April 28, 2026
There is a moment, just before leaving, when everything still feels hypothetical.
The camper is packed. The truck is loaded. The hayball is tied down — firmly, but not rigidly. It has a little give to it. It will move with the road.
We stand there looking at it for a while.
It is, objectively, a strange thing to put on top of a vehicle and drive across the country.
Which feels like part of the point.
We are leaving from Maine, heading west by way of smaller roads — the kind that move at 55 miles an hour and pass through towns instead of around them. In a few days, we will reach Missouri and join Route 66, the Mother Road, as it turns one hundred.
We are not in a hurry.
There is a 1963 Frolic Catalina camper behind us. A woven sphere above us. A three-legged dog who has no concerns about any of this.
Already, before even starting, the project has begun to do something subtle.
Neighbors slow down as they pass.
People ask questions we don’t fully answer.
There is a moment of hesitation — curiosity, maybe — before recognition gives way to a smile.
We are carrying something that doesn’t quite explain itself.
And that feels right.
We don’t have a full plan beyond the general direction: west.
We will stop where it makes sense.
We will follow older roads when we can.
We will join Route 66 not just as travelers, but as participants in something ongoing — something layered with memory, movement, and reinvention.
This blog will hold what we notice along the way.
Not everything. Just enough.
We are about to leave.
The road is waiting, in the way it always has — indifferent, open, and ready to carry whatever comes across it.
We’ll see what it gives back.