The Jet Set Betties

Hello from Mathews County, Virginia! We’ve been here 13 days and already experienced temps ranging from 35-78, sunny days, snow showers, wind gusts near 30 mph, and a big boomy thunderstorm. Dynamic! This is where Matthew’s parents live (from April through November), and we’re settling in here for a few months, to spend some good time with them and also to build our teardrop camper.

Mathews County is about 8,500 people living on 86 square miles of land surrounded by the rivers and inlets of the Chesapeake Bay. We’re on Cobbs Creek, which empties into the Piankatank River, which then dumps into the Chesapeake Bay. I realize this map (and the ones that follow) aren’t necessarily the easiest to see here, but maybe it’ll give you some idea of where we are. Richmond is directly west of us, Norfolk is straight south.

Catching Up

It’s been a while since we’ve given a good update, hasn’t it? Believe it or not, our intention here is to frequently post short updates … but since it’s been a couple of months, this one is a bigger read. With photos, of course! However, if you don’t have time for the full stories, here are the headlines:

Jan-Feb: finishing (mostly) projects we started at Iris’ lake house, watching deer roam about, adventures in winter grilling, and building plenty of cozy fires during Michigan winter nights.

Also: Planning the teardrop camper we’ve decided to build from scratch, and applying for jobs — the remote/flexible kind that can keep this dream on the road. (Spoiler: no luck so far. Got any ideas for me?)

Feb 16-18: road trip (on all secondary roads!) across the state to see our dear friend, Ed, while he was visiting his home town of Wyandotte. Stories include a completely delightful lunch in an authentic Polish restaurant, and driving past a house with an unbelievable number of Santa and snowmen lawn ornaments.

Feb 27-March 2: cramming all our stuff into a trailer, tearful goodbyes after such a nice long stint with my sister, and a fun 3-day road trip to Virginia, with two sweet stopovers.

March 3-12: Groundskeeping, area explorations, starting to requisition camper materials, and Kayla’s new job as a bartender!

Read on to find out more —

January & February on Lake Michigan

The slideshow below tells most of the story: these months were mostly spent working on some home-improvement projects for Iris and preparing for the next chapter in our adventure. One big missing link in the whole “live our dream” scenario is income to keep us rolling, and the plan has been that I could get a part-time, flexible, do-it-from-anywhere kind of job, plus maybe Matthew (and I?) could pick up short-term gigs here and there as needed. Well, for the last 6 months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time searching for jobs, tweaking my resume, and writing cover letters, primarily for jobs for which I really felt well-suited (e.g., managing all the logistics for a summer music festival!!! or maintaining a non-profit’s donor database), but still no luck. Disappointing, frustrating, and a bit demoralizing. My current plan is to take a few online classes to build on what I already know about bookkeeping and see if I can get some work that way.

The other big piece of making this semi-nomadic life dream come true is, of course, the camper. After LOTS of research and conversation, we’ve decided that a teardrop camper with an additional sturdy 10×10 canvas tent would suit us well. Furthermore, after looking at lots and lots of used teardrops for sale (at crazy-high prices!), we’ve decided to build our own. I’m sure Matthew will share more details about our design with you soon, and we’ll definitely blog about the building process once that begins!

Road Trip Across Michigan

Ed Ronco has been one of our very dearest friends since 2009 when he moved to Sitka. Ed grew up in Wyandotte, MI, downriver from Detroit. Ed unexpectedly spent 2 weeks in Wyandotte this February, and although it was a terrible circumstance that brought him there (the sudden death of his wonderful father), it gave us the opportunity to drive across the state to see him and his lovely mother, Anne.

Onward to Virginia

On Feb 28, we shoved the last of our stuff into the trailer my dad loaned to us, exchanged big tearful hugs with Iris, and headed off for our next chapter. We made the trip from Glenn, MI to Cobbs Creek, VA in 3 days, with a few perfect stopovers en route: 1) North Manchester, IN – home of the lovely Tina Rieman, who I met in North Manchester on New Year’s Eve 1996 when I was at the home of my college boyfriend who happened to be the brother of Tina’s then-boyfriend. The boyfriends didn’t last, but our friendship sure has! 2) Sweetwater Music in Fort Wayne IN – complete with a mind-blowing tour of their facility and lunch with Matthew’s long-time sales consultant, Chris Ishak. 3) Columbus OH – to visit my awesome niece Emma.

