The Jet Set Betties

For decades, Maine and the Maritime Provinces have been on our bucket list, and we’re finally gonna get there! But first, we needed a little break and a taste of New Hampshire.

July 26-28: New Hampshire

From the Cape we headed to Deerfield, New Hampshire. Why, you ask? Primarily because we found a nice-looking, reasonably-priced Airbnb, and we both had plenty of computer work and video meetings and whatnot to make holing up in another AirBnB a good idea. And that’s pretty much what we did. Not too much to report during this time, other than we found this sweet little farm/brewery to visit.

July 29-31: The Ledges at Leeds!

Crossing into Maine we find ourselves in an interesting place. We picked this one on HipCamp because it promoted a community area and nice showers. It was quite a bit off the beaten path (near Leeds, which is a little north of Lewiston), and when we arrived it was raining. We couldn’t find anyone to meet us, so we parked our camper right by the shared common space. Later we were met by someone, and when we asked where we should properly park the camper, she shrugged, and so we stayed right there.

As we walked around the grounds, it became clear that this area was designed as some sort of music/event venue. The common area had a loft-lounge, and was wired for sound. There was another area with a kind of amphitheater and stage, as well. Later exploring would reveal, within a short walk, a lakeside beach area with a tiki-themed shelter, and a shed full of windsurfers. A walk up a trail system along the mountain in the other direction (the “Ledges”) opened to a great vista and a half-finished deck.

We learned over the course of our stay that all this was the vision of Tim. He and his siblings had grown up here, and now retired, he was building a kind of playground for musicians and travelers. Tragically, he died of a heart attack, while working on his dream, just two months prior to our arrival. His family was clearly still in shock, but making a go of keeping the place viable. This would be such a fun space to bring a bunch of musicians to camp and hang out for a week.

We spent a couple fun days exploring the small towns nearby, and had a glorious afternoon borrowing paddleboards and floating on Androscoggin Lake.

August 1-8: Acadia National Park

We head to a place on Kayla’s Bucket List. Like all National Parks, this one is busy. As we roll into town on Saturday afternoon, we are backed up in traffic behind a stoplight, and make the mistake of turning into the heart of Bar Harbor with our trailer in tow. It is solid traffic, tight turns, and people crossing the street any which-way. It took some time to navigate four blocks and get back on our way. We resolve to visit this place on a quieter day.

Smugglers Den campground is on the “quiet” side of Acadia NP, and is just lovely. Because it is Maine, the campground office has a live lobster tank and will let you borrow a steamer to cook ’em. We are set in the trees, but bordering the playground, which allows us endless hours of observing kid dynamics.

This is still a period where we both have some hefty work obligations, plus there are a couple days of heavy rain while we’re here, but we make the best of it, and make sure to have at least one or two adventures a day.

National Parks are busy (did we mention that?). Many of the popular places in the park have long lines of cars parked along the road, and long lines of people, some weary, some exuberant, moving through the scenery. Plus plenty of 20-somethings more focused on getting their Insta just right than becoming One With Nature. Still, if one explores the edges of even these busy places, there is solace. It also helps to come to these places outside of regular visiting hours. We take in a few popular views and bike trails during the early evening hours when everyone is waiting in line for a table at some seafood place, and enjoy spaces mostly to ourselves.

One of the big features of Acadia NP are the Carriage Roads. The Rockefeller family owned this land, and apparently they weren’t fans of automobiles. So, they had roads built all over the place specifically for horse-drawn carriages. Now these Carriage Roads are exclusively for bicyclists and walkers. They are very well maintained, and we enjoyed many hours of biking along side-by-side.

We had been admonished by friends that we must have a lobster roll while we are here. Matthew thought that these rolls were something like an egg roll filled with meat, or like a lobster salad (you know, heavy on the mayo, light on the meat) … neither of which was super-appealing. You see roadside shacks (called “Lobster Pounds”) advertising these things everywhere. We ate lobster in other ways, but held off on the roll for a long time. We gradually come to understand that it’s really much more lobster than anything else, accented with lemon and/or butter and perhaps SOME mayo. And so, on our last day as we were heading to the ferry that would take us to Nova Scotia (spoiler alert), we did indeed have a lobster roll. And it was, in fact, delicious. And whoo-boy expensive! And yes, we’ll have at least one more during our maritime travels.

In the next installment, we head to Canada just in time for a Trade War!

It’s turning into a summer of Cities! We already had our brief adventure in NYC, and now we’re off to Boston (and don’t forget: Philly in September!).

But first — there’s no way we’re gonna tow the Bettymobile through that infamous Boston traffic. After some internet searching, we learn of Neighbor, an app that’s basically an Airbnb to store your stuff. Started in Utah in 2017 by a guy who stored all his household belongings in his neighbor’s garage while he did mission work in South America, it has exploded across the country with thousands of possible locations in all 50 states. We were a little skeptical but had read good reviews and it seems to come with insurance, so we decided to try it out.

For greatest convenience on our path in and out of eastern Mass, we chose a site in NW Rhode Island. En route to Rhode Island, we drove across Connecticut, thinking surely we would find a park / picnic table to enjoy a quick roadside lunch, but boy howdy that was difficult. We spent a hangry hour going from town to town to find places that looked promising, only to find out that Connecticut has a very loose definition of “park”. Some of Connecticut’s parks literally have no parking. We finally found a shady spot between a ballfield and a cemetery to throw together a quick sammy.

George Washington State Campground was not far from the storage site in Rhode Island, so we spent a night there to see how Rhode Islanders do camping. I think it was pretty different than how George Washington did camping. Did he camp in Rhode Island?

