Pennsylvania (pizza) Party

After eight days in the woods we headed to State College, PA to visit with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. My cousin is about to turn 18, graduate high school, and move to Sweden, so it’s good we got a visit in before then. It’s also nice to visit these relatives because they don’t care if Kyle sculpts at the dinner table.

After three days of hanging out and working and eating a whole lot of food and completely forgetting to photograph anything it was time for us to be on our way. We were planning on heading directly to the world’s most amazing amusement park – Knoebels – but it was closed on the day we wanted to go.

Knoebels is the world’s largest free admission amusement park. You can either pay per ride or get a bracelet that gives you free reign of the place. None of the rides cost more than three dollars, so no matter what it’s really affordable. They have some pretty top-notch rides and there is amazing people watching. Who doesn’t love watching the Amish ride roller coasters? It’s also dog friendly and while they have your typical fair food (funnel cake, hot dogs, etc) they also have perogies absolutely swimming in butter. Kyle and I had such a good time when we went a few years ago that we were really looking forward to spending the day there again. Oh well. We’ll just have to go back.

July 2015

Once we got over our sadness about missing Knoebels we headed to Wilkes-Barre to visit my friend Mark and his girlfriend Kristle! And, because Mark knows a bunch of mechanics and owning an RV is constant maintenance, we got some shocks installed while we were in town.

After that was done we headed to his house where he fired up his super intense pizza oven and made us some awesome neopolitan pizzas.

Did you know that there are insanely specific rules about what constitutes that type of pizza? That there’s an academy of pizza people? THAT THERE ARE PAMPHLETS?

Well I certainly didn’t.

Now we’re just working our butts off to get ready for Five Points Fest! There are still tickets left – so grab them and come hang out with us! You can see Sandwich! I’m making snacks!

High of Fifty

As we make our way north it’s becoming more and more obvious that neither of us are built for winter anymore. Kyle has an excuse, being from Southern California, but I’m from New York. I’m just being a baby. For two nights in Georgia the lows dipped into the thirties and we could barely handle it. When we weren’t in bed I was blasting the heat and layering on clothing, even when the temperature reached fifty degrees outside. One night Kyle was actually kept up by the cold and caught so off guard that he didn’t turn on the heat or grab another blanket or anything. He just lay there shivering and trying to figure out why he couldn’t sleep.

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We recently spent a few days in Knoxville, Tennessee where we finally got to meet up with Greetings Tour!

Greetings Tour is made up of Victor Ving and Lisa Beggs who took off from New York in April 2015, just a few months before we did. They are traveling and painting amazing vintage postcard style murals all around the US and beyond. We’ve been in touch with them since we started (Victor was the one who told us to get a Planet Fitness membership for showers), but meeting up in person and seeing each other’s set ups was a totally different animal.

It’s always nice to talk to people who speak the same language as you, and it was a great to show off Sandwich without having to say “and we have a stove and a fridge, and an oven and a bathroom…” They know what we have, they have it too! We took note of similarities and differences – they have a double closet (so jealous), we have a  pantry, their bed is higher which gives them more outdoor storage, but we have a double sink!  Greetings Tour just got solar panels installed, something we’ve been looking into for a while but haven’t made the jump on. After their rave reviews we’re finally going to do it! We told them about the All Stays Camp and RV App which has been an absolute life saver for us and how easy it was to switch out all our lights out for LEDs.

We’re currently in Kentucky which has been added to the list of places we absolutely never want to live along with Arizona and New Mexico. Kyle keeps getting openly pointed at for having long hair, so it’s probably not a good fit for us. Plus, while there are some beautiful places here, it’s pretty landlocked.

We’re off to Ohio tomorrow to see a very old friend of mine in Cincinnati, then it’s on to Dayton for a wedding. After that we buckle down in a campsite for a week to work and get ready for Five Points Fest which is fast approaching! We don’t have all the details yet, but I can officially inform you that you can come see us and Sandwich all weekend long! If you’ve ever wanted to see our house, or see Kyle’s art in person that’ll be the weekend to do it.

All Plans Subject to Change

When we were starting out on this adventure we were torn between planning out everything to the minute and flying by the seat of our pants. Kyle was on the planning side while I was much more laissez faire about the whole thing.

It turns out that the best way to approach this lifestyle is somewhere in the middle. This is not a situation for the stringent planner, but it’s good to have some idea of where you’re headed. Even if it’s just so you make it out of The South before the heat hits and The North before you’re snowed in or your pipes freeze and burst because you weren’t paying attention. The problem with too much planning is that it doesn’t allow you to take outside influences into account. Sure, you can plan on being somewhere at exactly 3pm, but it probably won’t work out that way. Living in an RV means being comfortable with some wiggle room. Or a lot of wiggle room.

After waking up in Macon, Georgia on Sunday morning, we thought we’d spend the afternoon in Atlanta. It was about two hours away, and it looked like the weather was going to be gorgeous, so we stowed away and got on I-75. We’d gone about three miles down the road when traffic reared its ugly head and we slowed down. It was stop and go for about half a mile before we came to a complete stop. A complete and total stop.

