Saturday, December 24, 2011

Home for the Holidays

Alright - so far so good with the camper!  We slept in it for two nights and it has been awesome.  Can't wait to get to work on it and keep on traveling!  Also, I had my very first trailer-pulling experience with it.  While I did remain very tense for the entire shift, it wasn't as bad or scary as I imagined.  In fact, for the most part I didn't even notice it.

In the last two days of travel, we also finished up all of our bingo... it was sad for it to end, but really fun that it lasted the whole trip.  Here were the final wins: Ben won a yo-yo (which is really perfect for him, if you didn't know); I won these noisy magnet things... not sure how to better explain them, haha; and finally, Ben won a small wind-up flipping monkey.  Pretty freakin' awesome, and really such an amazing gift from Zach and Blaire - thanks you guys!

Well, folks, this chapter of our adventure is officially over...  Ben and I got back to our families in the Charlotte area early this afternoon.  We have spent the day with our respective families, which is pretty much the perfect end to the trip.  I still can't believe it's over, but we'll be up and moving again before too long (probably about a week from now, actually).

Since this post will be wrapping up Chapter 1, I think I'll go ahead and comment on my initial goals -
1. Have lots of fun.  This was without a doubt fulfilled.  I will always be grateful to have seen all the places we did, and to have spent good time with family and friends - I can't imagine having a better and more fun trip.  It was straight-up awesome.
2. Don't get too worked up about the details - remain flexible.  While this is traditionally something I need to work on, it wasn't too big of a deal for me during this trip.  There were definitely moments when I would worry about money or how long we had in a certain place or if we would get home in time... but really, they just ended up being fleeting thoughts - easy to get past so I could just enjoy what we were up to.
3. Stay Healthy.  While I was no health nut on this trip, I think I did pretty well.  I haven't weighed myself, but all of my clothes still fit.  I am not injured or anything like that.  I would say, goal accomplished.
4. For Ben and I to keep liking each other.  This one was so easy!  Seriously, I started to get worried when we were planning the trip and people kept advising that we spend time apart whenever we stop somewhere.  Well, we didn't spend much time apart at all, and it was totally awesome!  We had so much fun together... I honestly think we laughed every single day, multiple times.  I am a lucky girl.

Also, I thought it might be fun to quantify the trip... here are some numbers for you :)
40 days on the road
41 tanks of gas
4 chips in the windshield
11 loads of laundry
1 new derailleur
6 days mountain biking
3 days skiing/snowboarding
3 meals from Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives restaurants
11 bingo prizes won
8 days with family
10,000-ish miles driven
27 blog posts... and over 2,000 blog views.

Thanks to everybody who has been keeping up with our adventures.  We have had so much fun and can't wait to continue the journey, whether it's on the road, in a new city, or with new jobs.  It's a happy and sad feeling for this trip to be over, but it'll be exciting to see what is in store for us next.  I'm not planning on this being my last blog post - let's hope for some fun and excitement in our lives so that I have some good stuff to write about!

We hope everybody has wonderful and heart-warming holidays... and, I'll keep you posted!

No comments:

Post a Comment