Anyway, on Saturday morning we found our “Neighbor” – Construction Junction. We never met the guy we corresponded with on the app. Our instructions were to pull in and honk the horn. We threaded through many car curiosities. Some appeared to be in the process of being taken apart. Some appeared to be in the process of being put together. And for some, it wasn’t too clear. We honked the horn.

In a few minutes, a man emerged from a camper and showed us where to “pahhk the trailah.” This guy had the thickest New England chowdah accent either of us had ever heard. Yep, he told us, he lived in the junkyard. After a head injury and a few stints in jail, he said he was grateful to have a place to stay and steady work. His job was to remove the rims from the rubber of a mountain of car wheels. The rims made some money at the scrapyard. We decoupled Twyla from Betty, and wished everybody good luck. (Good news: everything turned out great, and Steve – the owner – even called and was super-chatty about how cool our trailer is, how cool that we’re from Alaska, etc. Thanks, Neighbor!)

Boston: July 18-21

We’d both been to Boston before but it had been decades for each of us, so we were excited to get to know this city a little bit. Plus, dear niece Emma lives here, so we got to enjoy several days seeing her life and enjoying her company! We scored a sweet Airbnb in Newton – the top floor of an old Victorian house, which was beautifully decorated and a quiet haven for our time there, even though it required some commuting every day to get to Emma’s neighborhood (Arlington) or the main attractions in downtown Boston and Cambridge.

We spent a perfect Sunday seeing the sights of Boston & Cambridge: first Harvard Square and the “old yard”, then a long stroll through Boston Common and Public Garden, along Commonwealth Ave, and across the Charles River to Cambridge. We managed to score 3 stools in a Middle Eastern bar/restaurant/night club to watch the World Cup final and had a great time with the crowd there.

Monday was another huge walking day. We started at Boston Public Market for lunch, then took a 3.5 hour walking history tour guided by a high school history teacher who did a great job of setting the stage for the American Revolution through the eyes of key individuals and the roles they played, e.g., John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, etc. It really created a cohesive story instead of just pointing at a series of buildings, street corners, and gravestones. We also got to see the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park, which was built after the Big Dig, that massive infrastructure effort that took 20 years to bury the freeway underground and reconnect the North End to downtown Boston (we have since listened to a 9-episode podcast about the Big Dig … fascinating!). And we wrapped up the day with some great North End pizza and cannoli.

Our final day in Boston was Matthew’s birthday, and to honor the day we got tickets to the Red Sox game. What an exciting addition to our summer of baseball, especially because the Sox were on the brink of breaking their record 14-game winning streak! HOWEVER … it’s an awful stormy day and the game gets cancelled before we even get to the park. (*sad trombone*) They rescheduled the game for the next afternoon, but we have an important date the next day and really can’t stay. In the best possible outcome, our friends Grace and Charlie are also in Boston — we’re actually meeting up with them in Cape Cod the next day — and they have more flexibility in their travel, so we send the tickets over to them and they have a grand time at Fenway the next afternoon before driving down to the Cape.

Meantime, we seek out “the original” Boston Cream Pie at the Parker House Hotel to try and ease our disappointment, and enjoy one more evening with lovely Emma.

Cape Cod: July 22-24

While Grace & Charlie enjoyed the rescheduled matinee Sox game (and their record 15-game winning streak), we drove a back roads route from Newton to Sandwich for our lunch date with Matthew’s uncle Tim. We had a delightful few hours catching up with him, and went away wishing we could have more time. We checked into our Airbnb in Falmouth, where we enjoyed a chill evening waiting for Grace and Charlie to join us. We had a happy reunion and nice homecooked dinner when they arrived.

Our two full days on the Cape were pretty chill in general. We spent one afternoon at South Cape Beach, picnicking, chatting, tossing the frisbee, taking a long walk. Nice dinner out in Falmouth. Long road trip up the cape as far as Orleans, lunch at a tiki bar and a stroll in Chatham, climbed the stairs in Scargo Tower on the highest hill of the Cape, and explored a pretty little inlet along Barnstable Harbor.

A big highlight on our final night was reuniting with some long-lost Sitka friends – Kevin & Kristen, now-retired Coast Guard who lived in Sitka about 15 years ago. We hadn’t really been in touch over those years, but thanks to Facebook, knew how to find them and thought we’d reach out and see if they wanted to get together. They responded enthusiastically and invited all of us over for dinner at their house in Sandwich. It was great fun to reconnect with them! We wrapped up the evening with a quick trip to the beach and Sandwich boardwalk, and departed with the hope of seeing them again soon.

On July 2, we bid adieu to Kevin & Kristi (and air conditioning! Remember, this is the time of The Heat Dome) and headed to upstate New York for the next two weeks. In this post, we’ll revisit those days, including our stay at a mushroom farm near Ithaca, the shores of Lake Ontario, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Catskills.

July 3-5: Mushrooms and Gorges

We’re really diving into Hipcamp this season and finding some very unique spots to park the BettyMobile, including Hawk Meadow Farm near Ithaca, where our campsite was in the woods amidst their log-grown mushroom farm. We ventured into Ithaca where they were decidedly NOT celebrating America 250, but the falls were beautiful as predicted. We also drove/walked around Cornell University, got some nice views of the town and Cayuga Lake, and scored a great lunch + World Cup at Revelry brewpub.

July 5-10: Western Shores of Lake Ontario

We took a nice leisurely route from our mushroom farm north, including a viewing of Taughannock Falls (30′ higher than Niagara!), and a long lunch stop in Seneca Falls. This town is significant as the site of the first women’s rights convention in 1848, but in some ways that historical notability is dwarfed by the town’s claims to be the inspirational setting for Bedford Falls in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Movie crews never set foot here, but there’s a museum, the “It’s a Wonderful Scoop” ice cream store, and plenty of movie-related trinkets to buy. The Women’s Rights Park is a nice tribute to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and it really is a very cute town. Walking their downtown streets on a Sunday afternoon takes you straight back to the late 1800s thanks to the marching band music they pipe through outdoor speakers down main street. Delightful!