When we’d been stopped for about five minutes I got up and cut up a watermelon that needed eating.

After fifteen minutes Kyle got his Switch out and started playing Zelda.

At the half hour mark Kyle asked how far away the next exit was, so I checked.

We were truly and properly stuck.

When traffic had been stalled forty-five minutes I started having Walking Dead waking nightmares based solely on the fact that we were both in Georgia and in an RV.  People started getting out of their vehicles and walking around. They went into the woods to pee. They took their dogs out.

After an hour and a half people had resigned themselves to this life. They were sitting on the ground playing cards. A man asked if he could use our bathroom.

We looked at the map and realized that traffic was stretched two miles ahead of us and four miles back. It was like nothing either of us had ever experienced before, and Kyle grew up in Southern California.

I was reminded of an episode of Married with Children where Al and Peggy and the kids try to take a road trip but spend the entire weekend stuck in traffic. It began to feel like we would never make it anywhere again, that we were doomed to live out our days on a little strip of I-75.

It was at that point that I started to realize how lucky we were compared to a lot of other people on the road. We had food, and water, and a bathroom. We could stretch our legs inside our vehicle. We had all the entertainment we needed. Podcasts and books and video games. We had coffee. Sure our water tank was low, and our toilet was close to full, but we could have made it through the night if we needed to.

After about two hours of sitting there traffic suddenly started moving again. There was such little warning that people were scrambling to get back in their cars. One lady ended up holding up our lane of traffic because she had wandered so far.

It was not our best afternoon, but it wasn’t the end of the world. When you’re traveling like we do, you have to take the good with the bad. And sometimes you’re a day late. All plans are subject to change.

The Worst Night

We’ve had some bad nights in the RV. The first few weeks of living on the road when we were too scared to open the windows at night? In June? Those were unpleasant. The times we’ve been trapped in the RV due to torrential downpours? A little uncomfortable. That time I burnt chicken and filled Sandwich with smoke? No fun. When we ended up in a city park with far more ticks than humans? Bad.

But nothing, nothing, could prepare us for the absolute nightmare that is Flamingo campground in The Everglades. We’re not stupid, we knew there were going to be bugs. I’m just saying that no one yet has done an accurate job of portraying just how many you’ll encounter when trapped in Hell at the bottom of mainland Florida. Because of our lack of information we booked two nights at Flamingo to the tune of $85 after park admission.

We arrived on Wednesday morning around 11am and went on a short walk at Mahogany Hammock where we encountered almost no bugs at all. “This won’t be so bad,” we thought naively.

When we checked in at the campground the guy in the booth warned that once the wind died down the mosquitoes would get “pretty bad.” The last thing he said to me before I headed back to Sandwich to guide Kyle to our campsite was, “Be careful out there.”

Look. That made sense back at Yellowstone and Yosemite where there are LOTS AND LOTS of bears. You know what Flamingo doesn’t have? Bears. Or even alligators. You know what they do have? FUCKING BUGS.

We stayed inside most of the day, but at around 4pm we decided to go for a little walk because dusk was still hours off. So we threw on some bug spray and headed out. The walk started out a little buggy, but nothing unbearable. We even had a funny conversation with an older couple who saw us swatting ourselves and called it The Dance of Flamingo. We wandered down to look at the Florida bay where a strong breeze kept us mosquito free for almost half an hour. When the sun ducked behind a cloud we decided to head back to the RV and that’s when things took a turn for the worse.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that there was a cloud of bugs surrounding Kyle. And by bugs I mean mosquitoes. Lots and lots and lots of them. They were on his back and butt and legs and arms and everywhere. I have no idea what I looked like but I can tell you that I was wearing long pants and managed to get over twenty bites on my legs. Through my pants. They didn’t seem to have much interest in my arms or torso, but thought my hands were delicious. I had at least seven bites on them by the time we got home.

When we got home the real nightmare began. I got into bed to read at about 9pm, then fell asleep, and woke up shortly afterwards to Kyle slamming our half melted fly swatter into the ceiling and yelling “HOW ARE THEY GETTING IN?? HOW??” There is, inexplicably, phone service in Hell, so I frantically Googled all the ways they might be getting in. Kyle taped any places that might be at fault shut and, for a moment, things seemed okay.

“There will be legends of this night amongst the mosquitoes!” Cried Kyle, “They will speak of me with fear for generations!!”

“So like a few days?”

“Shut up.”

With the mosquitos seemingly taken care of miniscule biting flies started coming in through the screens. Teeny-tiny monsters intent on chewing us to death. We killed as many as we could and tried to sleep vowing to not leave the house the following day.

 

Because the windows were all closed up we had to run the AC all night. (The only saving grace of this place was that it had power hookups). When we woke up in the morning the power blew, so our dream of keeping the windows and doors sealed all day was shot to shit. I ran outside and reset the power, then ran back in trying to let in as few monsters as possible. We couldn’t run the AC anymore because of the fear of blowing out the power again.

