2,242 Miles, 10 States, Countless Memories

As we said in our last post, one of our goals during this season of travel nursing as a family is to catch up with family and friends spread far and wide and to have some experiences we otherwise might not have had.  Our journey from Americus, Georgia to Auburn, Maine helped us hit the ground running on those goals.  This post is a bit of a synopsis of that 2,242 mile, 10 state drive.

We started our journey with just Mom, Dad and Hiram, because Lilian was already in north Georgia at church camp.  We went to Jubilee Partners in Comer, GA.  Jubilee was founded by folks leaving Koinonia Farm in an effort to duplicate Koinonia’s work and message.  During our time at Koinonia several folks from Jubilee visited and became good friends.  Jubilee also purchased some grazing supplies from us instead of us placing them in storage, and the visit doubled as a delivery stop.

The next morning Becca and Hiram got to spend time with Jubilee friends in worship and play, while dad picked Lilian up from camp.  In the afternoon and evening, there was a birthday party with great food and conversation, and we got a tour of the gardens.  

The next day we started off our journey in earnest and began crossing off new states, so we’ll call it Day 1. We wanted to say we had done more than just drive through different states, and also wanted to break the trip up a bit for the active one year old, so we stopped and found a geocache in each state too. On Day 1 we crossed off South and North Carolina and Virginia.  The South Carolina stop was particularly interesting. The geocache we found was located adjacent to a water tower shaped like a peach. We ended that day at our friends Wyatt and Katie Miles’ home in Virginia, getting a tour of Wyatt’s family farm and watching a beautiful sunset.

Day 2 was Sunday. Andrew helped Wyatt and his dad with the prechurch chores; then we went to worship with the senior Miles, had a wonderful lunch and drove a couple hours north (through beautiful and at times nerve-wracking mountain roads) to Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm. Joel is a prolific author, speaker, farm trainer and local food advocate.  His writing has been very influential in our thinking, practice and formation. Last time we talked about how the things we read change us, and it is safe to say that without Joel Salatin’s books we would not be where we are today.  We have wanted to visit his farm for a very long time, and it was great to finally get a chance to see all the things we have read and heard about for so long.  

We spent the night in a tiny house on the farm with a beautiful view, and the morning of Day 3 walking around Polyface Farm, then drove over to Washington, DC. We all got to see the Smithsonian Postal History Museum that afternoon and we had planned to see some other sites all together the next day. However, Hiram got sick that evening, so on Day 4 just Daddy and Lilian got to see more museums while Mommy and Hiram stayed at the AirBnb in Maryland. 

By Day 5 Hiram was on the mend, so we hit the road again, taking a slight detour into Delaware to grab a geocache and check off one more state, on our way to visit Becca’s Aunt Susan and Uncle Edgar. That was state six.  Pennsylvania made seven  for a quick overnight visit.  Day 6 Becca showed us around Nyack, NY, where her family furloughed twice in her teens, and spent the night at an AirBnb in Yonkers. We had intended to see some of NYC, but by this point Mommy and Daddy were starting to feel crummy too, and ended up testing positive for Covid, so we had to change plans. For Days 7&8 we found a small cabin in a Vermont ski village to quarantine in, and it was just right for resting and being able to get outdoors some while keeping away from others.

After two days of resting up, it was finally time to finish our drive to Maine on Day 9, crossing New Hampshire on the way. One of the things we did to keep ourselves entertained while spending so much time in the car was playing the license plate game.   Becca was the secretary and when someone saw a plate from a state we had not seen earlier that day she would apply a check mark next to the state’s name.  She used the same list everyday, but a different color marker each day to show when we saw what.  There were some states we saw every day, but there were some we didn’t see at all.  The last hour of our trip proved very productive, as we crossed off 4 new state plates on our list during that home stretch!

Our apartment in Maine was not quite ready for us, so we spent the first four nights in Maine “comfort camping” at Wolfe’s Neck Center for Education and Agriculture.  Wolfe’s Neck is a nonprofit that runs educational programs on an organic dairy farm.  They converted parts of the wooded land that could not be pasture to an oceanfront campground.  We have not ever done much camping and do not own any gear, so we chose the comfort camping option.  Wolfe’s Neck provided a tent, grill, memory foam queen size bed for mom and dad and other supplies.  All we had to bring was our clothes and food.  We had a good time, but also were glad to be done “roughing” it at the end of our time there.  Normal bathrooms and kitchens are very nice, it was rather chilly at night in a tent in Maine even in summer, and the sun rises early (first light 4-ish and fully light by 5 am) so Hiram was up with the sun.  

When we left Wolfe’s Neck we were finally able to fully unload the Suburban and settle into our “home” in Maine.  We are right in town on a main road with no yard.  It is a triplex, and we are on the second floor with neighbors below and neighbors above.  All that has been an adjustment, but we are finding lots of parks and playgrounds to help Hiram get his energy out.  Lilian loves the local library with a children’s section larger than the entirety of some of the small town libraries she has used in the past.  There is a public pool and splash pad a few blocks from the library the kids have enjoyed as well. Becca is working 12-hour nights at the local hospital’s maternity unit, and has enjoyed learning new things, and interacting with people from different cultures, as a large amount of African refugees have been re-settledin this area (particularly from Somalia and Djibouti, but also some Angolans and others).

We have gotten to meet cousins at the beach twice, visited a couple of local ice cream shops, and of course farms.  Dad and the kids got to visit a wildlife rehabilitation center/fish hatchery and see native Maine wildlife including a moose, bear and thousands of trout.  Lilian is part of a day camp put on by a local church this week, and having lots of fun.  

We don’t know where our next contract will be, but Becca has started to apply and we are hoping to be in the Midwest (IN, OH, MI, IL)  in order to be close to Indiana for Andrew’s brother's wedding at the end of September.  

Thanks so much for all your messages of love and support.  Please reach out and let us know how we can be praying for each of you.

Pressing on to win the PRIZE,

The Newkirks

Top Row Left to Right: Our log license plates found, Entering VT, Polyface Farm welcome sign, Sunset over the pastures at River Bluff Farm while visiting with the Miles family.

Second Row Left to Right: Peach shaped water tower, Jubliee Partneers welcome sign, The Bootmoblie out front L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine, Lilian at the ocean

Third Row Left to Right: Hiram in his birthday boy shirt sitting on the bumper of the stock trailer we delivered to Jubliee, Cannolis from the Rockland Bakery in Nyack, NY, Maine seafood dinner right on the water in Freeport, ME, A map of our route,

Bottom: Wolfe’s Neck’s cows resting on bedding pack after milking.