R and J in the USA

On Thursday, May 30th, 2024, after years of planning, months of getting ready and, well, decades of dreaming for Julie, our 50 States Tour officially began!

And, it was glorious.

A lot of pieces needed to be in place to be able to have the trip we had envisioned and hoped for within the limited timeline we had carved out to do so, and we were working on tending to said pieces right up until the moment of departure.

While there were some significant boxes that would remain unchecked by the time of departure, many boxes, including the most important ones, were very satisfyingly checked.

Still left on the long to-do list: get the blog set up and ready to be populated, finish the day-by-day itinerary and associated reservations past the first month, and, oh, figure out an itty bitty issue that seems to be causing our house battery to die when it still reports having 70% charge remaining. The house battery being the one that provides electricity to the living space in the van – lights, refrigerator, heater, et al – getting it taken care of would be somewhat mission critical. However, having put the issue in front of three different technicians so far, having made some progress, but not enough to make the problem go away in it’s entirety, it appeared the next step would be an expensive battery replacement, and one that we wouldn’t be able to get addressed until we met up with a Victron Energy specialist in Virginia.

As for checked boxes, there were many. We had a van ready to hit the road, replete with multiple new upgrades and organized and packed to the gills; a house rented out to great tenants, watched over by a great property management team, and all packed up; and an overall state-by-state schedule in place.

We had the entire first month mapped out day-to-day, including campground reservations made, driving routes chosen, 5Ks registered for, and various other logistical purchases like ferry-rides and national park passes made.

And with all of that done, we did manage to squeeze in an awesome fare-thee-well party to show the van off and say goodbye for now to many of the people we love, will miss, will send postcards to, and hope are reading this right now. Despite the to-do’s that were still left undone, we were quite satisfied with all the boxes that were checked as we headed into the morning of departure.

Yet, as is always the case, there were things we were cramming in under the wire. Somewhat urgent texts were sent to a tree guy earlier in the week to schedule the removal of a dead tree from the yard that would happen on the morning of our departure. And we had to make a stop on our way out of town to have the final piece put in place for our new security cameras, which are part of our many-pronged safety approach on the road. With all of our personal belongings packed (read, piled and shoved) into the storage rooms in the basement and the rest beautifully organized in our little house on wheels, we aimed to hit the road by 10:30 AM for our first stop, a campground just outside DC in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Whether 4 years old or 44 years old, gotta stop for a hug goodbye to the parents before heading off on a big journey. We managed to leave the house by 7:40AM to be able to do just that. We swung by chez Cramer and did the requisite hugs, kisses, and packed-van showing off, and then were off to Bergen to do just the same with Ryan’s mom, who awaited us with a very sweet going-away present.

On our way to Bergen we realized our first tactical error of the trip. Though we’d still need to swing by to pick up brackets for the EXTRA security cameras we had intended to put on the van at the last minute, our guy’s availability window was smaller than we thought, so there would be no installation. Alas, we had enough security cameras on the van installed. We would survive it. We swung by and picked up the leftover cameras and brackets that we would need to install ourselves. It was 10:00 AM, and we were ready to hit the road! We had just one more stop in Geneseo, so we would be hitting the road right on time! Now that’s a miracle of trip planning and execution.

That’s when we got a text from our neighbors asking us to swing by for a goodbye hug before we leave. Oops. We felt terrible…we had left without saying goodbye to them! We also felt great thinking we have neighbors that we WANT to hug and say goodbye to and that WANT to hug and say goodbye to us. We count ourselves quite lucky to have such a thing. We were hemming and hawing about whether to make the detour back for the goodbye hug when we saw a notice from UPS that a package Julie had ordered that was supposed to arrive the day before had just showed up at the house. That was enough to tip the hem and the haw homeward. It was on our way anyways, so we swung by and got a proper hug and sendoff from our neighbors, grabbed our package, and, THIS TIME, we were truly on our way!

We stopped by the one remaining parent to say goodbye to at the cemetery in Geneseo. We told Ryan’s Dad about the trip and left one of our small American flags at his grave along with a lot of love and a few tears.

And then, of course, we made one more stop at Wegmans and, by 11:30 AM, we hit the road for good. Not too shabby!

There was one final logistic we still had to take care of to check all the house and packing boxes off the list, and that was to send the insane amount of ‘before’ photos we had taken of the house that morning to the property managers. It took Ryan almost the entire 7 hour drive to organize the photos in folders and send them off to the property manager. Julie drove the whole way obsessively gaming for great gas mileage (we got 16.4 miles to the gallon that first day thanks to Julie’s obsessiveness).

We rolled into Greenbelt Campground in Maryland at 7:00 PM whooped and pumped in equal measure. The trip had begun, and enough boxes were checked to turn our sights fully to the task at hand. We opened the back doors of the van as the setting sun poured in through the trees. It was a good day, a satisfying day, and a great way to kick it all off. USA, here we come.