We stayed inside. We stayed inside. We stayed inside. Hours snailed by. Kyle took a much needed nap. I texted my friend.

“I AM TRAPPED IN MY HOUSE AND I AM SO BORED”

“And like…I have things to work on. But I can’t be bothered.”

“And Kyle is asleeeeeeeeeeep”

“And it is so hot.”

That was about 5:30pm, a mere thirty hours after we’d arrived in The Everglades. At about 6:15pm Kyle woke up from his nap. We talked about dinner and how early we could leave in the morning. We weighed the pros and cons of how much money we spent to be tortured. Then we realized that our house is on wheels, we are adults, and there was nothing keeping us in the Everglades. I ran outside again after putting on long pants and long sleeves and drenching myself in bug spray to unplug us. Even though I did it as fast as humanly possible I managed to get back inside with four new bug bites on my hands.

By 8:30pm our butts were in barstools at Applebees in Homestead, Florida. There was air conditioning and appetizers on the way and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. The best part? No bugs.

 

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Kyle and I are huge Harry Potter fans, but it wasn’t always that way.

When the books first came out I spent an inordinate amount of time making fun of both my mother and grandmother for reading children’s books. They kept telling me how wonderful they were and I kept being an angsty teenager about the whole thing. One night, when I was about fifteen, my mother stopped me when I was on my way out of the house.
“Where are you going?” She asked
“Out.” (See angst-ridden teenager above)
“No you’re not,” She told me. “You’re grounded.”
“What do you mean I’m grounded? You’ve never grounded me!”
“You’re grounded until you read the first chapter of Harry Potter.”

And so I did. And then I read a few more chapters for good measure and was late to meet my friends because THERE WAS A BOY WIZARD.

Kyle was already in college when the books came out, so rather than a parent it was a professor who bullied him into reading the books. She was going to fail him if he didn’t give them a try. Within thirty-six hours he’d read the first four books.

After rereading all seven books this summer one of the things we were most excited about doing in Florida was going to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. (Special thanks to my cousin Mike for hooking us up!) It was an ongoing joke that I was going to cry when we got there, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for exactly how much I was going to cry.

You walk through the park and pass through a number of things including a Simpsons section. I’m sure it was really cool but I was focused on getting to London.

And then suddenly…SUDDENLY:

This marked the first time I cried…

Then I got to pose in front of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place…

KREACHER SOMETIMES LOOKED OUT OF THE WINDOW ABOVE ME BUT NOT WHILE I WAS STANDING THERE APPARENTLY.

When you cross the threshold into the Wizarding World from Muggle London it…is…magical. And, like so many magical things, impossible to photograph properly. BUT…

 Butter Beer is reeeeeally good. And topped with something that tastes sort of like melted ice cream? It was amazing.

We went on our first ride (Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts) and while in line (INSIDE GRINGOTTS!!) there are paintings and they move. Just like in Harry Potter! Cue more tears…

I spent a large portion of the day completely and totally overwhelmed but never as much as when we went to Ollivanders. They take small groups of people in for a little show where one special person is chosen to try wands. Our group consisted almost entirely of adults, though there was one child who was a shoe in to get chosen. Our Ollivander scanned the group to pick a willing volunteer, passed the child by and arrived on me. A thirty-two year old woman who was staring at her like she could actually do magic.

I got to try three wands. Three! I made plants die when I was supposed to water them. I made shelves shake when I was supposed to move a ladder. But then…Then I was given my wand and a breeze blew in my face and light surrounded me aaaaaaaaaand I started to cry again. Because of course I did.

From there it was off to lunch at The Leaky Cauldron for lunch. I had toad in a hole and felt lovely and British and I barely cried at all.

See? Only two sobby faces. I was fiiiine.

THEN WE RODE THE HOGWARTS EXPRESSSSSSS. (I don’t care that it’s just a monorail. You shut your stupid face)

They actually set this up really well…Kings Cross Station looks like a London train station complete with news stand selling beer. If you ask a conductor how to find platform 9 3/4 he will get upset with you for wasting his time. And you can see people disappearing through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10! The people in line behind you get to see you disappear. IT WAS WONDERFUL.

We arrived in Hogsmeade and I cried again because it looked so good.

We headed to The Hogs Head for an afternoon beer for me and a coffee for Kyle. We were talking to the bartender who said, “When I was reading this books as a kid, I never dreamed I would grow up to work for Aberforth.” It really does seem like the most wonderful job in the world. “I’m a wizarding bartender.”

We then went on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey which we liked so much we rode it twice.

Eventually it was time for The Hogwarts Express back to London and out into the muggle world again…

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If you love Harry Potter and find yourself in Orlando GO TO HARRY POTTER WORLD. According to my cousin JK Rowling had a ton of influence over how the park was set up. There are book and movie tie-ins all over the place and if you’re anything like me it will make you cry buckets.