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Trading Classrooms for Campgrounds: How One Mom is Raising Road-Tripping Kids
43 Plays1 month ago
Natalie shares how she left behind the traditional classroom to raise and roadschool her kids while exploring America's national parks. We dive into the challenges, triumphs, and unforgettable moments of building a life on the road — and how travel can spark bold new beginnings.
You can follow Natalie and her family's journey at Camping Kiddos.com or on Instagram
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Transcript
Introducing the Go Far Girl Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey there, and welcome to Go Far Girl, the podcast where women share the stories that changed them one journey at a time. I'm your host,
Themes of Personal Growth Through Travel
00:00:18
Speaker
Chantel. I'm a travel writer and a lifelong wanderer, and I believe that every mile we travel brings us closer to the strongest, boldest, most authentic versions of ourselves.
Weekly Conversations with Women Travelers
00:00:28
Speaker
Each week, I'll sit down with incredible women to talk about the trips that shaped them, the lessons they learned along the way, and the power of going far in every sense of the word. So grab your coffee, your journal, or your carry-on, and let's dive in.
Meet Natalie: A Journey from Teaching to Travel
00:00:59
Speaker
So today we're here with Natalie and you guys are going to love her stories. She homeschools her kids. They travel all over the United States hiking through national parks and doing all sorts of hands-on learning throughout the U.S. So that's amazing.
00:01:13
Speaker
Natalie's story really felt like a call to me for anyone who's ever wondered, like, what would happen if I just took that leap? And she just ditched her job, packed up the kids and headed out and hasn't turned back. So I'm really excited for you guys to hear what she has to say about that.
00:01:28
Speaker
A little about Natalie is that she worked as an English professor for more than a decade before stepping away and homeschooling her kid. She's very good at writing resumes. You guys can hit her up for that if you need a little brush up on your resume. um Thank you for being with us today. I'm so excited talk to talks you.
00:01:47
Speaker
Me too. Thank you so much for having me on. Of course. So I know that your story starts out in the classroom, but can you walk us through that moment where you first started envisioning your life looking a little bit differently than it was?
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah. So I had been, as you mentioned, I'd been a college professor for quite a long time. And, you know, you're always on that that system, right, where we were actually on the quarter system where I taught it down in Charleston.
00:02:11
Speaker
And so every your life revolves around the next seven weeks. And so in some ways, that's very good because everything is set out for you. It's always planned.
00:02:22
Speaker
I would teach the same classes pretty much over and over again because you kind of get slotted. I was one of the professional writing people, but we taught a lot of English 101, a lot of English 102, which was our American, kind of like our American literature writing
From Routine to Adventure: Natalie's Transformation
00:02:36
Speaker
class.
00:02:37
Speaker
And so in some ways, once you get the lectures and everything set, it's on autopilot. Which, you know, you of course have different students come in and out, but the actual material doesn't really change that much from blue to quarter.
00:02:51
Speaker
So this does get very samey after a while. And i have always been one to not want samey. And this is something that my husband, who is the a tried and true, he likes the samey. He is a banker. he is all about it. He loves consistency.
00:03:10
Speaker
Whereas I'm like, man, it's been three years. Let's do something different. So I've been one that's like, we need to move to this other place. We need to go here. And he's like, but what's wrong with where are we? Nothing's wrong. I just want something different. So yeah.
00:03:24
Speaker
We had moved around Charleston for a while, which is where I'm from, but we had just stayed in that area. And,
Adapting Lifestyle During the Pandemic
00:03:30
Speaker
and let's see, this would have been about two, around the pandemic, around 2020, we were all home.
00:03:37
Speaker
We were doing online teaching. My husband was doing all the PPP loans through his banking. We had both of our kids at home doing the homeschool hybrid thing where they were you know calling you on everything.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah. It was chaos because all four of us, we were actually selling our house and having it renovated. Of course. Of course. yeah wondering And but we were already the middle of it. And so we moved back to Mount Pleasant, which is the port of Charles that I'm from. And it was the housing market there.
