Road-trip Day 1 – This is REALLY happening!

And we’re off!  Thank the Lord for this amazing opportunity to explore his beautiful creation as a family! 

On Sunday July 7th, we set off on our 34 day RV road trip to the west coast! We completed our mad dash to load everything into our RV, said our very sad goodbyes to family, and concluded our month stay in GA. It felt like our time in Georgia was going to last for SO long and then in the blink of an eye it was over 🙁 We were really sad to leave and it was especially hard as we realized that we weren’t going back home to DC. We looked forward to our time with family and friends, but then all of a sudden it was coming to an end (look for a blog post in the future on the fun we had in GA). We experienced this same thing with our last month in DC…we thought it would feel long, maybe even sufficient. But the truth is that time never feels long enough when you’re with the people and in the places that you love. And this is a hard reality we’re coming to terms with – it is difficult to look forward to something for so long and then have it come to an end. This will be especially true for us during this unique and special season of sabbatical.

We experience the deep pain of saying goodbye and embarking on such a significant life transition. And yet, we are also incredibly grateful for this amazing adventure that we’re on and for all that God has done to bring us to this point. We remain full of anticipation (and sometimes stress!) and excitement about what lies ahead. We recognize this as a tension to manage – as we have so often said, this experience is very bitter-sweet.

So, all that being said, road-trip here we come!

The goal for our first day of RV life was to drive from Peachtree City, GA to Cave City, KY so we could explore our first of many national parks – Mammoth Cave National Park. (Fun fact – Mammoth Cave has over 412 miles of underground caves, and they are still finding more!!!) Our first day of driving went well – Drew didn’t crash the RV, we made it the 330+ miles we planned, and the kids did well in our new home for the next month. Unfortunately, a big accident in Chattanooga delayed us over an hour and diverted us away from Nashville, which we had planned to drive through (we love Nashville!), and forced us to drive on windy backroads. We arrived at our first RV Park (Cave Country RV Campground in Cave City, KY) around 8:30pm with just enough sunlight left to figure out how to hook up electricity and water. We ate a quick dinner, learned how to convert the RV from drive mode (i.e. car seats set up) to sleep mode (i.e. beds set up), and got everyone to sleep. Day 1 of our road-trip was in the books as a success!

Tomorrow we go explore huge caves…