Advance and Hickory, NC. A little explorin’ a little adultin’

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Hello Embryadventureco family! We are back in the saddle with this blog business and I’m ready to give you some updates on our recent travels. This past week (and a bit of the one before that) brought us to Advance, North Carolina. Advance is a cute small town about an hour outside of Greensboro, NC.

Friends in Hickory, North Carolina

After the move we just rested for a bit and then it snowed so we stayed put because we had to, but after it warmed up some we got to meet up with some old friends for pizza! Let me tell ya, it was seriously the best. If you get the chance to reconnect with old friends, do it! We explored downtown Hickory, NC with them, which mostly just included smelling candles in the boutiques and discussed tattoos in the local tattoo parlor but it was perfect. Emily and Nick, if you’re reading this, this is your shout out and we love you mucho.

Loneliness and Full time travel

Every once in awhile people ask us if it gets lonely traveling. And to be quite honest, yeah, it does sometimes! Of course I always have Luke with me, and he’s my bestie, but I do miss my gal pals back home, old co-workers and the patients I worked with every day. It’s just different and it can be tough to meet up with people on the road because our location changes at least every two weeks. We’re friends with a couple other full timers so add them moving place to place into the mix and it’s a madhouse trying to actually see each other!

Thousand Trails Update

I thought I’d give you an update on our Thousand Trails membership since it’s been awhile since I discussed some of the technicalities of how we “do” this lifestyle. Thousand Trails is a camping membership with a lot of different membership tiers you can buy. We have a pretty basic membership with about 3 zones (zones include different regions with campgrounds you can utilize). We are able to stay in Thousand Trails campgrounds for 14 days at a time, totally free, then we have to be out of their system for 7 days. After that we can do it all again (pending that there’s a Thousand Trails campground somewhere remotely along our route). If we stay 4 days or less can hope on down to the next Thousand Trails directly, but that’s a bit fast for our travel style.

Some people love Thousand Trails and some hate it. Truly, we love it, it saves our budget SO MUCH. All the campgrounds we’ve stayed at have had full hook-ups (water/sewer/electric), and usually a clubhouse with books and games. I love full hook ups. That means I can take a ridiculously long hot shower if I want to or take my sweet time doing the dishes. I will say at some of their campgrounds the spots can be pretty tight (looking at you Las Vegas Thousand Trails) and close to other campers, however, it doesn’t bother us. We like seeing people and being near a town or city in some cases.

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The exciting “adulting” part

So I’ll be honest with you and say I’ve been quite stressed these past couple weeks. I registered to take my LCSW exam (Licensed Clinical Social Worker). That means I’ve completed my 4000 hours of work (2 years post-master’s) and been supervised by another LCSW during that time. I finished up these requirements before we began our journey in October but then I had to register for the exam, get a new background check, and procrastinate a bit before I could sit for the test.

I studied pretty much everyday, had sweet social work friends send me materials they’d used to study, and read through my entire prep book twice. Luke was so sweet and would take walks with me to help me calm down a bit and expressed that he had no doubt I’d pass. Oh and he also drove me to my test 30 minutes away on the motorcycle in 33 degree weather at 7:00 am. He’s my hero.

Social work as a career

Now a reflection on social work. To be vulnerable for a bit, I had a hard time believing I was a good social worker for quite sometime. I felt like I got into graduate school out of luck or because they felt sorry for me (I know, I know I have no logical reason to think this) and I was way out of my league sitting in classes with people who had all this life and career experience.

Then, I went straight to work as a school-based mental health professional at 23. I cried a bit, I felt totally lost a lot, and felt like I didn’t have any business doing this work… Then God decided to smile down on me and he gave me the best friend and co-therapist, Megan. She believed in me, always assured me of myself and skills, and was there no matter what. I began to feel like a better therapist. I began to feel like a better person.

Of course after sometime and company changes we left those jobs. Megan moved into private practice and I moved into nephrology social work. We hated saying goodbye, I couldn’t imagine going to work each day without my best friend. But then, things worked themselves out again, Megan became my supervisor to help me become an LCSW (meaning I got to see her every week!) and I made another very best friend at my new job (hi Elizabeth! 🙂

I felt much more in my element in nephrology social work but I also found myself using that direct therapy muscle I’d built up in school-based work. So, all that to say, taking this exam just hit me in the feels with all these memories and experiences. It was like a culmination of all I’d worked for since I was 18. I also tell you this story to say if you find yourself doubting you abilities or what you can do with your life, keep pushing forward. I promise you, things truly do have a way of working out.

The Test

“So how’d the test go?” you ask. Well, I passed that big bad exam and now I am an adult woman social worker. I’m not practicing right now (you know, teaching young bright minds online and such) but I do plan to return to social work when we head back to Arkansas, and even if I’m not working as a social worker at the moment, I’m still pretty proud of me.

Childress Vineyards Tour

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Yesterday, we ventured into Lexington,NC (about 15 minutes from Advance) and toured the Childress Vineyards and winery. Though we’ve toured a brewery and distillery I can’t say we’d ever done a winery before so this was a treat.

The tour started with an explanation of how the winery came to be (built int 2004) and the many varieties of grapes and muscidines found in the vineyard. Of course, they’re a little twiggy looking right now because it’s the middle of winter you silly goose.

The tour guide told us about the bistro and wedding venue the Vineyard also hosts. We then moved onto the actual process of making wine. Which is a whole ordeal I don’t fully remember and I’m going to spare you from. I am going to show you some pictures of the barrels they age the wine in and other wine making contraptions. The big silver things are where they ferment the wine.

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Downtown Lexington, NC

After our tour we felt ready to do some antique looking and shopping, seeing as Lexington hosts several antique shops. We found a couple vintage treasures but decided to leave them be since we live in a 31′ home.

After finishing up with the antiques we popped into Davidson County historical museum for free inside the lovely courthouse. The museum had all your standard info but it also told us about the recently discovered underground tunnels of Lexington (they don’t officially know what they were used for so let you mind run wild.) The museum also hosted a small theater that you could watch local film from the early 1900’s.

After walking around downtown a bit more we decided it was getting chilly. So we headed back home on the motorcycle and made dinner.

Special Broadcast…RV cooking!

So there’s this new recipe I’d been wanting to try and I finally gave it a shot yesterday. This is Shakshuka, it’s a middle-eastern dish with onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, and cilantro (and of course some other spices). The fun part is when you put it in the baking pan. It should be in like a cast iron skillet, but I didn’t have one big enough so the baking dish had to do. Then you make little wells to plop your eggs in. You bake it about 15-20 minutes (eggs should be soft) and then top with feta. Serve with crusty bread on the side. It was really tasty. I wanted to bulk it up a bit more so I found a recipe that also included cannelloni beans.

That is all for now! If you missed out on our last post, go check it out!This next week will include seeing some more friends and going to a POST MALONE CONCERT. I am ridiculously excited. Stay tuned.