00:04:08
Speaker
skyrocketed and it still is it is insane what is happening in Charleston right now and so we moved into this house that was just it was such a cute house and it was a great neighborhood I mean like on the surface everything looked perfect we both had great jobs the kids really enjoyed the school they were going to but because the cost of living ended up just skyrocketing from Mount Pleasant, you know, from like when i was a kid, there were 4,000 people living there. There's nearly 100,000 people living there now. The median house price is over a million dollars. It's just, it's insane to me what's happening in my hometown right now.
00:04:44
Speaker
And so a lot of it just, we came down and we were starting to have these big conversations like, did our lifestyle it the life we actually want to live? Because we're just doing the whole two-income, kids in school, day in, day out kind of thing.
00:05:01
Speaker
And are we living to work or are we working to live? And it really came down to that idea of, There could be more than this. And so we had many, many, many conversations in like the late 2021, early 2022.
Homeschooling on the Road
00:05:19
Speaker
We saw the housing market kind of skyrocket. We're like, we're not stuck in Mount Pleasant. Like we're, my family lives there, but you know, they can travel, we can travel.
00:05:29
Speaker
we can move. And so we made the decision to actually move out of those about 90 miles outside of Tribbleson up to the country and the middle nowhere, which is where my husband's extended family is from.
00:05:41
Speaker
And that's where we ended up. We bought this farmhouse that was built around 1900. We've rehabbed it, but because the cost of living here is so much lower,
00:05:52
Speaker
we can, I didn't have to work. I was able to to come home, take care of my kids, homeschool them, and then to use that time to you build my blog and to then go travel with them to really reinforce what we were learning. So it was a slow and steady process, I guess, rather than just one light bulb moment. Though there were many, many, many lectures that I thought,
00:06:14
Speaker
I really would like to be doing something other than the teacher. As they're asleep and drooling in the classroom. yo Exactly, exactly. So, yeah, it was a very slow, slow realization that we could do this, that just because we're on this path right now doesn't mean that we can't get off this path and make a new path whenever we were ready to to make that change.
00:06:42
Speaker
Did you have people ever trying to talk you out of that and just kind of be like, you need to be conventional, you know, you need to have two incomes? did Did you kind of get some pushback with that? I have to say, ah so I lived less than half a mile, probably closer to a quarter mile than my sister and her family and my mom and dad who were in the next neighbor over neighborhood over.
00:07:04
Speaker
We could ride our golf cart over there. So even though they were very, very supportive of us being able to travel and do all of these things, they knew I really held close. They were so sad because my mom had both of her kids.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah, and the grandkids. And they would come over and drop off stuff and we could go take our golf cart to the grocery store and everything. And they were just, I think, really sad, but also sad, but supportive. i mean, they've come on many of our trips. They've met us. They've flown out to see us on our trips and things like that. But that was the biggest thing moving was moving away from my parents and my sister and her family because I'm very, very close to them.
00:07:44
Speaker
But yeah, there were some people I worked with that I told them when I said, okay, I'm not going to come be coming back for the next school year. were like, you're you're going to do what? But I'm not going to that.
00:07:56
Speaker
You're going to go and move to the middle of nowhere and you're going to go drive around the country? Like, this is what you're choosing to do? It was a lot, but everybody was, think, more intrigued than they were anything else because a lot of people, for a lot of different reasons, don't end up making that jump. They stay. It's scary. It's and It's super scary.
00:08:22
Speaker
Financially speaking, like it's a massive shift. It's a lifestyle change. So you really, everybody has to be in it. Like the kids we talked about, this is what we're going to is what our day is going to look like. This is yeah know how we're going to change. We're leaving the friends. We can come visit them.
Integrating Travel into Education
00:08:39
Speaker
But they're not going to be with us all the time. My husband's job, he ends up moving jobs and he commutes about 45 minutes every day to be closer. But it was one of the things that we all four talked about and really all had to buy in. And we still talk about that. Like we all have to buy into this idea to make it work.