Our destination was Selkirk Shores State Park, near Oswego, in a campground that is VASTLY different from our quiet mushroom farm. We have RV walls on both sides, including one family that likes to play the local commercial rock radio station on their outdoor speakers which are pointed right at us. They like that station so much that they play it for us even when they aren’t around. It’s nice to see families having some R&R together here, but it’s one of those campgrounds that is the destination, so everyone is hanging around here most of the time instead of heading out on daily adventures elsewhere.

Our days in this area are pretty low-key: we catch up on work tasks and explore the curious local towns and lakeshore sites. For example, Mexico Point, where some guy in the late 1800s built an elaborate hotel and retreat area where city folk could escape the heat and play games. But there were fires, and rebuilding, and more fires, and now it’s just some stone wall remains and an occasional community event. Why is it called Mexico? Because the German guy who originally claimed the area in the late 1700s was fascinated with Central and South America. Go figger. Oswego is interesting: 19th-century architecture combined with the nuclear power plant that looms on the horizon and the Oswego Canal that connects the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario. Pulaski is a cute little town boasting “the World’s Best Salmon Fishing” (of course we Alaskans know that PR campaign is BS!). 

We spent one day wandering further north to check out other state parks. We start in Sacketts Harbor, which was really fun! The whole town is a designated historic district, famous for the role it played in the War of 1812 as a vital shipyard (and apparently NY’s 3rd largest city in 1812-1814), and it’s beautifully restored/preserved. A big highlight for us was the Whisky Coop – a sweet little restaurant with an outdoor patio serving a perfect combo of great chicken and delicious whiskey cocktails. Our other State Park visits were less satisfying, however. On the map, Robert Wehle SP has a “unique area” and might have some nice 4-mile hikes, but the park is mostly dedicated to Wehle’s breeding of English pointers, there is scant info about the trails, and the most unique thing we saw was statues of dogs everywhere. We move on to Sandy Island Beach SP, which looks like a promising long barrier island to explore, but alas, the park itself is quite small and the rest of the island is privatized.

July 11: Cooperstown!

Keeping with our baseball-themed summer, we spend an afternoon/evening in Cooperstown at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Well, before we can even get to the BBall HOF, we have to park the car and camper – which allows us a great deal of time driving around the downtown, clogged with crossing tourists, and some of the outskirts, where we finally find a spot on a street that even offers some blessed shade.

A word about these tourists. Matthew, at least, is surprised by the number of youth – most with ice cream in their hands, walking along the sidewalks and across the streets like ducklings with a weary adult at each end of the line. They are all wearing the same ballcap. Of course – what do you do when you manage a Little League baseball team but promise a weekend in Cooperstown?! And, there are plenty of other kinds of folks making their journey to hallowed lands that ostensibly (thought not really) gave the world it’s greatest pastime of baseball. We see plenty of Japanese tourists (and indeed, there is a whole section of the BBHOF that is devoted to Japanese players and fandom) and plenty of old guys that Matthew suspects have a suitcase filled with baseball cards in the trunk of their old Impala.

As for the museum itself? Matthew has some comments. First off, the actual Hall of Fame (really, “Halls of Fame”) is everything it should be. It is kind of like walking into an old European cathedral, but the transepts aren’t filled with tortured saints, just burnished bronze plaques of name after name of great players.

The other two floors of the space are filled with exhibits mostly telling the story of why some of those names on the first floor rightfully deserve their spot on the walls. And then there is a substantial amount of space given to baseball history itself – the evolving rules, equipment, and overall mechanics that make the sport what it is today. Here’s where Matthew has some advice for the curators. So many of these exhibits just tease the details, but don’t take the story all the way to home plate. There’s an exhibit on safety equipment, and you can see what a catcher wore in the 1920’s, but not a full uniform of what they wear today. Here’s a glass display of an old leather bound rulebook, but what about today? Where do we go to understand the “fourth out” rule? When were batters required to “present bunt” and why? That’s the stuff that would bring the story home for old Matt.

There was, however, one display that we could find no fault with, and that was the private collection of bobbleheads. There must’ve been eight display cases full, each equipped with a jitter function, because what is the point of a bobblehead if not to bobble?

The campground we stayed at had two ballfields attached. Clearly this is where you go with your team after a day of ice cream and BBHOF. Cooperstown also hosts Little League tournaments – as we left we passed many many ballfields ready for action.

July 12-16: Catskills

Lovely backroads drive to Kenneth Wilson State Park, a highly-rated campground in the Catskills west of Woodstock. Our assigned site was impossibly tight and uncomfortably close to a couple of guys with three barky dogs, so we appealed to the sympathies of the park ranger and scored a huge site with plenty of space to spread out. The whole campground, including this site, is full of trees, which is wonderful for shade and privacy, but terrible for Starlink and getting any work done. Our few days here actually require quite a bit of work focus and internet access, giving us the opportunity to find several creative spots to hang out, ranging from a picnic table near the playground under a big open sky to a sweet public library in Shokan where they have a live bee display, to a beautifully restored historic building in Kingston, NY, which now functions as a co-working space. By the way, this was during the days of heavy smoke from Canadian wildfires, so we’re grateful to have found nice indoor spaces to work and breathe.

We especially enjoyed Kingston. It’s a nice mix of history and interesting old architecture (including buildings from the mid-1600s!) with vibrant present-day work and community life. While in the area, we also explored all the “kills” (which is Dutch for creek/river – e.g. Catskill means Cat Creek.). Beautiful windy roads through forested hills, past rivers and waterfalls, and dotted with charming houses and small communities. We didn’t spend much time in Woodstock – at a glance it looks like a quaint community but very touristy, which didn’t hold strong appeal for us.

