Weeks 27 – 30 Recap: The Carolinas

Hi Friends.

It’s been a minute since I’ve updated everyone on our progress and what we’ve been up to. I still want to update weekly as we go, but with the holiday season, a lot of things are slowing down with van life, while also ramping up with family time and other projects that we want to get done. As mentioned before, after the holidays we will continue doing van life full time for a while and in the meantime, we are using my parents house in Bluffton, South Carolina as a home base throughout the holidays and taking side trips around the carolinas.

A few weeks ago, we traveled throughout the outer banks of North Carolina, on a recommendation from a friend of ours that we met up with in Virginia. We both have heard great things about the outer banks, but haven’t traveled there ourselves, so we were excited to see what is was like in the off season. When we first arrived in Kitty Hawk, we knew there was one major thing we wanted to see besides the beach: The Wright Brothers Memorial. I highly recommend going to anyone who hasn’t been. They not only have a great museum that goes into the brothers’ lives and their family growing up, but it talks about just how much work went into the flight. Walking up a sand dune hundreds of times with their plane to test out flight is a feat within itself. When you go to where the memorial is, you walk along a paved path to the top of the hill, and it’s a trek. I couldn’t imagine doing that over and over again with it being sand and having each step slide halfway back down as you ascend.

After we spent some time there, we decided we wanted to drive and take ferries all the way to Ocracoke and eventually Cedar Island which led us back to the mainland. We love being here during the off season. Sure, a lot of things were closed, but it was also incredibly peaceful. Plus, getting to have Pepper Jack off leash on the beaches was so much fun. He loved any opportunity to be off leash and he has so much fun running through the sand.

Wilmington was next on our list. I’ve been looking forward to going to Wilmington for a while. It always seemed like a beautiful place, plus a few of my favorite t.v. shows were filmed there. When we first got there though, we had a job to do. We were contacted by one of my best friend’s brother to photograph the proposal between him and his girlfriend who happened to be in the area visiting her parents. Of course we said yes! We were so excited to photograph and film this moment for them. Luckily, the day he picked ended up being a beautiful one, and he proposed to her on the beach around sunset. It was absolutely gorgeous and we’re so happy for them to take on this next big chapter in their lives!

Wilmington is so beautiful – we went to a few places to eat (and tried to eat as much seafood as we can now that we were on the coast) as well as checked out the filming locations of both Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill. If you’re in the area, highly recommend going to The George on the Riverwalk for dinner, but heading just around the corner for some dessert at Gelarto.

There’s something about being in those places and seeing other fans around which just feels awesome. We also traveled a little further north to meet up with one of Travis’s friends, her husband, and their adorable little girl. It was really fun getting to catch up with them for a day before heading down to Myrtle Beach.

Travis and I both have been to Myrtle Beach before, but thought it would be fun to spend a day here before continuing on. One place we both haven’t been is to Myrtle Beach State Park. It was absolutely beautiful. We spent the work day here (thanks to good wifi reception!) and then walked along the beach for a while with Pepper Jack. It’s just been so peaceful and relaxing. I’ve been trying to soak up as much beach time as possible. Our original plan was to stop in Charleston on the way down to Bluffton, but we decided to head straight to Bluffton a few days early. Charleston is definitely on our go to place, but I heard it’s just gorgeous when it’s all decorated for Christmas, so I wanted to wait until after Thanksgiving to go check that out.

In Bluffton, we have been spending some time with my family and celebrating Thanksgiving, while also getting a lot of work done with the van (Marlene). Marlene is working great, but she could use some upgrades that fit our needs a little better going into the next 10 months of our journey. For example, we didn’t have a ton of organization done in one of our storage areas – so we bought something to work there that will help keep our cleaning products a little more orderly and easy to get to. Additionally, the shelf we have was starting to bend a bit in the middle from the weight of things we have – so we bought extra supports and got those installed. We also had to do a decent amount of sweeping out dog hair and sand. It has really been a refresh for us.

Over the next couple of weeks before Christmas, we are currently planning on going to Congaree National Park, Greenville, Asheville, Boone (NC), Charlotte, and then heading to Charleston on our way back to Bluffton.

Do you have a recommendation for any of these places? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for reading.

Leece

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