00:08:59
Speaker
How did the kids manage that change? Were they pretty excited about being able to be homeschooled? And had they traveled? Have you guys done travel like to parks before this? So did they kind of already know a little bit about what that would look like on trips and things like that? Or was it all brand new?
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, so I have always had, like, I've always been that person that's like, I will spend the rent check to go somewhere instead of being responsible. i know he'd be friends. and yeah that well Ever since my kids were very, very small, i have tried to take every possible opportunity to, even if it's just to go to the Children's Museum,
00:09:37
Speaker
in downtown Charleston or to take them to a park or take them to a local hiking trail. We've tried to get out as much, try to expose them as much as we possibly could. But they have but had both traveled sort of extensively. My son was born in 2016, very late in 2016. So just he was getting in that cute little toddler, like, let's go on the plane.
00:09:59
Speaker
COVID hit. And so we were truncated on that. But my daughter, who's almost 12 now, she had several good years in there when she was a little kid that and we took her to Germany and Luxembourg. And she'd been Disney World and she'd been like down to Florida, the Everglades and things like that.
00:10:16
Speaker
They were really excited. My daughter, who's my older child, she is a social being. And so I was most worried about her, right? Like, what am I going to do if I take her out of this setting where she's got 15 other kids to talk to mom every day and just put her in car with me for something like, what is this going to look like?
00:10:41
Speaker
But she has adapted beautifully. We're part of a co-op here. And so we see people regularly. They're very involved in dance. So she gets those moments ah of socialization. yeah We have really great neighbors in the the area that we live in. So we're constantly talking to people. When we're out on the road, she is the one who she introduces me to people, which I think is hilarious. I love this.
00:11:06
Speaker
We've never met a stranger. She'll go up and walk in the park and she'll say, I wonder, know, when did, is this late man-made or, you know, how old are these trees? And then she'll go, there's a ranger.
00:11:18
Speaker
I'll go ask. She just, they think I know we're best friends with ranger Ashley. And she's telling us all about the homology of the park. So she really has been, she gets me out of my shell, which is awesome when we're on the road.
00:11:32
Speaker
um My younger child, who's now eight, he is a little bit more reserved. So he's not the one running up to the Rangers and everything. But he has always, I think, wanted to...
00:11:45
Speaker
Read more, wanted to do more than what a traditional classroom would allow him to. So he is great at math. He's two great levels ahead in math. We can kind of push through that at our own pace, which is really, really nice.
00:11:59
Speaker
He can't stand English, which kills my sad little things. He gone down really, really hard. But he is the kid that goes out and he'll buy a book at the park bookstore and he'll come back and two hours later, he's just reading you.
00:12:18
Speaker
Did you know about this fun fact about these volcanoes? Did you know this fun fact about the geyser here? um He teaches me sometimes with all that. So he has this kind of name quest for knowledge that is just fed by all of our traveling. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:34
Speaker
So walk us through a day. If you're if you guys are traveling, how do you do schooling? What is a typical day look like? I mean, I'm sure there's got to be like a level of chaos to it at some point, too.
00:12:45
Speaker
So so like how does normal day shape up when you guys are on the road?
Hands-On Learning Through Travel
00:12:51
Speaker
Right. So we were, I'll use a couple examples from our last major road trip, which we did eight weeks out west last summer.
00:12:59
Speaker
we ended up driving about 9,700 miles, which is just crazy to think about how far that actually is. But so there were several days where we were just in the car trying to get from South Carolina where we live, just out Out west, basically.
00:13:17
Speaker
And so we would spend six, seven, eight. One of our days was 11 hours just be trying to get us into close. As far as you could. yeah Right. And so those days we have a rule. So the kids carry their math and they carry English around with them all of the time.
00:13:34
Speaker
And so before they can get on their tablets, before they can read, you know, on their, like their personal books, before they can color, know, they like doing crafts and things like that in the car, they have to do one of the math lessons that I've laid out for them.
00:13:48
Speaker
And then they also have to do their reading and then any associated like reading comprehension or grammar that I have set out for them as well. So those are our two core subjects that we do.
