Our Great Moving Adventure
Surprise! Little House Studio has a new headquarters. Inspiration is now coming to you from sunny Florida!
Now, moving is difficult, messy and overall quite unpleasant, so I’ll keep all of those stories over {here}. Right now I plan to regale you with stories of the 6 day adventure that we had getting ourselves from Massachusetts to Florida.
Don’t fret! There was plenty of knitting, crocheting and yarn acquiring along the way!
Picture this, if you will: The packing is finally done, all of our essential stuff is *gracefully* shoved in our Honda Civic, and we are hitting the road.
Pennsylvania: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Our first destination was Scranton, PA. You might be saying, Scranton? What’s in Scranton? (Other than “The Office”, of course) Well, it is the birthplace of our nation’s 46th president, Joe Biden, and this is very important to my husband.
Sidebar: My husband is slightly obsessed with presidential sites, this is a common theme in our lives and particularly on this trip. It’s not political, it’s historical.
We drove past the hospital where he was born and his childhood home, taking in the views of Scranton along the way. We had planned to have lunch at Hank’s Hoagies (deemed Biden’s favorite sandwich shop) but unfortunately it was closed for vacation.
And yes, I got a picture of the building from “The Office” opening credits. I had no idea that it is actually a paper company!
From Scranton we made our way south west to the Harrisburg area to visit family.
We had a lovely visit, including a brief trip to Hershey Chocolate World, and dinner with family whom we haven’t seen for many years and stayed a few nights with my grandmother.
While in Harrisburg, we met up with my parents who had planned a visit which perfectly overlapped our roadtrip. It was such a happy coincidence and it was great to visit extended family and my parents at the same time.
Unfortunately the math didn’t quite work out for being able to go out and about together since our car was packed to the brim (safely to the brim), my parents had their camper van with only two seats, and my grandmother doesn’t drive.
This conundrum resulted in me spending some quality time at Cracker Barrel as I volunteered to be the first one shuttled over for breakfast. As a knitter, I didn’t mind a bit and enjoyed some sock knitting and people watching on the infamous Cracker Barrel rocking chairs.
Most of Wednesday was spent sightseeing, particularly at the James Buchanan estate and museum in Lancaster, PA. We spent some time in the museum and took a tour of the lovely estate. I especially enjoyed the gardens and landscaping. We had a bit of lunch out at The Lancaster Dispensary Co. and then headed to my favorite stop of the day.
Ewebiquitous: A Fibre Arts Destination is a lovely local yarn shop in Lititz, PA. They have a wide selection of yarn and handmade gifts for fiber lovers. I picked up this beautiful hand dyed skein all the way from Alaska! The person working the shop that afternoon was friendly, accommodating and happy to wind my yarn for me.
We spent the rest of the evening “camped out” in my grandmother’s carport enjoying beverages, chatting, and cooking (and knitting for me, of course!).
We started out Thursday on Pennsylvania back roads scoping out James Buchanan’s birth site (oh, you thought we were done with presidential sites, oh no, we’re not) and discovered the quaint town of Mercersburg. We saw a recreation of the birthplace, enjoyed some delicious coffee and filled up our gas tank.
Virginia: Thursday and Friday
Then we were on our way to the main attraction: Shenandoah National Park. We were so excited for our first visit to a National Park, even though we only really had time for the Skyline Drive and one short hike.
And it only disappointed a tiny bit…
Here’s the story: It’s June/July 2023. Canada is experiencing devastating wildfires and most of the northeast US is covered in smoke. Our hearts go out to all of those whose lives have been impacted by these fires and we are extremely aware that our experience is entirely insignificant in comparison.
That said, every view and overlook was just white. 50 winding miles of white views in what we know to be a gorgeous national park was a bit disappointing.
We made the most of it though! Instead of hiking to the highest point (where we knew there would be no view) we hiked down to a beautiful waterfall and instead of driving all 100 miles, we cut the drive short and used the extra time to visit the incredible Luray Caverns.
We ended the evening in Staunton, VA, with drinks and burgers at Remedy Burger, which was amazing, and gelato at The Split Banana Co. Someone in our travels shared the observation that Washington D.C. had made Staunton its “playground” over the last few years. As nuanced as this observation was, it didn’t take us long to agree.
On Friday morning, we had a bit more site seeing to do in Staunton, but we started out with coffee, of course! We went to Crucible Coffee Roasters where we enjoyed espresso and a delicious sourdough blueberry muffin with a view of the canal and train tracks.
Then it was time for a visit to the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace and Presidential Library. The exhibits and tour had a very current perspective on a controversial president and the grounds and house were lovely.
So far on this trip I had learned that local yarn shops can be a bit tricky to find…. I couldn’t believe that we were all the way in Virginia and I had only gotten to stop at one! Often they were closed that day or time, or they just didn’t exist at their advertised location, or they were closed for vacation (broadcast only on their shop door).
Then, like an oasis in a desert, there was Susan’s Yarn Stash! It’s filled with beautiful hand dyed yarns! They have familiar dyers like Emma’s Yarn and new and local ones like Momma Jess and Gabie’s Knit Goodies. It was exactly the stop I needed to revive my fiber loving spirit!