Fun fact: Yasgur’s farm (the Woodstock concert site in 1969) was actually about 60 miles SW of Woodstock. Sounds like those event planners had a hard time getting permits – Wallkill was the second option, before Yasgur saved the day. Seems like a miracle that so many thousands of people found the festival!

Coming up next: We stow the Bettymobile in a Rhode Island junkyard and head into Beantown!

It’s true, a bit out of the blue we find ourselves in the heart of New York City. But that’s just a teaser – hang on, we’ll get there.

And speaking of getting there: In a future post, we’ll catch you up on what’s happened since NYC up to today. Currently we are near Bar Harbor, ME, about to embark on a full week of activities in Acadia NP. Adventures of the last month have included three spots in upstate NY, a week in Boston / Cape Cod, and four nights holed up in a central New Hampshire AirBnB so we could catch our breath from a remarkable 7-week run of camping and events. More on all that later … let’s start by going back to June 22-July 2.

Our route til now.

That dark blue line is following our 2026 route: starting in Glenn, MI, down to the bottom of the vee in Georgia and about halfway up the other side to our days at Red Wing music festival (all discussed in previous posts).

It was just a short hop from the festival to Shenandoah National Park, and for Matthew’s folks, it’s just a skip and a jump to that same place from their home on the Bay, so we all met up for a few nights. The highlight of the visit was taking Jim and Tammy’s ragtop VW Bug and touring the Skyline Drive. Top speed limit 35 mph!

But then, yes, it was time to head to New York City. It turns out that Kayla’s coworkers at On-Ramps (a New York City based company) were going to have an office cocktail party at a rooftop bar. And wouldn’t you know it, we could make it there, too! Kayla’s brother Kevin lives outside Philadelphia and right next to an Amtrak train line. We could dash up from Shenandoah, stash our camper in Paoli, then the next day catch a 2.5 hour train into NYC and make it to the party by cocktail hour!

We spent three days and nights in the city and walk about 20 total miles. It was during the World Cup, and that energy permeated the town. So many people in team jerseys, so many little nooks and big public spaces showing the games. It really raised the energy level!

After these fun-filled days, we head back to Paoli, where all the talk is of record high temperatures and Heat Domes. Rather than rush out into the un-conditioned wilderness, we hang back with Kristi and Kevin for a few days. In addition to enjoying a/c, catching up on work projects, and several nice evenings of hanging out with K&K, we get a special tour of the Wharton Esherick Museum, where Kristi is a docent. Wharton sure was a creative guy — what an interesting place!

Next in line for storytelling: two weeks in upstate NY! Stay tuned.

Here we are again: The Betties haven’t posted in months, and now have too many memories and pictures to share. What happens? Life, I guess. We’ve been excited for our next road trip, and getting there has meant getting a lot of other obligations out of the way to clear the path. And once we hit the road, wow have our days been full!

One thing that has struck Matthew on this trip is the pride folks have of their communities. We draw some attention with our camper and our Alaska license plates, and that can strike up some great conversations. We always try to ask what folks think is special about their town, and so many times that question just lights them up!

Another new element to our journey this round is that we’ve given in and bought a Starlink – that little device that can give us streaming-level internet anywhere that we can find open sky, and helps fuel Elon Musk’s dream to one day rule the world. It has been a remarkable tool, especially for Kayla’s work. It has also allowed us to catch the occasional baseball game as we keep track of our Phillies. What a hoot.

Pre-Road Trip

Straight from Alaska we flew to Matthew’s parents in Virginia. It was a nice week of sharing meals, doing some landscaping, and enjoying some nice warm weather. We even had the opportunity to see “one of the premier ‘Rhythm And Beach’ bands in South Carolina!

The audience was as old as the band.

The second day after we returned to Glenn (to Kayla’s sister’s sweet little cottage by the lake) this happened:

And so after that this happened:

Turns out some plumbing had an outburst, and so the kitchen ceiling was torn down. Meanwhile, Matthew and Kayla were busy finishing the painting job they had started last fall. We had some help from nephew Jonathan, who came for a three week visit.

We also spent a week in Storm Lake, IA for Kayla’s dad’s funeral, which of course was an intensely wonderful, bittersweet time. Lloyd was the last of his family of six; we were honored to have his last living in-law – Rev. Ed Maas – presiding over Dad’s services. And, to further honor this generation and our family heritage, we hosted a cousins reunion at our family homestead. What a joyous time we had, even in the midst of missing our dad and his siblings.

On the road

June 6-7

Painting done, camper packed, and we’re off! This is a planned four-month expedition to primarily explore the northeast US, but our first destinations are southward.

First stop General Butler State Park in Carrollton, Kentucky, part of our “we need to learn more about Kentucky” initiative. The park itself features remarkably un-level sites strewn about the grounds. Whatever, we’re tired.

The next day we head out for supplies, and surprise ourselves by finding a distillery along the way (who would have expected this in KY!?). This is a “contract” distillery, essentially for hire to folks that want their own whiskey brand, but not the trouble of their own whiskey distillery. Their most recognizable client is Jefferson’s Ocean. They’ll even let you mix your own whiskey (minimum 50 bottles) and put whatever label you want on it. This is now a thing for wedding gifts and the like. We are looking forward to being invited to a Kentucky wedding as a result.

They also quietly make their own stuff. We enjoy many samples of many whiskeys as the sole guests in their tasting room, walk away with two rare bottles of the stuff, and are well prepared for our journey through Costco.

