A long and winding road

Today, April 5^th, is the one year anniversary of our reversing The Grapes of Wrath and heading east. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole year. As the old saying goes, it seems like “only yesterday” that, like the Joad family of that famous book, we loaded all our worldly possessions on a truck and lit out for a life somewhere else.

In the beginning – a line from another famous book – we fancied ourselves to be looking for a place to live somewhere else other than California. We spent the whole summer bouncing around all over New England and finally decided that, pretty and historic though it is, it still would be just a little bit on the cool side most of the year. As one person we met said, “We have two seasons… winter and August.” Well, for two Californio’s, that doesn’t sit too well. So, in October, we moved on.

For various reasons, we put our search on hold for a few months while we tended to some life housekeeping duties (hard to do when you don’t have a house, I know) but last month we again started the hunt and thought we’d like to give the coastal southeast a try, visiting Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. So far we can say that anything anywhere near the coast is going to be a non-starter due to the same problem that we encountered when visiting Joan and Phil in Florida: bugs. As is so common there, they also have no-see-um’s and mosquitoes in this part of the country too. And that doesn’t sit too well with us. It’s no fun having to lather up with bug spray every time you go out. And, as if that isn’t enough, there’s the heat and humidity. We’ve only been here a couple of weeks but already we see that the summer months, along with the creepy crawlies, wouldn’t make for very comfortable living. So, although we’re going to stay here in this part of the country for a while longer, we can already pretty much write off living here permanently.

So, as for finding a place to live, we’re at the “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there” stage of our travels. But, we’ll “keep on truckin” down the road and see what other areas of the country have to offer. Can I get any odds on our winding up back in California?

Pictures in the “Current pictures gallery”.