00:13:59
Speaker
Every day, whether we're driving before we go into a park, before we go hiking, the kids are both kind of mourning people. So a lot of times they'll do that while we're having breakfast or where one of them's getting ready, the other one's doing their core subjects.
00:14:14
Speaker
And then if we're still on the road, we might listen to a podcast to learn about history or science. Or like I said, my son is always carrying a book around, usually about science. So he'll give us lots of fun facts and we'll all learn together with him.
00:14:28
Speaker
It's a lot easier to do the science, the history, of those deep dive subjects. Language, we'll do you know Spanish or we'll talk about French or Latin eight languages as we're...
00:14:40
Speaker
just exploring the world. And so we might go to a museum and we'll talk about the history there. We might go to yeah one of the Peric Interpretive Centers and we'll look at the biology or the wildlife that's there. And so that gives us a starting point for a lot of conversations.
00:14:57
Speaker
And so a lot of times i will say, you know, they'll ask me a question that maybe isn't covered by the interpretive materials or the museum. So I'll try and have either a running list in my head or even type it in my phones when we get back to our camper.
00:15:10
Speaker
We'll say, right, hey, you know, you asked me that question before. I've got Wi-Fi in five minutes. So look it up. Let's talk about those things. So the the traveling sort of informs the learning, but then the learning also informs the travel.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it kind of goes hand in hand. I've even planned trips to make the kids kind of think about some of the stuff that we've learned about. so That's cool.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's constantly evolving, that whole process. But it's crazy. If you actually sat and wrote down everything you learn in a day, you'd be surprised, even as an adult, the number of things you just naturally were like, oh. Just absorbed. wonder going to go.
00:15:52
Speaker
That's right. Exactly. Look it up on your phone. and We don't think about it, but that's, that's learning. That's us trying to teach ourselves, even though we're far more structured than that. And I know some people aren't, which is cool too. That do kind of like the unschooling, just as the kids learn as they go. I'm still a classroom teacher through and through. And I like to have my worksheets. yeah I like to have all the stuff planned out. that night on the that I was just thinking while you were talking, I just got back from a trip to Macon, Georgia. Have you guys been to Oak Mulgay Bounds?
00:16:21
Speaker
You know, we have driven past it at least a dozen towers. And I was thinking your son would like it because yes it's, it's, oh my gosh, the history of it is actually just mind blowing.
00:16:33
Speaker
And it's getting ready to be our next national park, which will be the first national park in Georgia. It's sitting in Congress right now. It was really close to being done. And then with the administration changed, everything kind of reset.
00:16:43
Speaker
So it's still like in line, but it's just kind of, you know, stalling or whatever. But it's the biggest archaeological find in North America. And they have, oh my gosh, they have like the original like flooring for some of the mound houses and the setup like of the skylights.
00:17:01
Speaker
It was like, I call it skylight is where the smoke came out and they had the ceremonies. It is so, so cool. And during the summer, what we just did, we went during the day and hiked around, but they also do like a lantern hike at night. Yeah.
00:17:14
Speaker
So you go out there at night and the rangers are at different stations and they're dressed up like different explorers and people that kind of tell you the history through their eyes. One of the guys was showing us like drawings of the plants that he had made and and pictures of the maps that he had made of the area. And it was really cool just to walk through the mounds and you go to kind all these different people and learn the history that way. And that's a really cool one. And it's kind of close to you guys. It's not that far.
00:17:40
Speaker
What? mean, Georgia, I feel like, is, like, woefully underexplored by us, even though it's our next-door neighbor. I mean, we live not even two hours the border, so ah we're going to have to do that.
00:17:50
Speaker
We're going to Georgia road trip just to... Yeah, and I would go before it's an actual national park, so it'll be less busy. I was there before it became famous.
00:18:01
Speaker
I made it famous. this sit yeah man yeah yeah eyes get get so So that's really cool. So what do you think is maybe like something that the kids have learned out and about that they wouldn't have learned in school?
