A Month of Springtime in Virginia

After visiting our friends in Asheville for a long weekend, it was time to head to Virginia, where we planned to be for over a month in April and May.

We had a 180-mile travel day to stay with our friend in southwestern Virginia. He’s been working on a cabin, so we offered to come for a visit and to help tackle some projects.

After getting set up, he showed us around what all he’s gotten done since we visited last year and we talked about some of the projects on his wish list to tackle while we are here.

With an idea of what he wanted done, we divvied up the list so we all had tasks to complete during our time there around life stuff and exploring the area.

It seems like every walk around the tree line offered new wildlife, which suited us just fine! We spent the days working and our evenings having dinner and spending time together.

We got our supplies for Alaska so we could get things tested and organized while we had a long term stop to do so. We also got some preventative maintenance done and coordinated some repairs and supplies we’ll do enroute.

We also got 10th grade homeschool figured out and ordered the Algebra 2 curriculum now so we didn’t have to figure out where to intercept it later. We are going to keep the split between FLVS, MathUSee for Algebra, and novel based English using my archives and Teachers-Pay-Teachers materials. And what better research project than a trip to Alaska?!

I’ve taught travel research lessons in the past, so will draw from curriculum I’ve created and will get that shared over on our Classroom Edition of TPT, too (I linked it here, if you want to see other things we’ve got available).

We did a lot in our time there. Got haircuts (including finally donating mine to Wigs for Kids), explored hiking trails, downtown areas and shops, finished up Luther’s 9th grade courses.

We saw all kinds of weather and got a reminder of thunder in the mountains. (If you’ve never experienced it, when lightening strikes the nearby peaks, it seems incredibly loud and then lasts for minutes as it echoes through the surrounding valley).

Life had a quiet rhythm in the hills for a few weeks as April showed us what transitioning from winter to spring is like in the Blue Ridge Mountains. From rainy days and evenings, freezing nights, even hot, sunny days–and everything in between, even in the same day.

The first of May brought us to our much awaited visit with our oldest a few hundred miles away in Washington, D.C., area. We left the RV safely tucked away and headed off to the big city. We love getting to visit with them whenever our travels bring us this way. D.C. has been one of our favorite cities since our teen years, and getting to “live like locals” and get time together is such a treat.

Sadly, we missed out on high school graduation of kids we’ve watched grow up their entire life. It’s a challenging part of travel life, choosing what to say yes to and what you can’t. Trying to do it all will cause burnout–something we learned the hard way.

Our time to leave came all to quickly. We know we are always welcome, but we try not to overstay that welcome. It was time to head back to the RV and get her ready for travel, and spend a couple of days seeing a friend and staying at one of our fave campgrounds, Utt’s Campground in Fancy Gap, Virginia. Then it’s time to head to our next stop–some friends in Ohio!

Join us next week as we continue our journey north, before we start heading west!

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