Tomorrow marks 10 years since we crossed the Seattle city limits for the first time. That also means this blog is 10 years and 10 days old.

Ryan and I started Lilly Road Trip as a blog to update our friends and family on our crazy cross-country adventure/move. With a 6 x 8 UHaul trailer packed to the brim, we went West. Each day we wrote about our venture, creating posts for the very first time.

It wasn’t until Chicago that I realized Seattle was a big city. I checked the total populations in our USA road Atlas (that we used to navigate the entire trip) of a few major cities – Boston, Chicago – and then compared them to Seattle, finally realizing we were actually moving to a major metropolis. Up until then, all we knew about Seattle was this — water, mountains and coffee. Somehow, that’s all we needed to know to move to the exact opposite side of the country.

It wasn’t until Iowa that we secured a couch to crash on while we looked for an apartment, but oddly, Ryan and I will always look on that 10-day adventure as some of the most peaceful times in our lives. We couldn’t drive fast because of the trailer; we stayed off I-90 as much as we could; and we stopped regularly so I could take photos. We ate cheaply and tented half the time. It wasn’t until day 9, that we thought about how daunting our move really was. 

I will never forget the feeling of coming down Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 for the finish, and realizing we could no longer go west. We had arrived at the end of westward travel. I-5 was abrupt, and we both shrugged our shoulders about whether we should now head north or south since we didn’t know where we were or where we were going.

2008 Road Trip Summation

1. Cheapest Coffee: Plainview, Nebraska 50 cents
2. Total Coffee: 29 cups
3. Cheapest Gas: $3.37 in Waterloo, Iowa
4. Most expensive Gas: $4.30 in Yellowstone National Park
5. Best deal of the trip: free camping in Plainview, Nebraska
6. Favorite state: Wyoming
7. Favorite town: Cody, Wyoming (with Bozeman, Montana; Custer, South Dakota; and Gelena, Illinois following)
8. Favorite place we ate: La Comida in Cody, Wyoming
9. Total spent on tolls: $49.80 (mostly due to the $18 dollar toll in NY!!!, Illinois was horrible too)
10. Total miles: 3700

We crashed on the couch, my friend providing shelter and hospitality. She connected us to our church and introduced us to our friend, Jeremiah, who felt like a brother to Ryan within weeks. In the Starbucks around the corner, we found a listing for an apartment in Maple Leaf. We called and talked to Dori, who would be our landlord the entire time we lived in Seattle, even relocating us to the apartment attached to her house. She was one of the first people to meet Bronson, earning the Grandlady title for life. 

We had no idea what we were in for when we moved. We were mostly taking a chance and trying to ensure that we wouldn’t always wonder if we should have left Maine when we could have. We knew that once we had kids, we’d be Mainebound – it’s just hard to imagine raising children any other way. When we made our second cross-country move with Bronson (at the height of gas prices again), things were different. The weight of being parents made the move far less carefree, and the lack of trailer, left us free to pounds as many miles a day as we could. We weren’t sure we made the right decision for years after our reunion with this great state, but now… now we both can’t imagine not being here, just as we can’t imagine never having left.

After we finished our trip posts on our blog, I began writing when it struck me. A few years later I started blogging primarily about motherhood and Bronson, and eventually Oli. 

Most people who have blogged that long have book contracts and email lists and site stats that astound. We started the blog and I carried it on at a time when people didn’t blog. It was easier to gain internet traction then. For a while, an odd post seemed to attract a great deal of attention in Israel. I still have no idea why. 

But for me, I’ve had a very hate-hate relationship with technology, often wishing I lived in a pre-internet, phone-plugged-into-the-wall day-in-age. Because that suits me, and being a writer seems like it was far more enjoyable when you could just write privately and not have to try to make yourself a public figure and post constantly even when the writing wasn’t perfect. I’ve wanted to quit many times, and instead have tried to muster the determination to grow my blog. But truth be told, it hasn’t worked for me. 

But when I read an old post, I’m grateful it’s there – thankful to have recorded memories and snippets and thoughts, extra thankful for the quirky things about the boys that I’m realizing are far easier to forget than I ever could have imagined. 

And maybe that was really the point — maybe this blog has always been a recording of a crazy adventure of way too many moves, too much coffee and a whole lot of pondering parenting and faith and life. Maybe this blog is really just a recording of me, for me. And maybe, just maybe, 10 years in that’s enough.

In many ways my life feels like I’ve gone as westward as I can, and now I need to choose a new direction. I’m about to have two kids in school full-time, and suddenly the old question of what I want to be when I grow up, lurks anew. 

I’m not sure how much I’ll blog. I’ve realized that at least one half of the boy brothers will probably be a bit too much like me to want his entire life shared for consumption, and I’ve realized that adding blog post to my to-do list really doesn’t excite me, rather exhausts me, and the after-post site stats sting in a way that isn’t helpful to my actual life.

I didn’t start this post as a way to end posting, but it just might be that. The Lilly Road Trip continues in real life, but after 10 years, I may be ready to shrug my shoulders and see what the next turn brings.