These past few weeks have been full of adjustments and most certainly our first week on the road was no exception. We had to adjust to the idea of selling our home in Parsippany, leaving friends & neighbors and purging items that often held either sentimental or monetary value. We had to adjust to the idea of downsizing ~1,000 square feet and living full time in our lake home that we used to enjoy as a refuge from our everyday hectic life. We had to adjust to being unemployed and to no paychecks coming in. We had to adjust to little sleep and never-ending packing/moving/unpacking. We never really got to adjust to the fact that we were embarking on a 12-month journey because we went from one thing to the next and then got in the RV and drove. And that included a whole host of other adjustments.

First, it was adjusting to our new ‘automobile’, a 24-foot drivable home that shakes with the wind and doesn’t handle turns quite as nicely as our Sonata. Dave thought I’d be able to sit in the back and work or nap but the sad truth is it makes me nauseas. And so, there is an adjustment in the way you move with the sway and rock of our moving home and, most importantly, remembering to open cabinets slowly otherwise the insides fall out. We are adjusting to having to move many items to get to the one we want and having to immediately put away what we’ve gotten out because there is just no extra room for it. With the windows down, you suffer from the howling wind and truck traffic so I learned to put cotton in my ears. There are the road signs which don’t always provide the direction you need. Jackson is trying to adjust to his new window perch but still insists on laying across our laps to sniff the air from our window. He’s also slowly adjusting to the new noises and smells and to not sleeping in his crate or being able to run and play.

Then there is our limited wardrobe and supplies and initially, lots of time driving and scrambling for places to stay. We had to adjust to sleeping in rest stops with traffic and noise and to setting up and shutting down ‘house’ nightly. We are still adjusting to our new bed (and to having to make it each night and put it ‘away’ each morning), to a smaller fridge, a 2-burner stove, a miniature sink, a tiny bathroom (although it is a plus not to have to stop at rest stops for bio-breaks!) – heck, smaller EVERYTHING.  Believe it or not, Dave is still adjusting to not being in class and I am trying to figure out work on the road.

And in spite of the many adjustments, modifications and changes, we are EXACTLY where we want to be. Together. Free. Traveling this marvelous country of ours and enjoying every second of it. We’re not sure it has sunk in that we have 51 weeks left of our journey. But when it does it will surely be BLISSFUL.

We’re camping tonight on the Missouri River on the Iowa side. The other side of the river is Nebraska. Before I leave Iowa behind though I have to share something we saw that is probably a truly midwest event and that’s a “Tractor Parade”! They do have them back east too but you rarely see them. So we were heading to a campground and we see a tractor coming down the road. Behind that lead tractor is about 20 others. Most are very old/rare tractors and many are adorned with American flags and decorations. One is pulling a small trailer with an outhouse on it. Apparently the parade is going to go about 30 miles and at 7mpg the drivers are going to have to hit the head eventually. So we quick pull off into a gas station off the interstate to get some pictures and the whole parade comes into the gas station to take a break. I got to spend about 30 minutes talking to all the farmer/drivers who are proud as all get out about their tractors, the year they were built, etc. One guy has a tractor from 1919 being carried on a 1929 flat bed international truck cause it goes to slow to be in the parade. I start talking to him, Darrel is his name, and he says with unencumbered enthusiasm and excitement, that he’ll start it up for me. So he jumps up on the flat bed, takes out a crank handle like they used to start up model T Fords with, gives the tractor two turns of the crank and sure enough that almost 100 year old tractor starts running and it’s loud as a volkswagen without a muffler. All the guys are gathered around and having a grand old time. It was truly a blast to witness it and to get to talk to these guys. They were just out on a Sunday afternoon having some fun and camaraderie and man, were they proud of the machines that their livlihood depends on. Thank ya Iowa.

We’re in Iowa. Two days now. It’s down time and it’s got us a little “antsy”. You know, we’re not moving. We’re not going anywhere. We’re still not in a National Park. In fact, we’re sitting in a waiting room attached to a garage that’s bigger than two airplane hangers while our 24′ RV has levelers installed in it. We’re not “on the road”. The hanger is pretty much in the middle of no-where. Surrounded by corn fields with a few roads paralleled by drainage ditches. A few distant farm houses with barns and silos attached. Horizons in every direction passed over by moving clouds. And we wait. I took Jackson for a walk so that he could do his business and I could get up off of these uncomfortable chairs and stretch my legs. As I crossed the large dirt parking lot with Jackson tugging on the leash, I noticed a beautifully marked, rather large bird that was spending more time running around in front of us on the ground than it was flying. The large dirt parking lot was lined with large chunks of sandstone, I’m assuming being deposited here from the bottom of some ancient ocean. We reached the street and headed up the hill with no destination. The drainage ditch was about 20 feet wide and filled with quite happy cattails and a variety of tall grasses. Jackson occasionally made a charge into the reeds at some imaginary animal, at least imaginary to me as I didn’t see it. Red winged black birds perched on a fence on the far side of the ditch and then circled close to my head and screeched, most likely cause I came too close to their ground nest. Up ahead I noticed a cross, partially hidden in the lowest part of the ditch. Grasses had grown tight around it but it had neat, black, letters on it. RIP to a person whose last name was Peterson, followed by Semper Fi. I stopped to take a photo. Who was he and how did this memorial get set up in this spot. Was he hit by a car here? Did he end this life at this spot at all? In a sense, it was a more beautiful spot than being assigned a plot in a cemetery. Here you were surrounded by life. Lush, green, reeds of grass with yellow seed tufts. Lavender and pink wild flowers. Cackling birds and small invisible rodents. I slowly realized that we weren’t experiencing down time. We were experiencing time. I had finally taken the time to observe. To notice. To appreciate where I was at the moment. And then I thought of what I had told my students so many times, in reference to their year of learning: “It’s the road, not the destination”, or, “The road is the destination”. This was our destination. It was wherever we happened to be.

