A Summer to Remember in 2026: Part 2

Against all odds, we made it to New England for our only summer RV trip. Its purpose was productivity; we had to grab stuff out of storage and haul it back to our new cottage in SC. To offset that stress, however, we made several Summer to Remember goals that would remind us why we love New England. The trip up there wasn't easy, but as soon as we arrived, we had the familiar comforts of the places that feel like home.

This made for a strange summer, as though we had one foot in New England and the other in Myrtle Beach. Somehow, this big transitional year led to us building lives in multiple states at once. We did say we wanted more stability! We had our lovely coastal retreat waiting for us after our trip, and our land in NH, waiting for us to plant roots there. These transitions were the long arc, but our summer goals helped us remain present.

Pretty mountain and ocean photos

This goal became emblematic of our two homes. People often pose the debate of "mountain or ocean," as though we must choose one and can't have both. We get to express our love for each depending on where we are. It's funny, too, because NH has a coastline. Even at our MA home-base, we're just minutes from the ocean, but we hardly ever go! The waters of Myrtle Beach have always called to us more. We're not the types to spend an entire day sitting in the sand, but we enjoy taking walks along the shore. Since living in Myrtle Beach, we've found our go-to oceanfront spot with free parking, an elusive perk down by the water. It's a particularly sandy stretch of beach, and we can see the boardwalk in the distance.

I took a lot of ocean photos on our beach walks this summer, most of which included skies full of clouds, since nearly every day brought a storm. But for my official "pretty beach photo," I chose one that I took on June 3, one of the best weather days we had all season. Just look at those clear blue skies! I even opened up the windows at the cottage that day!

We quickly entered mountainous territory on our New England trip, reaching the Shenandoah section of the Blue Ridge Mountains at our 2nd campground of the trip. However, the official mountain photo had to be from our beloved White Mountains in NH. The walking path behind Riverbrook Campground offers beautiful views of the mountains peering over the Baker River.

It might seem like a surprising move, choosing a photo not from our land, when it also boasts a mountain view...

...but Riverbrook served us well this summer. We were so disappointed that our electric issues meant we couldn't stay on our land, but whenever we return to Riverbrook and I set foot on that path, I feel a comforting familiarity. I have so many pictures of the mountains from that very spot on the Baker River. That campground symbolizes the present. Our land symbolizes the future.

Make progress on the land

Because we didn't stay on our land, our time there was limited, but we did install new trail cameras. Our old ones never worked great, and last winter, we took them down to try and install updates on them after they stopped working entirely. Eventually, we gave up and ordered new ones. At first, we thought we were experiencing déjà vu; we charged them up and brought them to the land, but couldn't get them to work. We had to bring them back to the RV and contact customer service. Afraid these ones were defective and we'd run out of time to get replacements, we ordered another pair and shipped them to Riverbrook with just days to spare before we left. But before those ones got delivered, we successfully got pair #2 up and running, so we installed those and returned pair #3. Lots of hoopla for a couple of trail cameras, but we're glad we can now monitor our land, and the ample wildlife that comes through.

Had we stayed on the land, we would have loved to clear some overgrowth and maybe even do some trail maintenance, but those stopped being a priority until we can move forward with our build. The other goal we hoped to accomplish was closing on a border extension, to add 2 more acres to our current lot. At the time of writing this post, summer is almost over, and we've had some major hang-ups getting the paperwork completed. We're remaining patient and hopeful, but we also need to consider that, as far as progress on the land goes, the trail cameras might end up being the only step forward.

Have a campfire

Since we knew our time at campgrounds was limited this summer, we made sure to add a quintessential campground activity: have a campfire. Perhaps this would reorient us back in the RV life during our trip. The reasons ran deeper than this, though. All our campfire gear had been in storage in NH since the winter, and we were finally retrieving it! Sure, we could have gone and bought some fire starters, wood, and tools if we really wanted to, but we barely had an opportunity to make a fire, anyway. The weather was extremely hot, we were extremely busy, and when we really got down to it, "reorienting ourselves" back in the RV life meant troubleshooting, repairs, and stress. Our RV life.

