This post has been a long time coming… like 2.5 months-long time. We arrived back in Atlanta from our USA road trip on August 22. And wow how wonderful it was to be surrounded by our family and friends again, such a treat! That is truly one of the drawbacks of travel… missing moments with your people. Skype and Facetime can only go so far. Having time to laugh, cook, walk, play, & chat in person, that’s the good stuff. So we made sure to do a lot of it to make up for lost time.
Otherwise, I was quite startled, at how quickly the experiences and norms of vanlife fell away to be promptly replaced by the habits and routines of “normal life”. All of our time on the road became almost like a dream, that happened to 2 other people not connected to this same life. I don’t know how to explain it but if you’ve traveled for a long period of time you know what I’m talking about.
I think that’s why it’s taken me a while to sit down and write this last post from our road trip. These past 2 months we’ve jumped from summer in the USA, to fall in Italy, to winter in Switzerland. And it’s been exciting! But so much moving around has kept me constantly in a state of motion. It wasn’t until this week, as I sorted thru pictures from our trip that I was able to come to a place of reflection and appreciation. All these photos that remind us of the moments, places and people we encountered along our way. It was certainly an adventure- from the purchase of our completely empty cargo van- building it into our mobile home- to the days on the road. The whole experience taught both Luca and I alot about ourselves, our marriage, and our mission in life.
And so picking up where I left off… Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown and broken-down Street cars 🙂 San Francisco!!
Glimpse of the Golden Gate 
Chinatown 
can you guess we’re on our way to lunch? #foodieglow 
FINALLY…found a mailbox!!
As you can see, we had no luck capturing the iconic symbol of the city. But we were happy with our glimpse of the shiny red rails thru the fog, plus that night we slept at the Golden Gate rest stop so we had a fabulous view.
Chinatown was our first stop. For lunch, we went for a vegan/veggie restaurant which turned out to be majorly disappointing…should’ve known to stick to the local bests in a place like chinatown. Anyways, the sun came out so we were happy.
The slowest moving tram EVER… 
Alcatraz 
Near Pier 39 
Red Beet Latte at Beacon Coffee 
Luca hopping a trolley…so daring! 😉 
The lobby of some really fancy hotel. 
Mission District 
Dinner at Gracias Madre…so delicious! All vegetarian and mostly organic. 
Our parking spot that night…yeah you can’t see much of anything but the view was fabulous. 
Trolleying!!
San Francisco was a really fun and interesting city. We both agreed we’d like to visit again but not in the van. Parking overnight was a difficult and not so comfortable. We prefer overnighting out in nature and when you’re in a city the size of San Francisco that’s just not really possible.
After San Francisco, it was time to head back to Atlanta. We wanted enough time with our family and friends before Luca’s flight back to Switzerland. At the same time, we didn’t want to rush so we gave ourselves a good 2 weeks to make the trip. And then we spent most of the first “day on the road” frolicking thru golden fields and picking blackberries right outside of San Francisco. Typical…
Highlights from the Eastbound trek:
Salt flats outside of Salt Lake City, Dinosaur National Monument Utah/CO, Bald Eagle siting somewhere in CO, morning chat in Abilene Kansas, flat tire right outside of Abilene, romantic dinner in Kansas City, MO (watching the storm clouds roll in) and CITY MUSEUM in St. Louis, MO.
*Flat tire as a highlight??? Yes because it was bound to happen and we totally lucked out! We were near civilization, we had cell service, and it wasn’t raining. We were almost excited about it haha. We basically just pulled over, called progressive, and then prepared/ ate lunch while we waited for roadside assistance. Super easy thank goodness!!
Oh and City Museum completely blew us away. We had a blast climbing, exploring, sliding, crawling, running around and basically reliving childhood for a Friday night. Sooo much fun!!
Now our Gecko is in hibernation for the winter but we’re still roaming. We spent September in Italy (post on the way), October and the first half of November in Switzerland and now we’re both headed to India!!!!
In India I’ll be at a 200 hour yoga teacher training in Rishikesh and Luca will be traveling the East coast. We have no idea what the wifi situation will be but we’ll try to post when we can. Ciao 🙂
Roaming Geckos 