Lasting Impact of Travel on Education
00:18:14
Speaker
Do you think that it's given them a broader view? Do you think there's been that one moment where you're like, oh my gosh, yes. like Or is it just a culmination all the little moments? Right. It's really interesting to see what each one of them picks up because they do have such different learning styles.
00:18:33
Speaker
I don't know if i mentioned before, but my daughter has pretty intense ADHD. So she doesn't like sitting at the table when we have a school room here in the house and We'll do our writing and we'll do our reading and we'll do our math and everything or history worksheets.
00:18:49
Speaker
And she really struggles with like where she has to get up and she'll have to move around just to have that physical energy. But when we're actually out and about, she i feel like she learns and retains so much more because her body is able to move as we walk around.
00:19:05
Speaker
wherever we are reading placards, which is so immersive. And I love, I think that's how we, all of us learn better, honestly. But we were, we were doing a we did a year and a half of American history because I don't think American history is taught enough. i know people get it in school, but like, I remember doing American history and we never seemed to get past right near one. Like you just run out of time.
00:19:30
Speaker
I don't know what happens after 1919. Who knows? we ended up just getting so involved in our studies that the kids were still really, really interested. And like, we're going past World War I'm going to make it at least a career in it.
00:19:45
Speaker
We're going to do it. We actually made it all the way up to kind of present day, which was really cool. And we learned all the presidents and everything. But they were most interested in the early stuff, right? So like the Native Americans and how, you know, tree tears. And we I told you about the sitting bowl. We went out and a battle Little Bighorn.
00:20:04
Speaker
They were really, really into that whole thing. Another part they were super, super interested in was the like the very, very early European settlers. So ah we actually got to take them down to St. ol Augustine.
00:20:18
Speaker
We got to set go to Castillo de San Marcos down there and look at how the Spanish were actually colonizing what is now America. And then we actually went up to Jamestown and we saw how the English were colonizing that part. Turns out the Spanish knew what they were doing.
00:20:34
Speaker
Way more than the English. I'll just not make it. But while we were in Jamestown, the National Historic Site there, there were a bunch of archaeologists who were digging down into this huge pit that they had created by the church.
00:20:49
Speaker
And they had actually found a gun earlier in the day while we were there. And so, of course, my daughter is like, I have so many questions. I mean, we stayed there and they were the nicest people. They answered all of our questions.
00:21:02
Speaker
And it was mind-blowing to me. And the kids just were laser-focused on the archaeologists. That's so cool. I was compelling them. Bullock, like, this happened in the very early 1600s. And here we are looking at a gun that's been shot. And here it is. Yeah. Right. So that was one of those moments where they were like, this is real. Like, this is real.
00:21:25
Speaker
You're not just making all this up, reading it to us, right, Mom? but It's so much easier to care about things, too, once you've, like, witnessed something like that. Or it is real. It's not just words, words, it's words, take the test, move on.
00:21:37
Speaker
Like, it right matters more because you're like, oh, yeah, i saw that. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Right, because it's not just a book. Like it has, you can think back to that memory and it it has a smell. it has a feel. Like it has weight associated to it.
00:21:53
Speaker
And I feel like even though i grew up in a tradition, went to Catholic school where had a very traditional upbringing, but I remember i was obsessed with British literature. I took this 11th grade class. i had an amazing teacher. And then For my senior year, my parents said, would you rather have a car to go to college or would you rather choose somewhere to go over spring break in your senior year?
00:22:15
Speaker
And me being ever non-practical picked the trip and I just walked everywhere. I took this like clunker car to college. And we ended up going to England for 11 days. And that was the first time I'd been on cruises and stuff to the Bahamas, but I'd never been to Europe before. And walking through the streets and say, i like Shakespeare walked here and just going in and seeing Poets Corner and Westminster Abbey and All of these people I've been reading about and honestly just been obsessed with my entire 11th grade year, seeing that, Chaucer, you know, Shakespeare, ah all of them, right? It was just, it was mind-blowing. And that was, I think, that's really where a lot of my obsession started was what I was about, you know, 17, 18, that, oh, wow, this is real. You know, it's not just something in a book. Yeah.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's actual people that lived in actual places that I can go see. And it just deepens the experience so much. I love that you can give that to your kids. That's just so cool.