Up next was one of the longer stretches of driving as we left Virginia behind, perfect for making some significant progress on my road trip project (especially now that I was stocked up with minis!), which you can read all about {here}.
North Carolina: Friday
We rolled into Charlotte, NC late Friday afternoon just in time for some barbecue!
Our dinner was at Mac’s Speed Shop. We devoured a sampler platter, listened to the live music, watched Transformers (random!) and the National Poker Championship (also random!) on the TVs behind the bar, and just tried to chill after 4 days of traveling.
I was very ready to be home at this point, but of course, “home” didn’t really exist. This was quite upsetting for a homebody such as myself. But, I really wanted to enjoy this mini vacation that we had built in for ourselves, so I did my best to put that aside (in a healthy positive way) to enjoy the rest of the trip.
After BBQ, we headed off to find our hotel for the night. Up until now we had been staying with family and at small (read: inexpensive) Air BnB’s and tonight was our splurge at a fancy high rise hotel! We spent the night at the Kimpton Tryon Park hotel in downtown Charlotte. The service and amenities were impeccable and the view from the 12th floor was awesome.
We dropped our stuff, which was very chaotically packed at this point, in the room, donned the very best attire that we could manage and headed to the rooftop bar.
It was a party up there! The sun was setting and the gloam was on all the buildings. I got something bubbly and Chris got something mixed and fruity. We scoped out seats and eventually found ourselves with a front row view of the big city park and minor league baseball stadium.
We were severely underdressed, no one commented, we just felt it, but we reminded ourselves that half of classy is your demeanor and we partied on.
The next morning I enjoyed some crocheting with a view of the city, we walked through the park with our coffee and then said goodbye to Charlotte.
South Carolina: Saturday
Saturday is where things stopped going quite as smoothly. We were starting to feel slightly unhinged, our stuff was so disorganized, we were sick of both packaged snacks and restaurant food, and we didn’t have quite the same hustle as we had 4 or 5 days prior. We were also starting to be in the middle of nowhere (Sorry SC…).
Our first stop was at the James K Polk birthplace and museum… Yes, another tour of an old house… But they had a clean bathroom and a filtered water bottle filler!
The next stop was the Andrew Jackson birthplace… They had neither a clean bathroom nor a filtered water bottle filler… So, there’s my review.
For lunch, we could not find a single independently owned, local restaurant, so we chose Panera. This pained Chris greatly, but, hey, we had a gift card!
At this point it was like 3:00 and about a billion degrees (this comes into play later) and we still had one big stop: Congaree National Park. It’s one of our nation’s newer and smaller national parks and the mosquito capital of the east coast!
I opted for mosquito protection over coolness and wore skinny jeans, tall socks and Bean Boots. I was extremely hot, but I also didn’t get any bites, it’s difficult to say if it was worth it.
We set out on what Chris (and the trails app) claimed was a 1 hour loop. It was also completely flat, half was on a boardwalk and we are not slow hikers. 2 hours and 20 minutes later we found ourselves back at the (NOW CLOSED) visitors center. We could not change our clothes, not use the bathroom, wash our hands or fill up our water.
Now that I have aired my grievances, let me tell you about Congaree National Park. As a born and raised New Englander, the vast majority of my nature experiences have been in the Northeast United States, so this was very unique. A flood plain filled with cypress trees is unlike anything else I had ever seen. The cypress trees were massive, their “knees” were sprawling, the mud was thick, the bugs were HUGE, the air was sticky, the lizards were fast, and the sweat was pouring. It was a whole lot of nature all at once, but I’m glad that we went. I think next time we will visit in the winter!
Remember how I said Saturday was a bit unhinged, yeah, we’re just getting there…
It’s 5:45, we’re sweaty and covered in bug spray, we have very spotty cell service, not even a fast-food restaurant in sight, a two hour drive to our Air BnB where there is only an outdoor shower, and fleeting sunlight.
After much angst and driving in what felt like circles hunting down restaurants which turned out to be closed (Umm, it was a Saturday night?) we stopped at a Food Lion, bought fruit smoothies, cheese cubes, salami, and a can of Pringles, got back on the road and continued our race against the sunlight.
We arrived, each bathed before the sun completely set and wished we had been more prepared for the glamping experience that this Air BnB on an adorable farm had to offer.
Georgia and FLORIDA: Sunday
*Sigh of relief* Here we were, the last day of travel!
It was tempting to rush right through the last four hours of driving with minimal stops, but not more tempting than biscuits!
Maple Street Biscuit Co. in Savannah, GA is one of our favorite stops on the journey between Massachusetts and Florida!
Sidebar: We honestly thought that this was one-of independent biscuit restaurant special to Savannah. Turns out there are a lot of locations and it wasn’t even started in Savannah. Oh well, we still love it!
We fueled up on coffee and biscuits, took a quick drive around Savannah (one of our favorite southern cities so far) and got back on the road.
And that concludes our road trip adventure from MA to FL! We made it safely and ready to tackle the next part of our adventure.
Thank you for reading all about it and I hope that you enjoyed our stories!
Do you have any epic road trip or moving stories? Have you ever planned a combo move and site seeing trip? Share in the comments below!
