An American Grey Nomad

Celebrating one year writing at Substack.

In the late 1990’s and into the years beyond 2000, I wrote a popular homeschooling blog that had thousands of readers.

Our blog was called Traveling With The Kid. No longer online.

“The Kid” was my kiddo.

I began writing it in 1999 and the last post was in 2009, just before “The Kid” went to college.

The blog was about all of the travels we enjoyed while homeschooling and how we tied traveling and “schooling” together. But it was also about helping other homeschoolers with traveling, with regulations, with curriculum and book choices.

I wrote this blog for 10 years, not once did I ask to be paid.

It never occurred to me.

Many people told me how valuable my writing was then and that was good enough.

I started writing at Substack June 27, 2022.

One or two newsletters a week reached your mailbox on Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays over the last year.

Here are some of my favorites:

Content Warnings & Censorship

We Went For Mothman and Found the Silver Bridge

The Forever Gift: Teach Reading Early

What Are Gender Roles These Days?

Drag Queen Story Hour is Child Abuse

Taco Tuesday: Navajo Tacos For Two

To myself, I said I’d try writing again for a year and then decide what I was going to do in this chapter of my life.

I’ve built a pretty decent size subscriber list and I am thrilled and grateful you are out there!

Thank you!

I am also grateful the other writers have found my writing worthy of recommending.

Thank you for your support.

So, I’ve met goals I set out for myself and now I’m at the point where I decide if I continue writing in this forum with this topic of common sense lost in our current culture.

Some days the research and the writing can be depressing. I wonder is American culture really this lost?

Other days are fun.

I find the fun days are the days I am not writing about current popular culture, you see, my give a damn is busted.

The room that said “you belong here”. Photo Credit: Collette Greystone.

I sold my house last year around this time.

I loved that house. It was a historic house built in 1880.

The minute I walked into it I knew it was the one.

The living room had a fireplace and a wall of bookshelves.

It was where I homeschooled my Millennial from his “tweens” to his teens through to college.

It was where I hugged my teen on the day he was going off to college and I told him that these were going to be among the best years of his life and to enjoy them.

It was the place where my wonderful second husband picked me up for our first (post 40, imagine that) date.

And the place where we shared many meals, and cocktails.

Many, many, really good memories.

Instead of selling my house when I moved off grid to my farm (I wasn’t so sure I’d like off grid life), I set it up as a rental.

I was fortunate enough to have a tenant who was a pediatric resident that wanted to lease the house for two years (to complete her residency) just prior to the start of the pandemic.

She stayed for the full two years plus several months.

She paid rent the entire time during the pandemic. I got lucky with that one.

And after she left, I sold.

I decided I was going to do something fun with the proceeds.

Now is the time. I’m not getting any younger.

At first I thought it would be real estate somewhere warm near or on water. Florida is where I recently spent two weeks looking.

Florida is very crowded.

I like my quiet country lane where we don’t see anyone for days if that’s what we want.

While in Florida, I also looked at boats. I’ve always wanted to return to ocean exploration. We actually stayed in a harbor Airbnb to see what harbor life is like these days.

It’s not like it used to be.

But I like the idea of being able to change my location on a whim.

So I bought an RV.

We used to camp all of the time kiddo and I.

We bought touring kayaks back before kayaking was what the cool-kids do.

With the kayaks we did tent camping. Kayak camping. Primitive camping.

I like camping.

Did the glamour traveling in my 30’s and 40’s though there are still some European and Pacific rim destinations for me…

Yellow Buttercup Vintage Camper. Watercolor by Simone Ritter.

I swore I’d never have an RV.

A stink boat on wheels.

Sailors used to call motor boats “stink boats” in case you didn’t know that.

Do you know what a Grey Nomad is?

Grey nomads are Australians over 55 years old who travel for extended periods and cover more than 300 kilometers in a day across semi-arid and coastal Australia. The term was popularized following the 1997 Australian documentary Grey Nomads.

So, I’m off to Caravan, as my Australian friends might say. (Did you know there was a TV series about this? I didn’t.)

But I’ll be an “American Grey Nomad”.

It’s my next chapter.

I was a daughter, then I was a student who bartended, then I was a graduate with a degree I used for a while, then I was a stay at home mom who homeschooled, then I was an empty nester and farmer, and now, I think I’m going to be a Grey Nomad.

On a boat you do the Great Loop, which we considered.

The Great Loop route is a circumnavigation of the eastern U.S. and part of Canada via mostly protected inland waterways.

The Great Loop route follows the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the Chesapeake Bay, and the New York Canals northwards, goes across the Great Lakes, south on the Inland Rivers, and then east Gulf Coast to complete the Loop.

But we think we’re going to be more random, south (warm) in the winter, north (cool) in the summer.

I’ve been lots of places in the U.S., but there are places I still want to go.

I guarantee you they will be small towns, and vast scenery, and of course, beaches and ocean views.

So far I’ve learned about boondocking which is most likely what we’ll do, and Hipcamping and Harvest Hosts, which I plan to explore further.

Campgrounds can get crowded.

So it will be an adventure.

The farm will be home base because the cats will need their complete freedom periodically.

Yes we’re taking the cool kids, 5 cats, along with us.

Am I insane?

So maybe there’s a future Substack newsletter there.

It could be hilarious.

But for now, I’m taking a break from writing.

The creative me needs a rest and some new scenery.

I’ll still be around to read and comment.

Thank you for being out there.