Hello from Brunswick Maryland!
We made it through Virginia and into Maryland yesterday, following the fuel shortage that is occurring due to the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack. Fortunately, we are not running on gasoline and have not had an issue fueling up. I got a little worried about the shortages because we are reliant on diesel to get on the road. Diesel has not been effected as bad, which is good for us!
Durham North Carolina was pretty nice. I'd say it was the nicest State Park we've spent time in. It is called the Falls Lake Recreation Area. Our site was huge and had access to the lake below and a cool T-shaped pier. We took a trail by the lake to get some walking in and later came back to three large birds. Two vultures and a huge crane. Yikes! The area has small animals like foxes, white tail deer and Cardinals. The bright colored birds are really cool because they only live on the east coast.
The further east we drive, the more you can feel a shift to east coast weather and lifestyle. It is very refreshing. It is a bit cooler and rainy but many of the days have been sunny and in the 70's. Durham was the first place that felt really old. As we've traveled north from there, the older it has become.
We missed the tornados that we're devastating the midwest with carefully timed trips. I made sure we were on the tail end of each big storm. Tennessee was the worst weather with torrential rains and thunderstorms. We fortunately were deep within the Smoky's so no tornados were capable. I read that east Texas and Mississippi had tornados right after we left. Kind of scary when it's the peak of tornado season and you have to pass right through the epicenter of it all. We made it.
We spent a couple days in Surry Virginia to see my sister Nina and her boyfriend Daniel. Surry is quite rural and west of Jamestown. To get to Jamestown, we had to take a ferry across the river. That was pretty fun! Our last day there, we took the ferry to Williamsburg which is in Jamestown? We found the oldest college building in the USA, William and Mary College. It was very old. The whole town was old. It was funny to find Henry Square and Henry Street. Sweet Henry had a nice day walking around the area.
The next day, we left for Brunswick Maryland. We chose to go here early because of the fuel crisis in North Carolina and the Outer Banks are a bit cold for beach time currently. Brunswick is an old town too. It is so crazy to see the buildings from the early 1700's.
Today, we are going to do a hike outside of Brunswick then get lunch in one of the small towns around here. That is another difference around here. There are dozens of small towns everywhere and they are super quaint. The food is so very good and the people have been nothing but hospitable and sweet. The east coast breweries are growing on me too. The hazy beer is weird but they do have American IPA's and Pale Ales and some have west coast IPAs. Nothing I've had has been bad, just a little different twist.
We are staying at the Brunswick Family Campground until tomorrow, then we plan to head further north into Pennsylvania. Our destination is unclear right now but we plan to find somewhere awesome to hang out for a few days. It has taken us 2 months to get here and we are now only 6 hours away from Upstate New York.
Once we get to Upstate, we will settle in for a few weeks and spend time with Laura's family. Our plan is to search the housing market and see if anything looks appealing enough to buy. This won't happen until later this summer because we are waiting for our house in Boise to become liquid and a steady source of income. This will allow us to either pull equity from our house to buy property in New York or qualify for another mortgage. The goal has been to have our property in Boise pay for everything and it is a month away from that reality.
If you are in the market for AirBnB style home ownership, let me know because we made it happen. When the pandemic hit and my businesses started to fail, I obviously freaked out but when I collected myself, I put a plan together and made our home into a vacation rental. It did take some money to do but it was not that much. Those who have home equity should seriously think about doing this if you want a second source of income versus your day to day jobs.
The vulnerability of my line of work is so very high when it comes to disasters that we are still currently in. Boise seems to be back to normal mostly and with that came a big rebound to all businesses. We made it through and everything has stabilized and grown significantly. I guess that is life and you have to be ready for things like that to happen. It was a huge wake up call for me. Not only financially. I looked at my life and all the changes upcoming with Henry and made a decision to change everything up. New chapter and a new life.
Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend!
Nate
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