I am so excited for this next leg of my adventure!

I plan to leave east Tennessee tomorrow, barring any unforseen circumstances (i.e., weather). I feel pretty confident driving Dolly – after all, she is a petite 22 feet long, super short compared to most RVs – but I don’t want to test my skills by driving on ice and other dangerous conditions if I can help it.

She sure does look pretty in the snow, though.

I had a really awesome Christmas holiday with my family in Tennessee. My sister and her boyfriend were here, and we had a white Christmas, which none of us had seen in a long time.

I got to sled in the snow (check out my Instagram reel), I cooked all of Christmas dinner (check out this awesome buttery braised purple cabbage recipe from the Washington Post. I tried it for the first time and it was a hit!), and I got some great presents.

Check out this kick-ass breakfast station for the RV! It’s got a hot plate on top, a toaster oven, and a tiny coffee pot … and it fits perfectly in my tiny RV kitchen.

I also got a cool map for my RV, where I can add a new sticker for every state I visit. I need to fill this baby up!

I also busted out a donut-making kit I had bought a long time ago … I had a lot of fun being in a warm house, baking lots of different kids of donuts instead of freezing outside. It’s been a great couple of weeks, just relaxing at my mom’s.

I really wanted to leave last week, before this winter weather came back, but I had to wait for a prescription to arrive in the mail. I am taking oral chemotherapy pills, so it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be; five years ago this week I was going to what I thought would be my last chemotherapy treatment ever. As I had done five times before, I took a super long commute from my apartment in Ocean Beach to Chula Vista (about 30 miles as the crow flies, but if I didn’t have a ride, it was two buses and a trolley – almost three hours – each way), then for nearly eight hours I was stuck with multiple needles and infused with multiple different medications, including 5-6 chemotherapy drugs.

So, as much of a pain it is to deal with this specialty pharmacy that makes a rare cancer drug, this is way nicer than I had it before.

Plus, I can still travel!

I plan to take it easy the first day or so, visiting some friends in Cookeville and Nashville. Then I want to go back to Louisiana, to my friend’s place near Alexandria, and the sweet RV campsite/state park that my friends and I stayed at last month.

I will most likely continue on to Houston (it’s silly not to when I can see my sister!) and then, I want to see some cool stuff I have never seen before. I heard great things about Palo Duro Canyon state park in West Texas.

Of course, with the pandemic going on, it’s not a good idea to have too many plans that you can’t change. The website for the Palo Duro campsites look like there is a lot of vacancy, but then when I checked RV parks in California, they have warnings that you can’t stay there unless you certify that you’re an essential worker, or that your presence there is otherwise essential … and while this adventure is certainly essential to me, I don’t think the state of California would allow a dying-of-cancer exception to the law.

So the plan is to see friends and family, see a new state park, then head back to California. And I will probably be there for a while. I have a doctor’s appointment on the 29th in San Diego, and a reservation to stay at a cool RV park in Julian (one of those deals where they give you free time at a resort so they can try to sell you more time) the next week, then I want to see my brother in Oxnard, friends in Sacramento and San Francisco, my great-aunt in Santa Cruz, and a few other spots and people.

I also want to see some more state and national parks, and if the weather is good (it can’t be worse than Tennessee), some camping among the redwoods and in the mountains sounds great.

If the weather permits, I want to come back to Tennessee again (in March or early April) by going north – probably through Oregon, Washington state, Idaho and Montana – and then in the late spring and summer, see the east coast. At this point I feel like I have done the drive between California and Tennessee a million times, so I want to try some new routes and see some new things.

I have a few more things to organize and pack today, but I am really excited to get back on the road!

Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Instagram, and if you are so inclined, please support my GoFundMe. All funds go directly to this trip – gas, repairs, and stuff for the RV. See you out there on the road!