It’s been both an eventful two months since our last post, while also being a frustratingly slow two months… with excavation finally starting on the house and garage; turns out the excavation was the easy part, as getting the footer and basement walls formed and poured took the best of
Author: JenRan
Building on Raw Land: Power and Water
We are actively developing 30 acres of land in Northeast Washington… cleaning up decades of forest and logging debris, working to reclaim the health of existing woodlands, and building our dream house. The next steps in the process for us, which we had hoped would happen sooner (but were delayed
Building on Raw Land: The First Steps
After tens of thousands of miles and more than 130 stops across 48 states over a 2.5-year period, we finally landed back on our property north of Spokane, Washington, to begin building our dream house on 30 acres of raw land (containing no infrastructure; no water, power, septic). With the
Stop 133: The Road Home
The last stops on our 2.5-year road trip are a mix of overnight layovers and 2-night stopovers, as we strategically make our way during the Covid Crisis from Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to Eastern Washington, just north of Spokane. It has been a bizarre and crazy drive — with campgrounds
Stop 132: Oh Virginia! Blue Ridge Beautiful
It was a bit risky given the current circumstances and panic over Covid-19, but we were determined to make a quick dash into Virginia and end this 2.5-year road trip as planned, albeit a few weeks early… visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah National Park before turning westward and
Stop 131: Wet, Wild, and Wonderful West Virginia
We made it to West Virginia… the 48th and final state we are visiting on this journey. (Alaska and Hawaii will come in future trips.) We had planned to spend a bit more time traveling through the state and exploring more of its beauty, but Covid-19 and the fears and
Stop 130: Kentucky’s Cows, Caves… and Covid-19
Per our usual travels, we crisscrossed through Kentucky — state #47, the second-to-last state in our quest to visit all 48 continental states on this part of the adventures — starting in Paducah, located in the southwestern part of the state, at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Ohio
Stop 129: Tennessee Travels
We started our exploration of state #46, Tennessee, in the Chattanooga area. (Technically, we actually were in Tennessee briefly when we visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park a few weeks ago.) Tennessee became the 16th state of the United States in 1796, and later left the Union to join
Stop 127: The Highs and Lows of Our Second Trip Into Georgia
Our return to Georgia started out uneventfully, with a wonderful visit to Columbus, the third-largest city in the state and located near the west-central border of the state — along the Chattahoochee River (a tributary of the Apalachicola River) — about 100 miles southwest of Atlanta. Fun and crazy fact:
Stop 128: Truly Great Smoky Mountains!
Our trip to the Great Smoky Mountains ended up being quite different than what we planned when our travel trailer had a tire blowout that led to not only an axle replacement but a reinforcement of the entire trailer’s frame after a fracture was discovered. Still, we loved our short