Upcoming Trips

I finally had my back surgery! 🎉

Ive had a herniated disc since April 1st and it was really difficult to even simply walk, I saw two spine surgeons and ended up getting a microdiscectomy and a spacer placed in my back, that was August 11th. So all of April, May, June, and July and most especially the first 11 days of August have been primarily characterized by pain. I'm recovering now, very excited to report. And I can finally start planning all the travel ive been deprived of for months! 

First on the agenda, one of my best friends since high school is coming to visit me for a long weekend, and we are going to take an overnight by ourselves to a brewery out by Harper's ferry in Virginia. We will get tonsit on the patio and drink new beers, talk for hours and hours and hours, and camp in my van with its newly acquired air conditioning :) 

Next, I am hoping to take an overnight trip by myself out to Chincoteague island to take a boat tour to see the wild ponies. I read about them ehen I was a little girl, during a long "horse phase" for a girl who had lived in apartments her whole life 🤣 but i love wildlife, and as bucket list items go, this is probably the biggest one for our current station. I also want to piddle around the town on Chincoteague island and visit the old bookshops and the cafes and maybe a rock shop or two. So fingers crossed for a good bill of health and consistently improving mobility. 

Then, I want to take a longer road trip to pick up my friend up in Massachusetts and take her to New Hampshire to ride the white mountain train so we can see the autumn leaves together. We will make tea and crochet stuff in camping chairs while we watch the sunset, itll be glorious. Itll be two days of driving, one day of relaxing and trains, and then two days of driving back, but you know what, if the leaves are pretty ill really enjoy the drive anyway. 

Then, my husband should be disappearing off to training again sometime soon, so ill pack the boys up and retry the indefinite roadtrip again, and see if it goes better this time. The boys did great last time, though jasper did lament that he wanted to go home several times, mostly when he got told no about something. So maybe this time he will be happier, we will see. :)

Epic Roadtrip of Indeterminate Length (mom and 2 kiddos and a camper van)

I left the house with the plan to take the kids (the boys are 2 and 4 years old) to see several of my friends up North, then across NY to Niagara falls, down to my mils farm in Ohio,  and then across the Northern US to South Dakota to see more family.  It ultimately got cut down to one week due to my sciatic pain, I got an MRI and need surgery, but I learned a lot and enjoyed the trip so much that I cant wait to heal from my surgery so we can do it again! My confidence in solo adventuring with the boys has shot to the sky, at least once I heal 😅 

Day 1 we drove from DC to Fleetwood, PA, visited our friends Angela and her kids  Kieran, Ian, and Jin at the Ironwood train festival! We got to ride some mini trains, climb inside tiny steam engines, and check out huge model train sets. The boys had a blast, the weather was gorgeous, and we had a little picnic in the grass by the van while the younger boys played with the magnet tiles and cars. 

We camped in the van at a Harvest Host/Boondocks Welcome site in Pennsylvania that was a private driveway and right behind their house was a huge playground and sports complexes! The boys loved it, we played for several hours before dinner and bedtime. 

Day 2 started out great, we were up early and hit the road before 8, drove for a couple of hours, went to a cute playground when jasper had a meltdown, he played in the sand and made a friend, and collected plastic water bottle caps. Asher found a cool spiral pole to spin down. Then we got back in the car and our last 3 hours of driving lasted 6 hours so that was roughhhhhhh. We were like 40 miles away when I was like ILL TURN THIS CAR AROUND 🙃🙃🙃 But we survived and we made it to Aloras house! So excited to be here, she has been one of my best friends for like 20 years, whenever I need an attitude adjustment I call her and she radiates sunshine and goodness and its contagious. Chris is a good friend too, and finally meeting Lucy and grown up Fiona has been such a treat. I'm so glad we get to be here <3 

The kids favorite part was kids night at the BBQ restaurant! Asher got his face painted as Leonardo! 

Thursday we went to visit my friend Kim from my masters program, she had stayed with us a couple years ago and we were so excited to get to stay with her as well. Her sister in law brought her kids over, theyre almost exactly the same ages as asher and jasper. Asher and Kylie were instant besties with the *SAME* feral sweetheart energy. We went to their house saturday and the kids ran around for like 6 hoyrs, passed out at 530pm and slept for 12 hours straight including me transferring them to their beds 🤣

Sunday we drove home. I had planned on spending the night at another Harvest Host but it was rainy and gross and we made really good time getting across the bridges to NY and NJ so we decided to just finish the drive in one day, stopped just once at an indoor playground right before Maryland, and made it home at 630pm, just in time for baths and bedtime. 

The whole trip was honestly great, I cant wait to take them out again when I'm all better.

GPSMyCity self-guided walking tours app

If you are interested in self-guided and therefore free exploring options, I absolutely love GPSMyCity, so many popular cities have pre-made walking routes loaded with a description of each attraction, and you can also see attractions nearby on your route. You can start anywhere on the map, too. Plus theyre downloadable if you dont have or dont want to use international data. We especially loved it on our europe cruise, because the “old town” in every city is usually fairly compact and dense with fascinating architecture. Plus we could download all the maps and articles for the city we planned to visit and read up in advance while on the boat without paying exorbitant wifi fees. 

We used it in Southampton, England, we took a taxi from the port to the Titanic museum, followed the GPSMyCity route through a beautiful park, to the mall and the 

Blog revival

Its been a lot of years since I used this blog, I've had two kids and bought a camper van and lived several more places with even more on the horizon. 

Rather than starting a new one, I'm just going to revive this one and I'm going to stop trying to post perfect all encompassing articles about every trip. You're going to get stories, reflections, and travel tips. 

The first thing I really want to cover is our big cruise from Brazil to Norway in April of 2026. And I also want to talk about my road trip with the boys in May of 2026. I've been housebound for several months, my road trip got cut short due to horrible sciatic pain, so I have had lots of time to think about traveling instead of actually doing it. Surgery is in a few weeks and then I'll haves everal more weeks of recovery. 

I'm probably going to post text mostly, and add photos later if I ever remember. This is going to be an effort for consistent posting, not perfect posting. Wish me luck! 

Heather A-Bear (and a Backpack) .