Settling in to Virginia life

Matthew’s parents are still in Florida until the end of March, so we have the place to ourselves. PAR-TAY!! Jim & Tammy, we promise to clean up and move all the furniture back before you get home. ☺️ Just kidding. Mostly. We’ve been doing some good yard work – raking/mulching all the fall leaves – and otherwise just trying to find our way around the winding roads of this area, including a fun day trip around colonial Yorktown-Williamsburg-Jamestown.

Oh, yeah – and I got a job as a bartender! I’ll be working at the Deltaville Tap and Raw Bar, just 14 miles away, across the Piankatank River. I had 4 hours of training last Saturday and then they let me work an 8-hour shift by myself on Sunday. It was a nice steady pace, I met several regulars, and made some pretty good tips! We’re still working out the scheduling, but I think it’ll be a pretty regular weekend gig for me starting in April.

dol·drums| ˈdōldrəmz, ˈdäldrəmz | plural noun (the doldrums) 

a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression: the mortgage market has been in the doldrums for three years.

In the early-19th century, the word once reserved for a feeling of despondency came to be applied to certain tropical regions of the ocean marked by the absence of strong winds.

Let’s talk about the doldrums. Like, the fact that I’ve been meaning to write about the February Doldrums in Michigan since mid Feb, and here we are in Virginia in March (spoilers!).

Winter settled in, and the Jet Set Betties didn’t have a lot of wind in the sails. Sure, we went to work, did chores, puttered about on projects, but we felt somewhat adrift. Certainly we didn’t have much to share here on the Blog.

Good news, though! On February 28 we hitched up the wagon and headed east! We are now raking leaves and watching spring start springing in Mathews Co., Virgina at Matthew’s parent’s house. The folks are snowbirding in Florida until the end of March, so we’ve got the place to ourselves. And the only ice we see is in our sweet tea glasses!

Stay tuned for more frequent updates! The doldrums are gone, and we are now beginning to plan for the building of our teardrop camper. It will be a scratch built custom rig, and our hope is it will carry us to new adventures. More coming soon!

Check out January’s Monthly Grind* for 15 minutes of the Jet Set Betties in action! The Grind also features Boomer the singing dog, and our dear friends Jeff, Grace, Charlie, & Steve with some local literature (including an original from Charlie!).

*The Sitka Monthly Grind is a local talent show that’s been showcasing Sitka talent for over 25 years. Pre-pandemic, it brought people together in the beautiful Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi community house (photo below is from a set we did in 2017). Although the in-person events are certainly preferable, we’re glad for the virtual versions so we could still participate from 2,000 miles away!

I need to provide visual evidence that I do, in fact, have a kitchen job. I’m working at Guardian Brewery in Saugatuck. Right now the kitchen is just kind of shoved into a corner of the Brewing area. That other guy is Stephen.

Happy New Year and Merry 13th Day of Christmas! I hope you are well and found ways to reflect and reenergize over the past few weeks. Did you have to endure any of those horrible travel nightmares? We were so glad to not be flying this season! We pretty much stayed put, assembling some amazing meals, watching our favorite holiday movies, playing music, having video chats with family, and enjoying time here with my sister and her dear friends.

However, the Jet Set Betties can’t sit still for too long! Last week we hopped on a train to Chicago for a couple of days of fun friend times! Good food, fancy cocktails, incredible live jazz, and really wonderful conversation — all so good for the soul.

Meanwhile, back in Sitka, our sweet little houses are having a bit of a rough time with this unusually cold and snowy winter. We’ve had one busted pipe already, and now one tenant reports he hasn’t had hot water for a couple of days … it’s likely frozen, so we’re trying to work with him from afar on how to deal with exposed pipes and cold weather. But the real drama started a few weeks ago when a fuel truck drove off the side of the road and burst through the decking! It took about 24 hours for them to get the truck out without causing further damage (solution included bringing *another* truck onto our small street to drain the first one of its fuel to make it lighter!). The fuel company fixed the deck and support beams pretty quickly, but ever since then, one of our houses has had been getting significant sediment in the water. After some investigation, it seems there might be a corroded pipe under the road. It’s possible that the fuel truck incident shook things up enough to cause the sediment. But the bigger complexity is that it’s likely no one actually “owns” that pipe. The road is private and the city’s responsibility ends before our houses. But the owner of the road has their own water line separate from this one, so it’s unlikely that they would accept responsibility. So … in the last few days, this has escalated to be a rather worrisome problem.

