The Adventure of a Lifetime Begins …

Once upon a time … I spent some time living a fairy tale.

Seriously.

.

It began on a dark and stormy night …

The wind blew.

The temperature dipped down to 22 degrees.

In a land called Pennsylvania.

In December, 2004.

My handsome husband Jerry and I looked with awe at our three perfect boys, Joshua 15, Joey 13 and Jon 11, snuggled deep in their soft fully beds air mattresses in our castle 40-foot motorhome in the driveway of a house that was no longer ours..

No one complained — the adventure of a lifetime was about to begin.

Over the previous few months, we had sold our house, property and Meadow Gardens, a garden center we started eleven years earlier. We sold, gave away or stored everything else we owned. We were hitting the road — excited to experience a totally different lifestyle for about a year. Waking up to Pennsylvania’s first snowstorm of the season had us rushing to head south before we were snowed in.

We didn’t have a detailed itinerary, but a general idea of where this adventure would take us. We like warm weather, the sun and the beach, so our tentative thoughts were to spend Christmas in Florida with a friend, make our way west through the southern states in the winter, travel up the west coast in the spring and probably see Alaska in June. Then we planned to travel east through the northern states and come back to ‘real life’ in the fall of 2004.

We had family and friends in a few states, so they were on our list of stops. We had some contacts at volunteer organizations that we planned to work with a few weeks. Obviously, the boys needed to continue their educations with books and lessons. We also wanted to see museums, parks and do factory tours to enhance their education.

We spent the first weekend in Virginia seeing my sister and some friends. The weather was cold and they had about an inch of snow, so we were anxious to head further south. We wanted to see some of North and South Carolina, but the temperatures stayed in the thirties, so we drove until we reached Florida.

We had our first week of warm weather and sunshine in St. Augustine State Park in northern Florida along the east coast. The lush, green foliage surrounding our campsite was a pleasant contrast to the barren trees of Pennsylvania. After a few days of bike rides, building sandcastles and running on the beach, I began to realize how much I was going to enjoy this trip.

Leaving a life where my schedule had been bursting with all the duties of a business owner to looking at not just days, but weeks ahead with nothing scheduled was a glorious thought.

“Can you believe this?” I asked randomly every hour or so. I heard an assorted response of …

“Yeah!”

“Hooray!”

“This is the life.”

… before they rushed off to dig in the sand, explore the campground or other gallant adventures.

As I looked in the mirror at the end of that week, I hardly recognized myself without my normal creased brow … gosh, maybe there was hope. Maybe I would eventually turn into a princess less-stressed person.

I picked up a book and headed to the best spot on the beach … thankful for the moment, for my life and for the opportunity of this wonderful adventure.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the first in a series of stories/vignettes I will post to compliment Because I Can … which will be released in mid-September.