Traveling Again: Part One

Cooking dinner on the grill on Middle Torch Key.

As everyone has said more than once this past year, it’s been a weird and tough one.

I can’t complain much; I was employed, moved into a beautiful home, got married. I know and fully understand the extent of my luck and privilege in all that has transpired. For me, it was a year of trying not to spiral into depressive and anxious states; something I have a history of. I was always trying to adjust my mindset, trying to constantly see the good and love around me.

I succeeded a fair amount, but certainly had days where I didn’t. Working from home 98 percent of the time was certainly an adjustment, although not entirely foreign to me as I have preferred to work from home for several years now, finding I get a lot more done that way.

The responsibility of being a new home owner and wife was an added pressure, thinking I needed to be perfect in that but feeling like a failure most of the time.

Travel had always been a big part of my life, whether for work or pleasure. I have never stayed put in one place for more than six months and all of a sudden, we were locked down in the smallest state in the U.S.

Traveling has always been my way to reconnect: To see the world through brighter and better eyes. Not being able to made me anxious about if I could find joy in the mundane.

And yet, I made it through. More importantly, we made it through; my husband and I. We cancelled our wedding in Puerto Rico and had it in our backyard with just our immediate family present. We watched people flout travel restrictions and post photos of tropical getaways as we sat looking out at snow falling. We made a pact; we would get out of here by spring.

By late February, I had been let go from a job that I should have left years ago, but was too scared to. For the past couple of years, I had essentially been running my own business and working for another company in tandem. It had been stressful, but I handled it. I was always striving to make more money, to prove something to myself and everyone that I didn’t even fully understand myself.

Now, I only had my company, which meant everything I had been saying for years that I would do, now had to happen. I had to make my company bigger and better as soon as possible. The anxiety crept in. I knew I could do it, but there was the constant hamster spinning on its wheel in my brain, and it always ran its fastest in the middle of the night for some reason.

My husband saw me spiraling. He knows me well enough that he could see what I would do next: work myself harder trying to get to some unobtainable level of stability that I have always desperately craved. Work has always been my cradle when I am depressed or anxious. I felt that if I worked harder, I would be OK.

So he did what any good husband would do and went on Craig’s List.

We had talked a lot about our future plans for travel. We had ogled Sprinter vans and catamarans on Instagram. They had just been dreams, talked over beers by the fireplace, but all of a sudden, it became a reality.

Ted found a Sprinter van for sale in Rhode Island on Craig’s List. This might seem like nothing unusual to anyone who has never admired Sprinter vans, but since the pandemic, they have become the unicorn of land travel: Everyone wants one and no one is selling them.

Getting her ready.

Now, before anyone gets too jealous, this Sprinter van was not decked out to the nines. The owner used it for transporting his roasted coffee beans and had used it on one camping trip. She was rough, but she had good bones and was practically brand new.

Under most other circumstances, I would have balked at the idea of buying something that was definitely not a necessity in our lives, especially after losing a revenue stream, but on the other hand, considering there had been a significant closing of a chapter in my life recently, why not? Things were changing so why not embrace it?

Long story short, she became ours. She became our vessel of travel: we could stay away from people and hotels, bring our dogs, and have an adventure for the first time in over a year.

We didn’t know where we would go exactly, we just knew it had to be warm, so Florida was the obvious answer. My only surviving grandparent lives in Florida as well. He had received his first vaccine against COVID-19. I hadn’t seen him in over a year and if we were safe and got tested regularly, it felt like a fairly safe opportunity to see him.

The spontaneity of it felt good: scary but good.

We spent a few days making her somewhat livable for us and two dogs, which included exactly one trip to IKEA. We looked at each other from time to time in bewilderment, surprised at our own spontaneity.

Ted would say that he would never have purchased the Sprinter van had I not been fully in to it. More importantly though, I would never have dreamed of doing this had it not been for him.

Sorry about the horrible picture, but I was rushing to eat the sandwich and a nice photo was secondary in the hierarchy of my needs at that point. We are mostly vegetarian, I swear.

You see, Ted has this amazing thing about him: he is the best person to travel with. Flying with, not so much, but once we are truly exploring a place together, his joie de vivre is intoxicating and contagious. I wanted that feeling back again.

We set off on a Wednesday. When most people were going about their daily lives, we were heading south with one dog, Buoy, that was essentially Ferdinand the bull from the 2017 kid’s movie and Squishy, a rescue scared of anything outside of her normal routine.

What could possibly go wrong?

