♫♪ On the Road Again… ♪♫

It seems like just yesterday I was telling you all about our 50-day road trip in our Winnebago Travato camper van (that we named Meriwether). But the calendar says we’ve been home now for three and a half months, so I guess it’s time to get on the road again! These were our routes going and coming last time. We’re headed west again, but will be taking quite a different route this time.

When we left on our last trip, we had only been in our new house in Missouri for seven weeks and I was so not ready to leave! Now, not only do we feel wonderfully settled here, but we’ve found a church home we love and have had plenty of chances to spend time with our Missouri kids and grandkids, so I’m feeling much happier about leaving this time (especially since we’ll get to see both of our sons along the way). In addition, this trip is going to be a week shorter, and we’ll come home via Kansas so we’ll get a little visit with Ken’s mom and my dad on the tail end of the trip, which will make it feel almost like we’re already home!

I’d never driven the Travato before this past weekend! Ken loves to drive and I am happy to let him, plus, I was on deadline during our last trip and needed to write every possible moment. But this time, I’ve just turned in a full-length novel and a novella, so I’m much more free. At Ken’s urging, I took Meriwether for a little spin last weekend…just around the parking lot, then a couple of miles to home. I was surprised how great “she” handled. I’m ready to drive!

We’ve started getting the camper ready for the trip, de-winterizing, cleaning, gathering what we want to take, and organizing everything just so. We learned a lot from our last trip about what works and what doesn’t. And I had a little fun this weekend “making” canisters for all the staples we take. We discovered the plastic containers our favorite cashews come in stack perfectly without wasting space the way round containers do. Same with the boxes from the instant chai latte Ken drinks. So I labeled all the containers and decorated them with the leftover wallpaper we put up in the Travato. With help from an old-fashioned label maker, I think they turned out pretty cute!

I’m excited to see what kind of adventures we’ll have this time around. Hopefully, we’ll see some beautiful views like the ones above from our last trip! I’ll be posting my next few blogs from the road, and if you’d like to follow our travels on Instagram, you can find us at Raney Day Trippin’.

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Deborah Raney

DEBORAH RANEY's first novel, A Vow to Cherish, inspired the World Wide Pictures film of the same title and launched Deb’s writing career. Forty books later, she's still creating stories that touch hearts and lives. Her novels have won RWA's RITA Award, the ACFW Carol Award, the National Readers Choice Award, and the HOLT Medallion. She is also a three-time Christy Award finalist. Deb is on faculty for several national writers’ conferences and served on the executive board of the 2,500-member American Christian Fiction Writers organization for 18 years before retiring in 2022. She is a recent transplant to Missouri, having moved with her husband, Ken Raney, from their native Kansas to be closer to kids and grandkids. They love road trips, e-biking, Friday garage sale dates, and breakfast on the screened porch overlooking their wooded backyard.

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