Texas Vineyard Trip

While I work on my post about last year in general, I thought I’d update on my current adventure.

Over the summer, while I was gallivanting around the country, from the time of graduation I had a rough plan of what to do with my year up through Christmas and New Years (very rough – it still took a looot of thinking logistics), but I was at a loss for what to do after that. I eventually thought (and prayed!) about it and decided that last year was a miserably cold winter and I had the option of going South for it – a thought that had never occurred to me, possibly because it had never been an option before – and while I’m sort of “window-shopping” the U.S. for places I may like to live someday as well as trying to get a taste of places I’m pretty sure I do NOT want to live, Texas popped into mind almost immediately. When I passed through it earlier in the summer, I was struck by how friendly it was and liked the combination of Southern hospitality and Western vibe.

Now, this has been a little bit of a step out of my comfort zone, because while I was driving solo and going from place to place all summer long, I was also staying with friends or family everywhere I went. I do have friends in Texas, but I didn’t know of anyone in the general area that I wanted to visit (Central). I also would have just enough money for a one-way trip, so I would have to figure out some place that I could stay for three or four months as well as work for that amount of time in order to not only pay my way, but also earn enough money to get wherever the next place is (I have about ten ideas, but no conclusions yet). The thought made me really nervous, but really excited too. Yes! A challenge, but for something completely spontaneous and fun.

I spent the first couple of weeks that I was home with my family driving into town to get internet access, since my Mom prefers remaining off the grid, and filling out dooozens of job applications, making profiles on Monster, Indeed, and other job-search engines that came up, and looking for places to rent. The difficulty was in finding something that was a bit longer than “short term”, but not permanent, either. Most of what I found was either something like two weeks or a year.

Finally, my co-worker at the lovely job I got at a winery (not advertising, but for your benefit: https://www.facebook.com/thewinecavehamilton…I put together the “Get Your New Years Bubbles” display) suggested I look into the “HelpX” programs. I had heard of them before, but had forgotten. Perfect! I could have a place to stay for an indefinite period of time, work off room and board – so at least that would be taken care of – and possibly get a part-time job on the side to take care of the travel money I would need. I looked around and managed to find a neat looking place in roughly the area of Texas I was looking at (I had originally wanted to go to Georgetown, North of Austin, and this was Mason, two hours West) and it just happened to be a vineyard! I was game to do any number of agricultural jobs, since I grew up in an agrarian community and had been doing various different horticultural and other outdoor jobs all summer, but since I had just gotten a job at a winery, I like wine, and I’ve been really curious to learn more about it, this seemed perfect.

The trip down was a fun time. I had flown back to Michigan where I left my car for Christmas, stayed with some of my dearest of dear friends for a few days and got organized, then left at 7:30am on Monday with intentions to sleep at the friend of a friend’s place in Nashville (an eight-hour drive), then do the rest of it on Tuesday. Since I wanted to go through the Kentucky Horse Park, as I grew up competing with horses and had always dreamed of the place, Google Maps put the slightly extended trip at about twenty-two hours long. That wasn’t taking into consideration, though, the fact that all the schools in Michigan and Ohio were closing down because of the snow-storm that was in the process of coming down, so the first 130 miles of my trip was at about 40 mph, so it added about another hour and a half to my total trip time. I also needed to change a fuse and de-ice my Cr-V after that, which added a little more time. When I got through Kentucky (*swoon*) I did the mental math again and realized that I really didn’t want to try to pack in a fourteen-hour drive, plus unpacking and getting oriented in the next day, so I decided to pass Nashville and just get as far as I could go safely that night, then be able to get to my destination a little closer to afternoon, rather than the wee hours.

The short version is I ended up driving through the night, with a couple of short naps (I actually slept for maybe an hour), but since I never drink coffee and had been having a problem with insomnia, I didn’t actually get really sleepy until 4am, when I napped, then it was early morning and I was able to mentally wake up again enough to get there. Between gas stops, the snow, the fuse, walking around the Kentucky Horse Park just a little bit, and napping just a little bit, I arrived at my destination at 1:00pm – twenty-nine and a half hours (1,415 miles) after setting out on a roughly twenty-three and a half hour trip. In addition to being thankful for safety through sleep deprivation, I was especially grateful for safety driving through the cities and at night, because my tail-lights weren’t working, hence the earlier pause for a fuse-replacement (that didn’t work). Dallas was interesting, but I realized that by leaving a good deal of space between me and the car in front, often the person behind me would give me more space too – I ended up having a “bubble” around me almost every time I went somewhere with heavy traffic.

I was a little out of it when I arrived and began to get oriented (and it was much colder than I was expecting), but the couple running the place were super friendly and after spending the afternoon getting the trailer all set-up and orienting me, they gave me the next day off to sleep, get groceries, and spend some time in town. Today was a bit warmer and we did some simple things and I had an awesome conversation with one of the guys involved on the business end of things about life, faith, and humanity in general. This weekend is supposed to be 60 degrees and sunny and I’m excited to start! Check their site out at http://www.robertclayvineyards.com/

Just a quick addition, though. To give you an idea of my trip down, here are my facebook posts for the duration of the thing. I just got a smart-phone (yes, yes, I’ve been behind the times and very intentionally so), so I’ve been making the most of it.