The Last Campsite Left
Our entire life packed up and ready to roll east.
There wasn’t a plan anymore.
After Zach clocked out on his final day of work in Tennessee, we were suddenly asking questions we didn't have answers to.
Where will we go?
What will we do?
How will we make money?
We've found ourselves in this position before. In the past, we'd simply gone with the flow—not a care in the world.
But our entire world had changed.
Instability feels different when you're responsible for more than just yourself.
A one-year-old.
A camper payment.
A truck payment.
Suddenly, the freedom we'd always loved carried a little more weight.
Our biggest reason life on the road felt different this time.
Missed the previous post? Read One Year In, and Everything Is Changing first.
Staying in Tennessee was no longer an option.
My birthday happened to be just around the corner, so heading east toward family felt like the obvious choice while we figured out what came next.
There was just one problem.
Every campground along the way was full.
Of course they were full. It was peak spring camping season.
We'd never really had this problem before. In our van conversion and later in our skoolie, we'd spent years chasing free campsites, forest roads, and quiet places far away from campground reservations.
This was new territory.
Finding somewhere just to plug in suddenly felt like solving a puzzle.
Our long-term plan had always been to make this camper just as capable off-grid as everything we'd owned before. But Zach's layoff came months earlier than we expected, throwing a wrench into nearly every plan we'd made.
So we started searching.
We scoured campground maps, reservation websites, and Google searches, looking for anything that pointed us east.
One after another.
Full.
Full.
Full.
Finally…
One wasn’t.
One campground in South Carolina had one campsite left.
Four nights.
The very last campsite.
Roughly five hours away.
A little off course.
Without overthinking it, we booked it.
The plan was simple.
Leave Tennessee before sunrise.
Not because we knew exactly where we were headed.
But because staying wasn't an option anymore.
So we packed up our little life.
A toddler who had just celebrated his first birthday.
Two dogs.
Two trucks.
One camper.
And just enough hope to keep rolling east.
Packing with a toddler turned out to be far more challenging than we'd imagined.
This wasn't a quick weekend trip.
It felt different this time.
Usually we packed knowing exactly where we were going.
This time...
South Carolina was all we knew.
After that...
We’d figure it out.
It was the first time we'd packed the camper after living there for nearly a year, not knowing whether another campsite would be waiting for us after South Carolina.
Every cabinet had to be secured.
Every loose item found a place.
Every toy Banks loved had to be neatly tucked away.
And somehow, all of it took twice as long as we expected.
By then, Tennessee had quietly become home.
Somewhere along the way, this little campsite had started to feel like home.
We'd spent nearly a year there—one of the longest stretches we'd stayed anywhere in years.
We'd built routines.
Made friends.
Found favorite places.
Without realizing it, we'd started feeling settled.
The ordinary days were the ones that made Tennessee feel like home.
Life had slowed down enough that we'd started imagining what it might look like to stay.
Truthfully, we'd been told the job would likely keep us in Tennessee for another couple of years.
We were already talking about buying a piece of property.
About putting down some roots.
About making Harriman our home base.
Instead...
We climbed into our trucks.
Took one last look at the place we'd called home.
And started driving east.
Hoping that somewhere beyond the next five hours...
We'd find more than just a campsite.
And just like that, we were back on the road.
Continue reading → Four Nights in South Carolina