Achieving Travel Milestones
00:23:21
Speaker
We're trying. I think it's the absolute worst. like that similar because At the end, you're still their parent and you can't do any anything. I know. What are you going to do? Yeah. Let's see.
00:23:31
Speaker
Tell me about Brantley Lake.
00:23:35
Speaker
yeah let's see tell me about ah brantley lake you have Yes. So that was the first, that was part of the first big trip that I had planned. We had done, like I mentioned before, we had taken more traditional vacations, you know, to the Gulf Coast of Florida. And we had been down to the Everglades. We had done smaller trips here and there.
00:23:57
Speaker
But the six week trip that I planned, the first trip, like late spring, early summer that we lived in our current house. That was the longest that I had ever been away from home other than when I studied abroad in London when I was in college. But it was absolutely the longest that my kids had ever been away from home by a factor of like eight. I mean, they've gone to see their grandparents and stuff, but six weeks away from home was massive. And my husband wasn't going to class until the very end, like the last 11 days.
00:24:28
Speaker
And so their grandfather came out at for part of it. My mom flew out for part of it. So we still had people there to help me. But you're still in a camper 1,500 miles away from your home doing something that is, mean, they had been camping, but again, never for six weeks moving around, doing all these national parks and things.
00:24:52
Speaker
So that was, that weighed on my soul a lot that I was taking them away that they wouldn't see their dad for four and a half weeks just because he couldn't get off work to go with us the whole time.
00:25:05
Speaker
And they struggled with that after about the fourth day. they were like, wait, daddy's not going to be here for another month. So they, um,
00:25:16
Speaker
they They were very, very excited about that possibility because they just think, oh, endless vacation. But it took so much of myself to know that this is going to work out. Like, this is a huge undertaking.
00:25:31
Speaker
It took a massive amount of planning but figure out where I was going to be every night for six weeks because i'm used to planning you're like seven day vacation much less something a month and a half long and so when we had just kind of booked it out there we stayed three nights just basically long enough to sleep as we were driving out to new mexico and curlback caverns was the first thing that we were going to go do so I booked us a site at Lake Brantley State Park, which is not far from Coral's Bed, New Mexico.
00:26:02
Speaker
And the sun, we'd we'd gotten everything hooked up and the sun was going down. The kids were playing on their scooters. and like I was nearly in tears. Like, I did it. I drove this whole way, like two thirds of the way across the United States.
00:26:17
Speaker
I quit my job and we're doing this thing. Like, it was just, it was one of those things where you kind of imagine it. that you can do it. But then the actual reality of it's like, pinch me.
00:26:30
Speaker
I really did it, right? You know, so. Yeah, you did. Of, yes, you can do hard things. You can play in these things. The kids are going to be okay. They're resilient and they can,
00:26:43
Speaker
ah they can be away from their dad for a little bit. We'll call him. He's still there. and and um it was It was a lot to get to that point. Just a lot of self-doubt. A lot of my doing the right thing. Is this wild? Should i just wait till I'm retired?
00:26:58
Speaker
um But then kind of seeing how happy the kids were and all of the possibilities that laid ahead ah head of us for the next year. five and a half plus weeks was just, it was such a cool feel. I wish I could replicate that, but now, you know, I'm jaded and I've done it. So yeah now it's so awesome. That was so nice to think back on those times though. Cause you still get that little rush of like, oh yeah, but I did that. Right. yeah Yeah.
00:27:23
Speaker
That first one is always the most special. So what would you advise me for a mom who's listening now and maybe has been playing with the idea of the same thing, but is a little bit scared to take the leap? What would you, what would you say to her?
Encouraging Bravery in Lifestyle Changes
00:27:38
Speaker
I would say you are braver and stronger than you think that you are. You can do more things than you think you can do, even if it seems absolutely overwhelming in the moment. The planning, there were so many times when my husband and i were trying to figure out the logistics, where we're like, we're going to sell our house and we're going to quit our jobs. and He's going to get a different job, but I'm going to take on this whole other job that's unpaid, but it's still...
