We landed in Savannah!
Drove straight to Cracker Barrel and spent the night. It’s funny to think that when we started this journey we hadn’t even heard of Cracker Barrel! It makes me think about how far we’ve come over the past year or so, and what a steep learning curve it has been.
Back in Scotland we watched every video we could about Skoolie living, van life, traveling, homesteading, foraging, survival skills, natural building- all of our dreams for the future- and researched as much as we could, having many conversations about how we would get started and where we would go. We always loved the outdoors, and would camp in tents whenever we could, braving the Scottish weather and making fires in the rain. I slept on the ground in a sleeping bag on a thin camping mat during both my pregnancies with the boys, and the kids all went camping before they could speak. We thought we would travel around Britain, and started noticing van life people on the sides of lochs and roads. However, Scotland is very small, and after a short time we realised we had explored quite a lot of it already, and that the full-time road life community were all cramped up next to each other in only a few spots. There were other considerations too- we dreamed of starting a homestead, but land is expensive in Scotland and there isn’t that much in comparison to other countries. Also, the weather…
Suddenly it became clear- America! Daniel had been brought up there (we met when he was busking through Europe), so he knew the culture and had lots of friends and family there.
We started to prepare. I don’t want to gloss over all the details but it was a long process of self-improvement, mental and emotional preparation, and slimming down all our material goods. We had decided to take only one bag each, a large bag of clothes, one guitar and my violin which my dad had bought me for Christmas when I was a child. Daniel took photographs and painstakingly advertised for sale anything of value, and we both busked as much as we could to raise funds for plane tickets. I was surprised to find out how emotionally-attached I was to Scotland- I’d always dreamed of traveling but thought I’d always return home, and now I had to come to terms with leaving for good. We also slimmed down all of our spending, and quit all our bad habits, including smoking, drinking, and eating fast-food. Looking back on photographs from Scotland, I am shocked at how unhealthy we all look! It makes me happy to see how following our dreams has brought us all such happiness and health.
We flew up to Tijuana, walked into California, and then our real adventure began!
