and it went good.  Our neighbors are nice and very friendly.  Zachary and Carson are all excited about the new environment.

Our next big challenge is getting our house ready for rent or possibly sale. We have to finish getting the rest of our stuff out, clean it from top to bottom and then paint and repair anything that needs it.  This will probably take a couple weeks to do.  Our goal is to have it ready by the beginning of March.  We will be living in this park for probably about the next 3 months.  We will keep you posted if anything changes.

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