On our first day, we drove through New York City. The sole purpose was to get this incredible steak frites sandwich from Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte, a restaurant founded in France that only serves steak, fries and salad: A simple concept created by a Toulouse winemaker looking to diversify his revenue. The pepper sauce that accompanies the steak is out of this world. During the height of the pandemic, they created a takeout baguette sandwich with all these delicious ingredients inside. We would salivate anytime “La Baguette du Relais” would come across our Instagram feeds and it became a priority to try one.

I had been told by a former colleague of mine that works in the city that things were different there, but it was still shocking. The streets were quiet. No one seemed to be rushing anywhere. The side streets were mostly taken up by outdoor seating for restaurants. It seemed like an entirely different city, not the aggressive, manic one that I had left behind.

After a few hair-raising instances, like “Can we even fit in this tunnel?” we had our sandwiches and they were worth every butt clenching moment of driving in NYC. I don’t particularly like red meat, but that sauce could make glass taste delectable.

We passed through New Jersey into Delaware where we spent the night at the Delaware Seashore State Park, just above Ocean City. We backed up into a spot, let the dogs out and watched sunset. I had forgotten the feeling that was going through me: The feeling of breathing in every moment.

We were outside our routines and in the world again.

The next day we hugged the coast as much as we could through Virginia. Ocean City was one high rise building after another facing the ocean. On the other side of the road, huge retail stores selling cheaply made beach gear were only interrupted by a shopping plaza here and there. As we moved more inland, the scenery became very different. Open farmland with large agricultural productions like Purdue became the norm. Every other house we saw seemed abandoned. I have only ever seen a few places in the world with that many abandoned buildings, and none of them are considered “First World” countries, never mind U.S. counties.

Abandoned houses in Virginia.

I, of course, knew there was a tremendous amount of frustration amongst poor white communities in America. I knew that they felt forgotten and erased out of the country’s history in order to maintain the idea of “The American Dream.” But I hadn’t ever really seen it with my own eyes. I could now see how forgotten they really were.

The next day, we left the coast in search of one thing: good barbecue.

I put my investigative reporting skills to the test and found this article about a place in Greenville, NC. Now, I don’t know exactly how far out of the way we drove to find this place, but it was worth every bite.

I’ll admit, I was ignorant about the ever-going feud between eastern and western North Carolina when it came to barbecue. In case you aren’t familiar, easterners use a vinegar-based sauce. The westerners use what we outsiders would recognize as actual barbecue.

The best bbq I have ever had came from this converted gas station.

When we got there, we found a converted gas station with a line of people (all masked) wrapped around the building.

They looked at us curiously as we joined the line (after grabbing cash since no cards are accepted). Did we really stick out that much?

The man waiting in front of us told us that they start selling out of items as soon as they open at 9am. I was worried we wouldn’t get all the fixings.

Fortunately, they had the chicken and the pulled pork that we wanted. As we waited for our meals, we walked over to the smoker to see how it was done.

“Where are you all from?” A man asked curiously. “Rhode Island.” I said. “Y’all came mighty far for some barbecue.” He responded with a bemused laugh.

We sure did.

Our chicken and pork came with coleslaw, green beans, hush puppies and sweet tea. It would have been at least a $50 meal back home. It cost us $15.

I was surprised because it didn’t look like any bbq that I had before. No sauce!

As soon as I bit into that chicken, I became an eastern North Carolina barbecue convert. It’s light, tangy and juicy. One of the top five meals both of us have ever had.  

We left B’s BBQ fully satiated and in awe of the craft that goes into creating such heavenly morsels.

We slowly made our way back down to the shoreline to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Driving through Myrtle Beach, it was similar to Ocean City in that it was all high rises blocking the views of the silica sand beaches. On the other side, huge beach gear outlets and mini golf courses lined the road. I wondered how they had all managed to stay open, especially after the year we just had.

We made it to Huntington Beach State Park that night, just south of Myrtle Beach.

The state park was beautiful, although quite packed. The woman who checked us in warned me that it was copperhead mating season and started to explain to me the difference between a copperhead and other snakes in the area. I told her she need not waste her breathe explaining the difference: I was going to run away from any snake that I might see.

Chicken, green beans, coleslaw and hush puppies.

That night, we ate out at a restaurant: The second in-house dining experience of the trip. In Delaware, it was an awesome seafood restaurant called Matt’s Fish Camp. There had only been two other couples there while we ate, all spaced out way more than six feet. The server was masked the whole time and we felt pretty comfortable.

In South Carolina, however, it was a pretty different experience. There was no six-foot distancing, and the bartenders and some servers were not wearing masks.

We certainly weren’t in Rhode Island anymore.