At this time last week, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write a newsletter like this.
But here I am, writing to tell you that our Big Trip has come to an end—earlier than planned.

To be fair, it didn’t end much earlier than planned. If everything had worked out, I would have sent this newsletter last Tuesday, sharing that we’d made it to Albuquerque. And today, Jason and I would be arriving home in southern California, bringing our Big Trip to its scheduled end.

Instead, I’m writing this newsletter from California, and I’m sending it a week late. Because things got a little sketchy in Albuquerque.

My brain hasn’t quite absorbed this yet, so I need to put it in writing: As of two weeks ago, Jason and I have visited every national park in the contiguous United States.

That’s every park we can drive to. Every park from the Redwoods in California to the wetlands in Florida to the mountains in Maine. Which means we’ve done it.

The goal that sparked our idea for the Big Trip six years ago? It’s complete.
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And I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Back in Southern California, I used to sweat through every summer in eager anticipation of fall: the season of artificial pumpkin spice, when the leaves turned slightly more brown and temperatures dropped to a balmy 79°F.

Little did I know what I was missing out on.

This year, per my request, Jason designed our travel route to bring us to New England by October. I used to wonder what autumn felt like here. Were the fall foliage and cider mills really as spectacular as everyone said? Or was it all just hype, designed to lure naïve tourists like myself?

Having spent three weeks romping around New England’s forests and mills, I can say for certain now: It’s not hype.

Two big things happened over the last couple weeks.

First, I’m thrilled to share that we got our slide-out fixed--and our insurance covered most of the cost to repair it. Our sighs of relief could be heard for miles around.

Second, we completed one of our primary goals for the Big Trip: A few days ago, we watched our last baseball game of the season, and now Jason can say that he’s seen a game at 29 of the 30 Major League Baseball ballparks.

When we set out on the road last summer, we knew we were taking on a new adventure—and a lot of risk. Yes, we’d given up our apartment and our jobs, but we were also moving into a travel trailer. And when you’re towing your house along hundreds of miles of highways every few days, just about anything can happen.

Well. Something happened.

A couple weeks ago, as we broke camp in West Virginia, our trailer’s slide-out stopped working properly.* I could go into detail here—too much detail—but in an effort to keep this newsletter somewhat brief, I’ll just say this: our slide-out couldn’t extend and retract smoothly anymore. Somehow, it had become crooked.

Sustaining damage to a vehicle is already stressful. But seeking out repairs while you’re living in that vehicle thousands of miles from home?

Good Lord.

After more than a year of traveling full-time, you would think we’ve learned how to avoid burnout.

Instead, over the last few weeks, we managed to run ourselves so ragged that I began fantasizing about packing up and heading home.

To be fair, we knew August would be crazy. We flew to California individually and returned on red-eye flights that left us each out of commission for 24 hours afterwards. Then we arrived at one of the most significant stops on this leg of our trip, New York, where we had lots to do and didn’t want to waste a single minute. Basically, for three weeks straight, our pace was go go go.

Add to that New York’s unforgiving public transit systems, 10+ miles of walking a day, a quarter-sized blister on my foot, and a nasty cold I picked up somewhere along the way—and, well. You can see why “home” sounded so tempting.

Life on the road has been hectic recently. Going into this Big Trip, we knew we’d have to sacrifice a lot to make our new lifestyle work: things like easy-to-find groceries, consistent access to laundry services, reliable cell signal, and city-supplied electricity, water, and plumbing.
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But the one thing we weren’t willing to give up? Celebrating milestones with our family.

What comes to mind when you think of the Northern Plains?

Maybe it’s the view outside my window as I write this, sitting in the passenger seat of our truck while Jason drives us across North Dakota: endless fields in every direction, sometimes dotted with circular hay bales, sometimes packed with stalks of corn bowing in the wind. Maybe it’s a flat horizon interrupted by grain silos, or herds of cattle grazing on the side of the road.

That’s certainly what much of the Northern Plains look like. We’ve spent a lot of time driving the two-lane roads here over the last couple weeks, and we’ve passed many farms and spotted far more crops than people.
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But we’ve also noticed a funny pattern. Every time we’re about to stop driving, the farms dry up suddenly. And, seemingly out of nowhere, the land changes.

This newsletter will be either the most depressing one I’ve written or the most cathartic.

The last two weeks have not been easy. We set out on the last leg of the Big Trip on July 1, and while our travels have mostly gone well, lots of other things have gone wrong.
We’re having issues with our trailer’s slide-out room. One of our window shades broke. Our truck’s check-engine light turned on (again).* A rock chipped our windshield. A prong on our 30-amp extension cord busted open. We discovered that we didn’t meet our budgetary goal for the second leg of the trip.** We’ve had worse-than-expected cell signal, we’ve been towing through heat waves, and to top things off, we had to get creative to level our trailer on an uncomfortably steep campsite—some digging was involved—in a national park where the park’s main feature is closed to the public.

None of these items is catastrophic or trip-derailing. But they are frustrating, and combined, they’ve made for an exhausting two weeks.

At times, they’ve also made me wonder: Why are we still doing this?

We’re back from our rafting trip down the Colorado River, and in our rush to get home and prep the trailer for the next leg of our journey, we completely forgot about a huge milestone that came and went this week.

This Wednesday, July 3, marked a year since we hit the road full-time and officially started our Big Trip.