RV renovations

First 100 miles on the RV and, mechanically, all is well. We still have a few items to test - and we are adding hoses, fuses, replacement parts and tools to our growing on-the-road emergency box - but so far, so good.

(And since we received word that my tugboat captain brother-in-law has been laid off and is stuck in New Jersey with a broken car, we might just have a handy test run happening this weekend! Fngers crossed!)

Renovations have begun in earnest, though, thanks to carpenter friend Steve Pfleging. Classic RV enthusiasts are gonna cringe, but we got some pieces ripped apart yesterday, and the bunk bed frame completed. Thanks to Steve, it is safe and seems like it can withstand the antics of my crazy tribe.

Foam mattress cover will get ordered today, and plywood completes the frames tomorrow. Zaria and I are planning to camp out in the hardware store parking lot until we get it looking attractive again.

We've also got our sanding hands ready to repaint cabinetry. More importantly, we have a few spots picked out that are 3yr old height for chalkboard painting. (Did you know you can tint chalkboard paint now - such amazing ingenuity.) And we are sewing some basic curtains for bunk enclosures.

We have a 200-300 miles road trip planned for the middle of next week, barring any calamities between then and now. Then it's packing and food prep.

A bigger question is our route. I am still mapping out a general Google map - and planning to boondock down the east coast. (Loving that we found boondockerswelcome.com - while it seems to freak our family out a bit, we are looking forward to making some new friends - and smuggling along some Lady Bug soaps and local maple syrup to give away!) We have meetings planned with someone from the Transition movement in northern California, and someone from New Stories in Washington state. An amazing friend of mine in Oregon has offered her help with sites and contacts there.

Meanwhile I am sending out emails like  crazy person, trying to uncover he places where rural resilience is happening. If you have heard of somewhere that we should visit, give me a shout - times running out!

PS: Please share our fundraising campaign around, would you?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/determined-to-thrive-a-pilgrimage-to-find-america/x/6898573

Up, up and away!

We have a departure date!

(But maybe I am getting ahead of myself!)

My unschooling family of eight will be hitting the road on April 1st! After five years of running a general store in bucolic upstate New York, adding three more babes to our young family, and living deeply and richly in a community, wanderlust whispers seductively: just a little trip.

Photo credit to H. Soderquist

But our eyes have always been a bit too big for our stomachs.

So our little trip morphed, to use a Minecraft word, into a pilgrimage. First, we wanted a vacation, but large families don't have an easy go of the vacation thing.  And then we dreamed of "traveling' without a destination in mind. But we wanted to come back with stories, from specific places, told by real people.

Here, we figure, has a lot in common with lots of other places. We are specifically interested in the places that are engaged in the kinds of mindful change that we'd like to see in our hill town communities. We're looking for those with the foresight to plan for a transition to a more equitable society, those that are preparing us for a climate changed world, one that necessarily must adapt from consumer-centric masses to resilient (and often self-reliant) placed based communities.

So we are building a map - I still haven't quite got it right, yet - to share with all of you.  It's a path of stories, we hope, across our great United States, that will excite our imaginations and nurture our own best strategies for engaging our neighbors and planning for our future.

We are, as we suggest, determined to thrive, despite what feels like mounting odds against us.

And we think that sometimes the best way to grow is to bring back some seeds of change.