Category: Our Journey

June 2016 after months of planning, selling, and packing we finally hit the road with our Ford 350 and a U-Haul trailer packed with almost everything we have left. Funny thing, I was nervous first time pulling a 15 foot trailer, oh the fun to come when we hook up a 44foot RV.

Michele sold our beloved Nissan Quest to a friend up near Clarksville Tennessee so that gave us our first heading. After dropping off the Quest the first fun stop on our adventure is the historic French Lick Resort in French Lick Indiana. Built in the late 1800’s initially as a mineral springs health spa with it’s trademarked Pluto Water. With its high levels of lithium I’m sure people felt better after drinking the water, at least until lithium became a controlled substance.

We had a great couple days at the French Lick resort, we had fun in the pool, took a train ride and went 4x4ing. Ryan and I enjoyed the old school 4x4ing more than the girls. What’s not to love about driving through woods and mud?

Finally on the road video:

https://animoto.com/play/M3aJE4bwGsLkUTpErYEDpw

 

Howdy Y’all

My name is Daniel and we are the Harkins family from Smyrna Georgia. We love to travel, which is one of the reasons my wife Michele became a travel agent over 9 years ago. Most every school holiday we were heading off somewhere local or afar. Last year we began home schooling our children Ryan and Grace which opened opportunities to travel during the off season when the places we wanted to visit were less crowded and often less expensive. This lead to more thinking, sometimes a dangerous thing 🙂 so we began pondering what was really holding us here is Smyrna.

Yes, we had a great home in a great neighborhood with great neighbors (King Valley), we served in a great church (Passion City Church), I had a great IT career for the past 25 years. But Michele and I have both lost brothers (Jim Harkins and Mark Bonner) before their time which reminded us you only have one life to live, so we decided to live ours as an adventure. So we sold almost everything we owned, bought a new Ford F350, a 44 foot 5th wheel toy hauler RV and hit the road.

Your Doing What Video:

https://animoto.com/play/q3ua7BBIlKYBDGByd43EFg

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Shipshewana Indiana we took a horse and buggy ride out to a dairy farm to see where we get our milk.

We also got to see this baby calf who was only a couple hours old, mama was still licking her baby clean.

The kids enjoyed seeing all the animals, especially a couple little kittens. Ryan also volunteered to feed the horses so he had a pretty busy day.

Don’t believe the following picture that one is totally staged, we can’t get him to do that much work in one day 🙂

We had a great time in Shipshewana, but watch carefully when driving around town and remember to always share the road.