At the same time, we continue to work toward our travel dreams, and – as much as we’re enjoying Michigan – we’re still itchy to explore other places. I was hoping to have some definitive news about our next move to share in this post, but – alas – that scheme hasn’t worked out as we’d hoped. A few weeks ago, Matthew applied for a super cool job with a company called Under Canvas to be part of their set-up and take-down crew. Basically, Under Canvas is a high-end “glamping” outfit with properties adjacent to 10 National Parks across the country. They set up really nice seasonal camps and then people pay $500/night to stay in a remote spot with plumbing, the finest linens, and gourmet food. Matthew applied (and had a promising interview!) to be part of the crew that swoops through all these locations during the shoulder seasons to set up and take down the camps. We were pretty excited about this, because they pay mileage and per diem (in addition to an hourly wage) to be in all these places, which seemed like a perfect way for us to travel and earn money! Unfortunately, it turns out they’re not adding as many staff as they thought they would right now, so we’re moving on to a new plan. (Although the crew leader did indicate to Matthew that things often change once they’re up and running, so maybe there’s still a possibility for later??)

We’re still aiming to get on the move again in about a month or so. For now, Matthew is working quite a few shifts in the kitchen at Guardian Brewing, and I’m submitting applications here and there for remote-work positions. The number of job postings is kind of overwhelming! But the scope narrows quite a bit when I filter for part-time remote opportunities that fit my skills and interests. I have found a few really interesting positions, so … we’ll see. Fingers crossed!

Camper/trailer research and strategizing also continues to occupy quite a bit of time and brain space. Our thinking has really evolved over the last few months, and we’ve downscaled our dream trailer to the point where we’re now looking for a sweet teardrop camper with a sizeable, good-quality additional tent for extra space. And boy-howdy, in addition to the world having an overwhelming number of job-posting sites online, there sure are a lot of YouTube videos to watch about campers/trailers and the pros/cons of all types!

Ok, that seems to be enough for now. Cheers to you, and may 2022 be full of love, laughter, and good health.

Happy post-Thanksgiving, everyone! We’re sending you the warmest of hugs and lots of love – we’re so grateful to have such wonderful family and friends in our lives. We had a lovely and delicious Thanksgiving with my sister and a couple of her friends, and now we’re working our way through the leftovers!

This seems like the perfect time to also reflect on some soulful friend times we had earlier this month, but first – let me catch you up on some current news.

It’s been two weeks already since we returned to Glenn, Michigan, which is about halfway between South Haven and Saugatuck on the West coast of Michigan. (By the way – Michigan has so much freshwater coastline that they refer to it as the “Third Coast” around here!) Top of our list of thankfulness is my sister, Iris, who is sharing her wonderful lake house with us this fall/winter and supporting this exciting adventure we’re embarking upon!

This sweet little house was recently starting to show a few cracks inside, and it was determined that one of the beams was sub-par. While we were away, a local builder started work on repairing it. We returned to find the living/dining room in this condition:

We spent a few days helping out the builder, who’s a local renaissance guy named Al Weener. In addition to his construction abilities, Al is a super-talented musician, who once upon a time was a really active performer in this area. His band was Al Weener and the Bunz!

ANYway … Al shored up that beam with some steel plates and we got the living room back together in a couple of days. Matthew and I get to finish the job by painting it, which we’ll dive into in a week or so.

Now we’re settling in here for the next couple of months, to enjoy a winter of lake-effect snow, and figure out the next chapter. We currently have two major topics of discussion: what kind of camper trailer do we want (and can afford), and how do we make some money? I think we’ll save the camper discussion for a future post – it’s still sort of an unwieldy topic.

As for income – well … Matthew got a job in the kitchen at Guardian Brewing Company in Saugatuck! We’ve stopped into this place a couple of times and really like everything they’re trying to do. They make great beer (including fantastic IPAs and a couple made from Oreo cookies)! Part of their property (which they own) includes an historic barn, which was also home to a theater for decades. They’re very arts-oriented and plan to get that stage back up and running for local performances soon. Plus the walls are lined with autographed guitars. Matthew is working his first shift as I write this!