I looked up and gazed across the fields to a distant farm house. I wondered what it must be like to live and work in a spot like this. Every day, big, broad, skies that were sometimes blue, sometimes dark with blowing winds and pounding rain. Skies so big that you could watch it raining on another farmhouse 100 miles away while you basked in the sun. A life where you had your hands in the dirt every day. You could smell its richness. It was permanently a part of your finger nails. Where your crows feet are deep crevices through deep tanned skin, born out of countless years squinting under the life giving sun. Where you didn’t talk much, as your neighbor was 5 miles away. Most conversations took place in your head and centered around all those things that affect your crops, your tractor, your life, your loved ones lives. I’ve always felt at home with the common sense manner of speaking that people from the mid-west talk with. I’m going to guess that their talk is a fruit born out of saving meaningful words for the few conversations you might have. It’s an honest style of talking. It’s simple and to the point. You don’t have to wonder what your hearing. It’s honest as the day is long and honest as the sun on your face. I’m glad we stopped in Iowa. I don’t want to wish I was somewhere else tomorrow.

The goal was to start our trip on Wednesday, June 21st but we seriously underestimated how much work is involved in selling a house, moving everything to a tiny house, closing up that tiny house for a year, saying goodbye to family and friends via dinners, etc., forwarding mail to responsible handlers, securing neighbors to keep the mice out of our house when the cold weather settles in, and, loading an RV for a one year trip around America visiting all the national parks. Whew! It’s tiring just writing about it!

Well, 6:35 PM on Wednesday, June 21st we hit the road, much later than expected but on the road nonetheless. Driving west from New Jersey, I thought I’d feel the enormity of embarking on a life changing trip like this but I actually felt like I was just leaving on a vacation. It was a little surreal, as if I didn’t realize what I was doing. There was a certain tinge of panic in realizing that I had given up my job and in essence was unemployed. There was a feeling of loss in leaving my co-workers and students at Pequannock High School. There was also a little bit of unknown sprinkled over everything since we hadn’t made reservations for anything. There wasn’t any question in my mind though that this was the right thing to do. Being able to do this trip and share the experience with my wife Laurie, was one of the few things that could justify giving up so much. The first night we parked and bedded down in a rest area. And then there was the sore butt that you get when you start driving 5-8 hours on the interstate. I felt somewhat “weighted down”. By the second day, things started to fall into place. We had left Jersey behind and were 200 miles into the Keystone State, finding our way down to the Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater. It was a perfect metaphor for the Ecology portion of our trip since Wright designed this house to interact with nature and the environment, and Ecology is the interaction between species and their environment. The house is the perfect melding of form, function, creativity, mathematics, and nature.

From there we hit the road again and drove into Ohio. A great state Ohio, at least it is for pilgrims traveling in RV’s like us. Every other rest area on route 80 has a separate area where RV’s can park, hook up to electric, water, and utilize a dump station for waste. Nirvana! Showers, air conditioning, unlimited water! I know, we sound like a  couple of sissies, but, after 2 days on the road in the heat and the sweat, that shower was pure heaven. About this time, that old feeling of being on the road and not having any “obligations” weighing us down started coming back. I’ve traveled cross country several times before (in my younger days) and there is a great lifting of spirit that comes when your eyes are always “looking ahead” and, you’re blanketing yourself in nature. We arose in the morning renewed and eager to hit the road again. We spent about 5 hours arranging more belongings than our 24 foot RV could humanly hold and which had been alternately rolling across the floor or falling from overhead compartments for the past two days. It was also putting a major crimp in our ability to “live” in the RV. With the organizing almost complete, we hit the road and crossed Ohio and headed into Indiana where we suffered through hours of road construction backup but eventually made it to east of Chicago in Illinois by nightfall. We were able to secure an RV site in a trailer park that had a second job as a campsite but we had electricity and that made it worth it. We hit the road the next morning and as we reached the western edge of Illinois, we decided to stop at Starved Rock State Park in Seneca, Illinois. It was worth the stop as it gave us a break, allowed Jackson to get some exercise, allowed us to get out in some nature, and, to get off the road. The visitors center in the park had a section of an Elm tree that used to be one of the biggest Elms in the United States, that is until it was dropped by Dutch Elm disease which I believe was a fungus that came to this country via Japan. A similar fate befell the American Chestnut back east and across America, it too being wiped out by a blight that I believe also came from Asia. I also learned that the name “Winnebago”, (which is the manufacturer of our RV), means “people from the stinking water”. Wow, I wonder who the marketing genius was who chose it for the name of an RV company. Luckily, very few people know this background information. The park was quite crowed with hikers and dogs but we were able to view some wildlife along the trails that included a four foot water snake in a stream; white pelicans on the Illinois River; a huge snapping turtle also in the river; and a number of beautiful wildflowers along the path. For me, I think the highlight were all the dogs since I must admit, I have quite the obsession with the four legged flea hotels. After a few hours in the park, we hit the road again and headed for Iowa where we again secured ourselves a spot in a nice campground. Tomorrow, we head for Moscow, Iowa where we will spend the night in the parking lot of HWH Industries and at 7:00AM on Monday, will have “levelers” installed in our Winnebago. For those of you who don’t know what levelers are, (which included me up until 6 months ago), they are pneumatic jacks that come down and level your RV when you are parked in an uneven campsite. It does things like prevents you from rolling out of bed in the night or water running out of your pot on the stove. Quite handy actually. I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself but the plan after Monday is to head west to South Dakota where we will actually enter our first National Park and that would be Badlands NP. Can’t wait.

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