But we still wanted to check off the goal as soon as we got our gear out of storage. We'll be the first to admit that it was in poor form. We weren't under any restrictions or anything, but we were smack dab in the middle of the days of haze and poor air quality ushered in from the Canadian wildfires – the ones that stopped us from getting severe weather.

We lit our campfire the day after we cleared out our storage unit, while we were at Epsom Valley Campground. That day, the skies were clearer, and it was actually a beautiful day overall. Even still, as soon as the logs caught, I felt like we were further burdening the environment. It didn't help that Anthony's log tipi shot flames feet into the air, creating a bonfire-sized blaze.

We tamed the beast, but I just couldn't enjoy myself. The fire was hot, the bugs had come out, and I just knew everyone at the campground had wildfires on their mind. Soon, we doused the flames and called it a night.

This was the night we realized that our history of campfires has been incredibly polarizing. We've had tons of experiences just like this one (wildfires aside), where we get out all the stuff, build the fire, and then realize we'd rather just go indoors. Sometimes we're uncomfortable, sometimes the mosquitoes start biting, sometimes the smoke starts to bother us...sometimes a pack of coyotes starts howling far too close for comfort. Okay, that only happened once, but still. Our "unfinished fires" list is long – so long, that Anthony said we "always do this." But I pointed out to him that we actually don't. We've had some campfires that are wonderful and memorable, where we sit in utter peacefulness, enjoying the fire's warmth. We sometimes even go all-out by making "double campfires," where we use both the campsite fire ring and our Solo Stove mesa. And who could forget us devirginizing our firepit at Angostura Lake? We've had some good times pretending to be normal campers.

But if we want to be real, there are other parts of the RV life that we enjoy much more than campfires. If we're going to sit outside, we'd rather do that on our patio than by the fire ring. But if we're going to be outside at all, we'd rather be hiking a campground trail than sitting. This is the beauty of RV life, though. We can "camp our own camp."

Scenic hike

What I just said is true – we love a nature trail right from our campground. It's our favorite amenity. This summer, though, the campground trails came in clutch because we didn't go for any other hikes.

How is that even possible, coming from the same couple who had 100-mile hiking challenges on not one, but two Summer to Remember lists in past years? We have a lot of reasons:

1. The weather was absolutely ghastly this year. Myrtle Beach has been experiencing the hottest temperatures in years, turning the whole area into a soupy swampland. On our New England trip, we had good hiking weather exactly 5 of the 36 days: the day we lit our unethical campfire, which was also the day Clyde was in for service; the day we ran over our Starlink dish on our way to go hike but after that couldn't leave; and the 3 days we spent AC-free, packing all our stuff up at our MA home-base.
2. Our 100-mile challenges taught us to not shy away from the trails just because the weather isn't ideal, but we had a lot of more pressing issues to contend with, especially once our truck and trailer both started having problems. And on our rare off-times, we chose socializing, relaxing, and tackling other goals on our summer list.
3. I was suffering from foot pain from when my new favorite summer sandals turned on me and became my least favorite summer sandals.
4. We lost our hiking legs months ago, and living in the flatland of Myrtle Beach means no elevation gain for us for a while. We would've loved to make some gains in the White Mountains, but between our other roadblocks and the fact that we really couldn't risk injury, we stuck to the Riverbrook Campground nature trail.

Even these nature walks were iffy qualifiers for a "scenic hike." Scenic, yes. Hike...sure. It's a multi-use path in the summer and snowmobile trail in the winter. But our goal usually implies that we pack some gear and set out on a trail...like we were going to do the day we crushed our Starlink. We never took a "designated" hike in this way.

On the plus side, our easier walks allowed our companion to join us.

When we left New England having completed no true hikes, we knew that packing gear and hitting a trail wasn't in the cards. However, we could designate a hike in a different way – by hitting a state park trail that just happens to be at our campground. The way we see it, if we lived across town and drove to the state park for a hike, we'd count it, so why wouldn't we count it now? After our long drive day, we parked at Lums Pond State Park and took Tanner on a hike along part of the Swamp Forest trail. We got the scenery with the pond and the beautiful green trees, and once more, we were accompanied by our little fluffball. We're pretty sure he counts all these walks as "true hikes."