June 8-10

A meandering road trip to Chattanooga and Harrison Bay State Park. The park is just a short drive from downtown Chattanooga, and we have a lovely wooded site near a lake. Matthew has some work to do to finish the first draft of a report he’s working on for the AK Legislature, and Kayla has plenty of work of her own, so we spend the heat of the day at the downtown library, and then explore the town. And what a fun town it is! It has a unique vibe and plenty going for it. There are plenty of public spaces, wide sidewalks, and shade. Shops, restaurants, and bars aren’t compressed in one area, but kind of spread out through the compact city, with the downtown and the old railroad/warehouse district having plenty of places worth visiting. The city runs a free electric shuttle bus that connects these two areas. While enjoying lunch at a funky hotel-based brewpub, we watched folks dressed for work, tourists, and people with fishing poles over their shoulder all mingle on the bustling sidewalks. Examples of some of the great city art included below.

June 11-12

We head to Red Top Mountain State Park in Georgia, not far north of Atlanta. Matthew has fond memories of floating the Etowah river, so we spend a hot lazy day doing just that. It is getting hot down here. Time to start heading north.

June 13

We stay the night in an odd little campsite in Whittier North Carolina just off the highway 441. The next day we begin our journey up the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRPW).

June 14-15

Gaining some elevation really helps with the heat. We reach 6000 ft at one point, and breathe air for the first time in a while that doesn’t feel laden with humidity. After driving about 180 miles of the BRPW, we exit along Tater Hill Road, and meander to a Hipcamp called Loafer’s Joy to do some quality loafing for a couple of days.

June 16

Back on the Parkway and on up to Virginia. The speed limit along the entirety of the Parkway is 45 mph. It’s great to just meander along, enjoy the scenery, and not feel the need to pass or be passed. We stay the night at an odd little campground just off the BRPW called Don’s Camp Inn. Clearly this is a mountain biker’s destination, with lots of trails and a beer garden open on the weekends.

June 17

An easy meander to Devil’s Backbone Base Camp. Devil’s Backbone is a brewery of note, and they’ve established a remarkable outpost here. The Appalachian Trail follows a similar route as the Parkway, and for those hikers willing to come down from the mountain, the Base Camp provides a space for their tiny tents and showers for their stinking bodies. They also have lovely sites for us trailer folk. Of course they also offer a beer garden and some decent food.

June 18-21

We finish our journey along the length of the parkway. We can’t congratulate ourselves for driving the complete route, as there is a portion that is closed for repairs, but golly we sure covered most of it. Off the Parkway, we travel back roads to Mt. Solon, a wee little town tucked into the hills outside of Harrisonburg, VA for the Red Wing Roots Music Festival.

What a marvelous four days. It was one of those things that we know we will remember for years to come. There is a conscientious effort by the festival to encourage everyone there to just be nice to everyone else, and it works! Even as we are pulling into our camping spot our neighbors are welcoming us and inviting us over. There’s a real emphasis on family and kids as well, with special youth programming throughout the week, but also in just everyone from babies, tweens, teens, and us older folk enjoying the shows. The vibe has a real impact on the artists. So many of the acts remark on what fun they are having up on stage along with us. Oh, plus the music was AMAZING. Almost 50 bands in 3 days – we didn’t see them all but we tried our best!

We’ll leave this post here, but stay tuned for tales of our next adventures: camping with Matthew’s parents, visiting Kayla’s brother, and tales of New York ranging from Lake Ontario to mid-town Manhattan!

“Whoosh” is the sound of the last four months. Or maybe it’s the sound of time in general? I dunno, but all of a sudden it’s almost May, our brief stint in Sitka has come and gone, and we’re trying to pull all of life’s pieces together to make the most of 2026 and beyond. Today seems like a perfect moment to pause and reflect on the past few months before more time and events whoosh past us! Highlights described below: moving back into our Sitka house; friends, community, a shed remodel, so much snow in Sitka; quick trip to SoCal; and the passing of Kayla’s dad.

Sweet Snowy Sitka

These past few months have confirmed that even though we’ve been loving our nomadic life, we also still love Sitka. First things first when we landed there on January 10: move all our stuff out of storage and back into our little purple house!

We enjoyed reconnecting with our friends over dinner and pinball and afternoon walks. It was great to plug back into community events, and do things like subscribe to the local newspaper and pick up some regular radio shows again. We had hoped for some nice spring porch weather, but wow did it SNOW! Sitka normally receives about 33 inches of snow per year …. this year it snowed 32 inches in March alone (and 104 inches total for the winter).

And, because we can’t seem to go anywhere without diving in to some big construction project, Matthew made a goal to repair and re-side the utility shed that sits between our two houses. The cold/snowy weather + the challenges of getting construction materials in Sitka delayed this project until April, so once again we had to push against the deadline of our April 20th departure date.

Winter Travels

We snuck away from Sitka a couple of times – once to Juneau…

… and once to southern California. The SoCal trip was extra-special because we got to celebrate Kayla’s sister Iris being honored as Medical Director of the Year for the Foundation for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine! Plus we had a few days in one of our favorite spots: San Diego!

Lloyd Boettcher: 1931-2026

The biggest event of the last four months was the passing of Kayla’s dear dad. At 94 years old and experiencing both heart and lung issues, reaching his final days was certainly not shocking, and fortunately things progressed quickly so he didn’t spend much time suffering in discomfort. But even though we were prepared for it, it’s still such a big change in the world as we know it.

We are all so grateful for the time we spent with him last year, specifically focused on helping him distribute his things to new homes and his home to a new owner and sharing photos and stories and card games and laughter. We are planning a very special few days in Storm Lake May 3-5 to celebrate his life with our immediate family and many cousins and friends. I expect those days will include hymns, polkas, and the family choir; card games and maybe shooting some pool; lots of hugs, stories, and laughter/tears; and menus to include pickled herring, pork tenderloins & brats, beer and stingers, and a good steak at Zimmy’s. You can read his obituary here (special side note: he actually “wrote” most of this himself, dictating his thoughts to Iris late one night while hospitalized in late February). Please join us in a toast to this fine fella.

