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Category: North Carolina

What I Did & Spent on a Solo Weekend in Asheville & the Great Smoky Mountains

I really, really needed this trip. I needed to get out of town, to put on my pack and walk into the woods. I needed to spend a few hours in the car, music up and windows down. I needed to be alone in the woods, to take myself to dinner, to drink new beers, […]

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Sometimes, when it’s 100° out for yet another d Sometimes, when it’s 100° out for yet another day, when the humidity is threatening to drown me and when it’s too hot to exist outside, I hate summer. Then, tomatoes ripen, I dip into a body of water, sip a cold beer, build a new thing & make good use of the daylight hours & I think, ok, maybe it’s not all bad. ☀️
Mojave Terra Van Electrical Build: Part 7 🚐⚡️ We’re back with more of my electrical build, and this time, we’re working with DC power. To recap, we first hooked my batteries together, hooked those to the + and - bus bars on my Victron Lynx Distributor, installed a chassis ground, installed my Victron Mutiplus, connected my shore power and installed my AC distribution panel. Now it’s time to install the DC panel. Most things in my van run off a 12V DC system and y’all, DC power is easy. I hooked my + and - wires to my bus bars, and that was it. From there, I was able to hook up my various 12V DC van things, like my ceiling fan, my fridge, my lights, etc. Since I knew I’d have a handful of items to plug in on my van’s passenger side - things like my water pump, outlets my my heater and a few lights - I connected a smaller DC distro panel to the main on my drivers side and installed it on the passenger side. This just makes everything a little cleaner and means I’m running one big wire across the van instead of a bunch of smaller wires. 🍻 #vanlife #vanbuild #diy #solotravel
June. – spent more than half the month away from June. - spent more than half the month away from home.- went to France to commemorate the 81st anniversary of D-Day, took some of the best photos of my career, ate many oysters & had much fun in between some heavy, heavy moments. 🇫🇷 - went to New York to see my boo bear @rachaelgking, are more oysters, tried to find birds & visited @stonewallnps, the first @nationalparkservice site I’d been to in a long time. - tackled some minor van projects, but mostly spent a lot of money on plumbing parts. 🚿 - spent a work week at Virginia Beach during a heat wave & managed to get in the ocean every day. 🌊
A small van build update 🚐 ➡️ Between Icel A small van build update 🚐 ➡️Between Iceland + France, van build progress has been slow. Also, I’m a busy person, a single girlie in her early 40s with a full-time, regularly demanding job, three pets, a 100-year-old house that demands maintenance, & an incredible network of friends & family that I love spending time with. Then, there’s the wanderlust, the fact that I do most of my van building on my narrow one-way street, without a garage or even a shed.I’m toying with scheduling now, but I think the right thing to do is to set a hard (ish) deadline for myself to get all the things (van, work, house) settled & get my ass on the road. Also, plumbing! That’s next!#vanlife #vanbuild #camper #fordtransit #solotravel
Being on the beach at 6:30 am on the 81st annivers Being on the beach at 6:30 am on the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach was a career highlight. It was surreal, powerful and devastating. It hits hard, of course, being a girl born in Bedford, a girl who first enlisted into the 29th Infantry Division more than 22 years ago, who proudly wears the 29th’s blue and gray patch every single day I spend in uniform. But, it’s also the people. It’s the Soldiers, it’s watching them experience this place alongside me, capturing their milestone moments. It’s getting to know them, listening to their stories, hearing their individual and unique connections to this place. It’s the people of Normandy, the people who invited these Soldiers into their homes, who offered rides on DUKWs and in Jeeps. It’s the people who stopped to shake our hands, who easily returned our smiles, who asked for photos beside us. It’s the effort we all put in to overcome language barriers, placing hands over our hearts, expressing appreciation in the most universal way we know how. Thank you, thank you.Vive la France! 🤍🥀

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