Someday we'll get our hiker legs back, and we'll go make gains on the mountains in NH. We have a whole lifetime to do that. Right now, though, our priority was getting back to Myrtle Beach so we could experience the best of what it has to offer. What's that? Besides the beaches, of course, this city is one big invitation to fun. Every single day, you can find an overwhelming number of events happening, especially in the summer. We're talking dedicated events like live music, performances, art shows, fireworks displays, craft fairs, and farmer's markets. Beyond these, though, are the ongoing activities and attractions. We could live here for years and never get bored. Now that we lived in vacationland, we could find our balance of relaxation at home and entertainment around town.

Find a Facebook event and just go

Meta quickly picked up on my new location, and soon the algorithm included Myrtle Beach content among my usual cat, travel, and coffee videos. I'm apparently an old Millennial fart, because when I wrote this goal, I 100% expected to look at Facebook events – like the tab that shows event pages that people create, and you can say whether you're going, not going, or interested. Those still exist, but it's so much more effective to just doom scroll reels until something enticing comes up. Then I save the reel for later. That's what I did with this:

As luck (or the algorithm) would have it, when I saw the reel, the next Friday was in fact a "first Friday" – August 7. We had our event.

On the evening of the 7th, we braved the heat downtown to find some of the art. We had been doing a good job passing as locals until now, because once we parked, we walked around for several minutes with no clue where to go. I had tried to find more info on the Art Walk, but every time I went to the Downtown Alliance's website, it didn't connect. Baking on the side of Ocean Blvd, we pulled up the website once more, and it was back up and running! We found the Art Walk map and got our bearings.

That's when we realized, the "walk" part of the Art Walk was more business hopping around downtown. We thought that the tents would be closer to each other, set up more like an art fair. Instead, we seemed to have the causation backwards: We came for the art, and paying patronage to businesses would be secondary. Instead, people probably go to the businesses and the art is the effect.

Nevertheless, we chose a business on the map that seemed like a place we might want to spend money: Fresh Brewed Coffee House on Broadway. We headed over there, but went about a block out of our way so we could pass by one of the other ArtWalk locations, the Grand Strand Brewing Company. I had read comments online that said this was a good place to "start" the Art Walk, but since we weren't in the market for beer, we weren't sure if it was a good start for us. Soon, though, we spotted art tents, set up outside just as we had envisioned!

This all made sense because outside of the Brewing Company was a little park, with plenty of space for tents and even a soundstage for a live band. But what about the other locations? Every place we passed that had an "ArtWalk" sign had no tents outside. Were the artists indoors? And if so, that makes us feel pressured to go inside and shop when we really just want to see the art.

We decided, since we were close anyway, to continue to the coffee house, but we turned the corner and proceeded to walk into a completely desolate area. We found the coffee house and it was closed. We knew they don't typically have evening hours, but we thought maybe they stay open on the first Fridays for ArtWalk. Not so much.

It was far too hot out to continue meandering aimlessly, so we called our Facebook event a "for the check mark only" experience and decided to pursue another one of our summer goals instead.

Get really high

No, we were never planning on doing drugs for this goal, but heights do fill our brains with all kinds of neurotransmitters, some pleasant and some alerting us to the perceived threat that we're about to fall to our deaths. We had a lot of ideas for this goal, but we hoped to keep it well within the "pleasant" realm. And so, when the ArtWalk was a bust, we decided to play tourists downtown. We walked the boardwalk, got overpriced lemonade, watched the concert at Plyler Park, and – you guessed it – rode the SkyWheel.

At 187ft in the air, we checked off our goal.

Turns out we had some fun adventures over the summer and made some great memories, but our main goal this season was to slow down and regroup after our difficult year. We wanted to experience our new city of Myrtle Beach. We wanted to relive pastimes in New England. There's nothing better than finding comfort and joy in one of our favorite things: FOOD!

And so, we're devoting our next post entirely to our food-related goals, of which there were many...and even more than we planned. Grab your plates and we'll meet you there!