00:28:06
Speaker
weighs on my soul knowing that my education, the education of my children's future, like, is on me, is a lot, even as a lifelong educator. There were many times when we thought, we just can't do, this is too hard, right? When in reality, that it never...
00:28:22
Speaker
The decision never gets easier, even if you plan it out and feel better about it. You still at some point have to walk in your department's head's office and say, well, yeah, I'm not going to be here next semester. Like, i'm I am moving. I am going to do this thing.
00:28:38
Speaker
And that was still just as terrifying When I did it as the moment that I first was like, okay, I think I need to start making moves to actually do this. So yeah, just jump in with both feet. Of course, you know, do the finances, make sure it's old.
00:28:55
Speaker
I would call the boring stuff actually. I'm not even here ready to jump. He's banker. He's absolutely right um but planner and I'm just the dreamer. So we figure out like the endra what to do.
00:29:10
Speaker
a But yeah, like if you had told me three, four years ago, this is what I was going to be doing. i would say, um like I made, I made it happen. Like I did.
00:29:21
Speaker
all of the things that I wanted to do. Not all of them, but I'm at least on the back of the thing. So it's scary. It's very scary, but you can do it would be my advice.
00:29:35
Speaker
Love that. Thank you. Oh my gosh. You've had so much wisdom and I'm so excited just listening to you. I wish my kids were small a again, so I could like riff them out of school and go like, oh my God, it sounds amazing.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah.
Future Travel Plans and Exploration
00:29:47
Speaker
remind nothing and i ask you where is your next trip so we are actually going to go on an east coast road trip which i've been sort of putting off because growing up my parents very much like they were all about travel my mom especially and my dad was always game for it so we drove up and down the eastern seaboard we drove to canada one time my dad is also in banking And back in the day, you used to have to take a certain number of days off because I guess they wanted to make sure you weren't cooking the books or something. So they physically made you step away from your job before computers.
00:30:23
Speaker
So my dad was always available to go on these really long road trips. So we would drive. the Florida to Keys or to New York. Like I said, we we went to Prince Edward Island one year. um So I feel like I was sort of, forty I've already done the East Coast, you know, having grown up and lived here my whole life. But then I thought, well, my kids haven't, you know, we haven't taken... work yeah Yeah, we haven't, we went to Shenandoah a couple years ago, so we're going to back there.
00:30:48
Speaker
We're going up and we're just doing Maine. We're doing a big loop throughout Vermont, New Hampshire, coming down, doing Shenandoah again, and then New River Gorge, which we haven't been to. We've driven past a bunch of times and I've never stopped.
00:31:02
Speaker
um We're just really excited because it's closer. Yeah. I look at the amount of time I'll be driving each day versus where I was driving last summer going all the way up there.
00:31:13
Speaker
i don like oneana and I'm like, two hours? This is a piece of cake. So doable. yeah like Three days, I'll see the whole thing. But no, we're actually going to take about five and a half weeks to go up to Maine and back and see all of it. Amazing.
00:31:30
Speaker
Oh, very good. All right. So tell everyone where they can find you. Your blog is called campingkiddos.com, right? And where else can they find you? So you can also find me on Instagram. I'm camping.kiddos, and I'm trying to post more regularly. the Being an English professor, I'm always about the writing.
00:31:50
Speaker
But, you know, i like people like pretty pictures and funny videos, too. So come join me over on Instagram. Loves that. All right. Thank you so much. This was so amazing. Absolutely. Thank you.
00:32:02
Speaker
all right.
00:32:17
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening to Go Far Girl. If this episode made you smile, dream a little bigger, or realize it's never too late to book the trip, I'd be so grateful if you'd share it with a friend.
00:32:28
Speaker
And hey, we've got an amazing group of women waiting for you inside our Facebook community. Just search Go Far Girl. Come on in and say hi. Until next time, keep exploring, keep growing, and never stop going far.