What’s Next?

We plan to spend most of May back in Glenn, Michigan, finishing the painting and other loose ends on Iris’ lake house project, doing a little work on our camper, and enjoying spring in West Michigan. And then we’ll hit the road for one more 4-month road/camping trip! Our plans include driving the Blue Ridge Parkway from south to north; spending Solstice at the Red Wing Roots Music Festival near Charlottesville VA; at least a week each in the Boston/Cape Cod area and Acadia National Park; visiting friends in western MA and *maybe NYC; several weeks exploring upstate NY, VT, NH, ME, and the Maritime Provinces. Our big circle will bring us back to Philadelphia by the third week in September, when we’ll spend a week with family and friends, soaking up history and culture by day and Phillies games by night. Be sure to let us know if/where we can meet up with you along the way!

Happy mid-holidays, friends! We hope you have had safe travels, festive times, and lots of holiday cheer. As we type this, we’re both wrapped in blankets watching a winter storm bluster across Lake Michigan and attempt to topple our construction-site outhouse. Good thing we have one working toilet in the house! More on that in a moment….

Speaking of wind, the last five months have been full and breezy, and it’s remarkable to take this moment to catch our breath and reflect on it all a bit. But we can’t relax too long because this week we need to pack our stuff and return semi-permanently to Sitka! That’s right – if all goes to plan, on January 10 we’ll arrive in Sitka and move back into our house! Prepare yourselves, Alaska friends!

But enough forward-looking, this is a time of reflection, so let’s catch up on the Betties’ antics of the last few months.

Lake House Construction

If you’ve been following our story this year, you know that one of the through-lines is our involvement with the remodel of Kayla’s sister’s cottage on Lake Michigan. We’ve spent a lot of time in this house over the last four years. It’s become our home base in the Lower 48 in-between our other wanderings.

During this time, Iris decided she wanted to turn this summer cottage into a year-round home, and – because we’re suckers for a good house project – we happily agreed to help. Her vision included a small addition to create a better entryway plus one more main floor bathroom; remodel the existing bathroom; install new insulated windows; upgrade all systems (plumbing, electrical, HVAC); and give a facelift to the adorable little guest cabin that sits separately from the main house.

Matthew helped locate a fantastic local building company to help with the big stuff, and they moved on-site in mid-September. Prior to their work and continuing in tandem with the professional crew, Matthew has been the on-site liaison for Iris while also taking on several of the “smaller” projects (like building interior window trim for all 16 new windows and tiling the shower in the guest cabin). We’ve also accepted painting duty, so we’re spending these two weeks painting as many new surfaces as we can before we head to Alaska. The professional crew won’t finish their work until mid-January (tiling and cabinetry are the big remaining items), so we plan to return here in late April to put finishing touches on whatever needs it.

The power was turned off for at least 6 weeks, and prior to Dec 12 there was no running water or functional toilet in the house (hence the port-a-john on the property that’s now being threatened by winter winds). By mid-December, just before the professional crew moved out for their 2-week break, hot water was restored, one toilet on the 2nd floor is functional, and a shower was hooked up in the main bathroom. Here are a few photos from this process; scroll down for headlines from the other adventures we’ve had since August.

AUGUST

Kayla and her sisters went to Chicago to see niece Kristina in an opera. Then Kristina came to visit us in Michigan for a week.

Meanwhile, a new part-time job swept Matthew to Anchorage for 48 hours in August. The Legislature has created a Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding, and hired Matthew to shepherd the process and write the final report. This turns out to be kind of a big deal. The Task Force will meet regularly for the next year, with the final report due just in time for a new legislature and a new governor to get things going in January 2027. If he does a decent job, Matthew will know a whole lot about the AK Ed Funding landscape, which we hope will land him an interesting job in-state to occupy his waning useful years.

In late August, after rearranging all the furniture in the lake house as final prep for construction, we took off for two weeks in Minneapolis and northwest Iowa.

September

The main event of our midwest trip was a full Boettcher family gathering in Kayla’s hometown of Storm Lake, Iowa. You may recall that her dad has been in the process of finding new homes for his things, and ultimately finding a new owner for his home – the house he and Kayla’s mom built from scratch when they retired from farming in 1996. Over Labor Day weekend, all 14 members of Kayla’s family came together in Storm Lake for a “house-cooling” event, complete with digitizing 60+ years of family photos (and enjoying stories and slideshows as evening entertainment!), clearing out the last of the household items, sharing conversation and the view from the front porch, and walking through the house together room-by-room to share memories and celebrations of the life lived in that house. What a blessing to have Dad present and fully participating in this process! Plus, we’re happy to report that after 3 months on the market, sale on the house closed just before Christmas – a perfect Christmas gift!

After this, we took a few days to leisurely return to Michigan, making a stop in Ankeny, IA (to visit Kayla’s dear high school friend Bridget), and camping along the Hennepin Canal Parkway in Northern Illinois (a 19th-century attempt at connecting Chicago with the Mississippi River).

After about 10 days back in Michigan (where Kayla managed to get involved with some garden harvesting / canning), we pointed east and took off again. Our destination was eastern Virginia, but we opted for a new route across Michigan to Port Huron (north of Detroit), across Ontario to Niagara Falls, then south through central Pennsylvania and the northern part of Shenandoah National Park.

We arrived at Matthew’s parents’ house in Mathews County on Sept 22 and spent a couple of nights there before heading into Richmond. We had secured a sweet housesitting gig in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond for three weeks, which gave us proximity and time with Matthew’s parents, who live about an hour east of Richmond. Church Hill is full of fun little restaurants and bars, and is great for long walks with a good dog. We loved having niece Hannah visit for a few days; we also went to a couple of live music shows (Neko Case and Pokey Lafarge) and spent time with friends who live in the area as well as with Matthew’s family. Everything was fantastic, except for the adventurous chickens who kept escaping their coop!