I’m kind of sniffing around for remote-work jobs … something that I might be able to keep doing even when we pull up stakes this spring and get on the move again. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please let me know. 🙂

In the meantime, we’ve also been reflecting on the awesome road trip we took in October, and the weeks we spent in the Midwest with family and dear friends. I already posted about my Dad’s big birthday weekend and the fantastic weekend we spent in Des Moines with some of my high school friends …. here are a few more times that really filled our hearts this fall:

Hi friends! We’ve come full circle and made it back to Michigan last weekend. The last few weeks have been FULL of so many good times with family and friends. We have lots of stories to share with you, but we’ll spread them out over a few posts. I’m going to start with a belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY post for my dad.

This amazing fella turned NINETY YEARS OLD on October 31, and my ENTIRE family traveled to Storm Lake Iowa to help him celebrate. We had a weekend filled with lots of Dad’s favorite things: oysters, prime rib, pickled herring, chocolate cake, music, card games, laughter, good conversation, and – most of all – cherished family time.

Two key events of the weekend: a parking lot drive-thru birthday party, where friends and neighbors could wish Dad a Happy Birthday from a Covid-cautious distance; and a special Reformation Sunday church service. (For any non-Lutherans reading this, October 31 is not only Halloween, but also Reformation Day — the day Martin Luther made his demands for change from the Catholic Church. It’s an important date on the Lutheran calendar!) For the Sunday service at my dad’s church, the Boettcher family became a 12-voice choir, plus we provided all the organ music and additional instrumental music. It was so fun for us to all sing and play music together!

Here’s a few more photos from our wonderful weekend together.

We had hours of this kind of stuff. I think this is somewhere in the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan.

Hello from Iowa! Wow, we’ve been busy since our last blog post – two weeks has flown by! After leaving our nice Airbnb south of Houghton, we spent another night in Michigan (camping in the Porcupine Mountains), then to Bayfield, Wisconsin for one night and a peek at the Apostle Islands (definitely a place I’d like to spend more time in the future!), then to Grand Rapids, Minnesota to catch up with a friend. After that, we hightailed it south on I35 to the Des Moines area for a few days, and now we’re in my home town of Storm Lake for a couple of weeks with my dad. I’ll catch you up on the Storm Lake stuff in a future post – but here’s a few snaps of our last week on the road.

Greetings from Pelkie, Michigan! This is night #7 of our first grand road trip, and we’ve been enjoying the heck out of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the “Yoopers” who live here. It’s such an interesting combination of industry (mostly former copper mining sites) and wilderness. There are amazing buildings everywhere – old industrial ruins, yes, but also grand cultural and religious buildings that were built during the mining hey-days of the 1800s. As for wilderness – well, we knew we were heading for a prime leaf-peeping zone, but apparently the UP is ranked second only to New Hampshire for its amazing fall colors! Plus the rugged shorelines, forests, and Great Lakes are all awesome wonders to behold.

People sure are crazy about rock hunting here (apparently there are Rockhounding Clubs and everything). Every night we’ve been near a lake shore, there have been head lamps and black lights roaming the shorelines until all hours, perhaps searching for the mysterious fluorescent “Yooperlite” (click the link if you want to know more). We haven’t caught the rock fever yet – we’re more into the dialect and phraseologies — just today we thanked a 20-something guy in a bike store for helping us find exactly what we needed and he said, “Well, bless my buttons, I’m happy to make your day.” Other highlights of the trip are included in the picture captions below.

I’d say our biggest challenge has been spotty cell & internet service (thanks, GCI!) … which wouldn’t be such a big deal if we’d actually done a little more research in advance. Haha, oh well – I guess people figured out how to travel before the internet, eh?

Also included in photos below: the arrival of our stuff from Sitka! Plus other adventures before we left West Michigan: we biked a nice portion of Rails to Trails, kayaked several miles of the Kalamazoo River, and tried out more breweries.

Next stops: our plan is to head to Wisconsin and check out the Apostle Islands, continuing on to Grand Rapids MN to catch up with a friend, then to Des Moines to see other friends, and onward to my hometown of Storm Lake for a couple of quality weeks with my dad. Then, in early Nov, a week or so in Minneapolis. Let us know if we might cross paths with you somewhere!