October

We wrapped up our time in Virginia on October 17 and made our way back to Michigan. Although we would have loved to return at a more leisurely pace, we were feeling some urgency around house construction projects back in Glenn, plus we already had our next round of travel planned for October 29. We had read a little about Blackwater Falls State Park in eastern West Virginia, which is about 5.5 hours from Matthew’s parents’ place, so we made that our first stop. Unfortunately, the state park campground was full but we managed to get a spot at a sweet little private campground called Rest Rite just outside of Davis WV. This whole area is pretty intriguing – hiking, biking, fun small town action – so we’ve added this to our “must-return” list. On 10/18 we wound our way through the WV mountains and just kept going all the way across Ohio. The weather forecast called for really soggy conditions that night, and we were pretty tired, so we drove all the way to Adrian, MI before we stopped and grabbed a hotel room.

Back in Iris’ orbit (but without running water or electricity out at the lake), we moved into the guest room at her house near Grand Rapids. On October 29, Matthew flew to Alaska for two weeks of meetings and Kayla flew to Minneapolis for another 10 days in the midwest, including back to Storm Lake to celebrate Dad’s 94th birthday on Halloween.

November

After a few days in Storm Lake with her dad and sisters, Kayla spent a week in / around Des Moines – first with dear friend Bridget, and then on her own retreat in downtown Des Moines – while Matthew, with unfortunate hair (see below) talked education and visited friends in AK.

Coming back together in Michigan in mid-November, we took a quick spin to see Jeff Daniels perform an acoustic music show in Owosso, we had a fun Thanksgiving with Iris and her good friend David, and we spent a weekend in Traverse City with our pals Ed and David.

December

And that brings us to December, which has kept us solidly in West Michigan, and for the last 10 days we’ve been living back at the lake full-time, chipping away at house projects and personal goals (like catching up on our blog!), with a brief detour back to Grand Rapids to join Iris for a lovely Christmas Eve of carols and good food. Somehow we need to pull ourselves out from beneath these blankets and figure out what to bring back to Alaska and how to get it there, but for now it’s nice to watch the storm squalls cross over the lake and testify that this house is now certainly more than a summer cottage.

And then what?

Yes, we will be establishing our residence back in Sitka, but we aren’t done road-tripping. While things are up-in-the-air with Matthew’s job through 2026, we hope to sneak back to the Lower 48 for a few months to do a Northeast America road trip – there are still a few places on our map that need more lines! We’ve also got a summer solstice music festival planned in VA, maybe a Philly’s game in Philly … who knows what other fun and adventure is in store?! Maybe we can plan some shenanigans with you!

July 10-16

Yes, we’re still catching up on stories from four months ago. Good grief. But it’s fun to go back and revisit these fun memories!

Our draw to Lillehammer is Kayla’s college roommate, Emily, who moved there around 2010 when her husband Erik landed a job and they could launch an ex-pat life in beautiful Norway. It was truly delightful to spend 6 days with Emily and get better acquainted with their whole family (including their fun and brilliant children, Greta and Henrik, and gorgeous doggo, Lotta).

And just like that it was time to head back to Michigan! In Reykjavik we remembered we had a bunch of Euros, and wound up spending it all on some questionable candy. They are wild about the licorice in Iceland, and even go so far as to put it in their chocolate. Hmmm. If you ever want to try it, I’m sure we’ll still have some hidden in a cupboard somewhere.

Getting back to Glenn, Matthew jumped back into housing projects, Kayla jumped back in to On-Ramps, and we enjoyed about three weeks of relatively routine midwest summer days.

Coming up in our next post: Matthew gets a phone call, Kristina comes for a visit, and we head to Storm Lake via Minneapolis on a short but action-filled road trip!

July 6-10

In case you missed the last chapter, our heroes just finished a week in northern Germany and traveled by train to Berlin. What a city! We had four days jam-packed with history, culture, art, delicious food, and delightful conversation. We were so happy that niece Sophia could join us – ’twas such fun to explore and learn things with her!

We asked our friend Roald to pick some favorite parts of the city to visit. He describes Berlin not so much as a particular place, but as an overall experience. Well put. Everywhere there are beautiful parks, plus crazy good (and inexpensive) restaurants with tables on the sidewalk to watch the steady stream of people all going somewhere. There is art and architecture and delicious pastries and quiet places and lovely walks.

We had a fine hotel near Alexanderplatz very near train and bus stations, so getting around the city was pretty slick. Here’s a glance at the ground we covered: the blue line is a bike tour route we took; all the black circles with white stars show places we visited.

A great way to see the city and learn a lot in a short amount of time is to take a bike tour. In 3.5 hours we biked close to 20 km (12.4 miles) and saw fifteen or more notable Berlin sites: Museum Island, Konzerthaus Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie, Holocaust Memorial, Brandenburg Gate, Tiergarten & Victory Column, Reichstag, and Berlin Wall Memorial, plus more! Our guide was terrific – super informative and prepared with maps and photos.

We invested two afternoons into some heavy museum visits: the Stasi Museum and the Jewish Museum. The Stasi Museum is located in the former headquarters of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of East Germany from 1960-1989. Since 1990 and the reunification of Germany, the Stasi Museum has been used to inform visitors about the Stasi and its activities as a “protection and security organ” during the SED dictatorship. It was chilling to see the ways Erich Mielke (MfS) manipulated surveillance systems to support Head of State Erich Honecker as leader and primary decider across all aspects of East Germany: head of party and state, secretariat of the Central Committee and Politburo (where all political, economic, and other basic decisions were made), Chairman of the State Council and National Defense Council. We also saw the propaganda that was fed to the people in an attempt to build loyalty for the state and suppress any concerns that the SED had stolen their freedoms and right to choose their leaders. No one knew who might be working for the Stasi (one of the largest secret police agencies in the world): at it’s largest, it employed 91,000 people. Spouses, family members, best friends — no one knew who they could trust anymore, and we saw examples of the information collected by Stasi on their friends and neighbors. It was grim, I tell ya.

The Jewish Museum is also incredible. Tracing the Jewish people all the way back to BC and how the diaspora spread around the world after encountering persecution after persecution, through the ~15 years of the Weimar Republic where Jews enjoyed a short stint of cultural flourishing before the Nazis took all that away, and of course the exhibitions about the 1930s-1940s were horrific. While not detailing the Holocaust specifically, the museum does an incredible job of showcasing the increasing discriminations and deportations that led up to trains filled with people shipped to concentration camps. How could this happen? How can this hatred and dehumanization still be happening today? Very, very disturbing perspective on humanity.

*whew* After both of these museum experiences we had to find beers and sunshine. We also enjoyed lots of other delicious food and drink across the City!

An icon of Berlin is the Ampelmännchen (“little traffic light man”) in all the crosswalk signs. East and West Berlin had different traffic signals – Amelmann came from the East and stuck around.

We’ll wrap up this post with a few more sights from Berlin. Next post – our last stop in Europe: Lillehammer Norway!

(this entry will cover the end of June to the beginning of July)

Hello hello! We’re still here! Wow, the last six weeks have been pretty wild. Last weekend we realized we hadn’t been in the same state for two consecutive Sundays since Aug 17! In order: Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia. We’re rewinding the clock more than two months for today’s post, but before we dive into that, here are a few headlines of our shenanigans since returning from Europe in late July:

+ Kayla and her sisters had a few days in Chicago to see niece Kristina in an opera performance
+ Then Kristina came to Michigan for a week
+ LOTS of projects at the lake house in Glenn, MI
+ Matthew landed a new part-time job in Alaska government, which took him to Anchorage for 48 hours
+ Several days in Minneapolis visiting family & friends
+ Eight days in Iowa with Kayla’s whole family, cleaning out the rest of Dad’s house and celebrating his years there (fortunately, with Dad participating!)
+ High school football game with friends (the highlight being their daughter as cheerleader / marching band)
+ Making garden preserves with Iris
+ Road trip from West Michigan across Ontario to Niagara Falls, then south to Virginia
+ Settling into a 3-week housesitting gig in Richmond, VA, which also gives us time with the Turner family
+ Weekend with niece Hannah in Richmond

Stories on all that coming later! But for now, let’s time travel back to late June, starting with the amazing week we spent in Northern Germany — in Hamburg and the Boettcher family homeland in the Altes Land.

Brief Boettcher History

For context: what makes this all so special is that somehow the Boettcher family has managed to maintain ties to relatives in Germany, dating all the way back to the late-1800s during the Prussian war when Kayla’s great-grandfather Ernst immigrated to the US with four of his six brothers. His eldest brother, Johann, stayed behind to continue farming, and Ernst’s youngest brother Heinrich was still too young to leave home. Eventually, though, after their mother died, Heinrich also came to the US along with their father, who is now buried in Zion Lutheran cemetery less than a mile from where Kayla’s dad was born in northwest Iowa.

For over a century and across 4 generations, the descendants of these brothers found ways to keep in touch, and today Kayla’s family has strong ties to Eike, who is Kayla’s 3rd cousin, the great-granddaughter of eldest brother Johann. Eike and her children (Tjerk and Insa) have all visited their US relatives (including an epic week where Eike and Insa came to visit us in Sitka!), and Kayla has been to Germany twice before. It definitely helps that Eike and her family are completely delightful and great fun to spend time with. So as we planned our trip to Europe, it was pretty obvious that we needed to go visit them.

June 27 – 30: Hamburg

We started by flying from Edinburgh to Hamburg, where we were greeted by cousin Tjerk. He and his family instantly welcomed us into their home in the city, and we spent a few days exploring the sites.

July 1-5: Altes Land

On July 1, Kayla’s niece Sophia flew to Hamburg from Minneapolis to join us for the next 10 days in Germany. Eike came in from her village to pick us up at Tjerk’s, we all went to the airport to grab Sophia, and then we pointed toward the Altes Land with a quick visit at Ballinstadt Emigration Museum.

“Altes Land” translates as “old country” but the original term was “Olland,” referring to the Holland origins of the land: initially, Dutch settlers reclaimed the land from the sea with a complex system of dykes, resulting in rich lowlands perfect for agriculture. Eike and Insa live near each other in the village of Moorende, on the banks of the Este River just north of Buxtehude.

Matthew, Kayla, and Sophia shared a lovely apartment just down the road. Eike and her neighbor loaned us some bikes, and we spent most of these four days bicycling between Moorende and Buxtehude, enjoying time with Eike and Insa and all the beauty of Lower Saxony. We also had the treat of a professional tour guide, as Eike works part-time for the local tourism board, so we had official tours of Buxtehude and the stretch of Altes Land between there and Stade.

But the most special of all experiences was a quick tour of Boettcher homelands and a “cousins lunch,” where we had the chance to meet Eike’s sister and several next generation cousins from their branch of the family.

This was truly a lovely few days, and it was over too soon. We’re so grateful to Eike, Insa, and Tjerk for hosting us, and for all the laughter, music, delightful conversation, and delicious food we shared. Hopefully we can find a way to be together again soon!

Coming Up Next…

Kayla, Matthew, and Sophia head to Berlin!