A Summer to Remember in 2026
The time has come once again, to share our list of summer goals and recap this busy season. Only this time, things looked a bit different. For the past 3 years, we blogged about our summers of travel, scooting to multiple states, and last year, even journeying across the whole country from west to east! This year, we needed to take a hard look at what we wanted our season to be. We now had a new home-base in Myrtle Beach, SC. We wanted to orient ourselves in our new community. Our only travel plans were north to New England, the location of our other home-bases – our land in NH and my parents' house in MA. Our summer centered around our homes. This inspired goals for our time in Myrtle Beach, where we spent the majority of our summer. For the rest, we focused on our favorite pastimes in New England and made goals to stay connected to this region. Sprinkle in a few RV-related goals, and we came up with our annual list of 20, to complete between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends.
In case you don't know, Summer to Remember was coined by RV YouTubers Keep Your Daydream, who found that having a summer goals list helped keep their family's priorities straight while journeying around the US. Marc, Trish, and their 3 kids all added their goals to the list, so no one's most desired activities would get left behind. Years later, with the kids all grown up, Marc and Trish continue the tradition and inspire the community to do the same. We started our Summer to Remember list in 2021, the year we were gearing up for our full-time RV life. Then starting in 2022, we turned our recaps into yearly series right here on the blog.
Read all our Summer to Remember posts here:
Things have gotten pretty interesting over the years. Sometimes we planned our list having no clue where we'd be traveling those months. Sometimes we put in extra challenges to keep us on our toes. But this year brought an entirely different energy. Our year had been challenging enough. We were ready to slow down and enjoy an easier pace of life. Did we always get that ease? No. But with our goals in mind, we found the moments of peace and joy, even in the rough tides.
And so, we present to you, our 2026 Summer to Remember list:
Alright, let's first address the elephant in the room: the goal we didn't complete, which also happens to be a SECRET goal. What the fwick? Well, we've been working on a project for the RV community for several months now, which we hoped to complete this summer. It was a hefty goal, and we didn't progress on it as much as we had hoped. Can't imagine what got in our way! Was it this? Or this? Or how about this and this? Who's to say, really? Nevertheless, we're keeping it undisclosed for now, but it's still a work-in-progress that we're very excited to share when the time is right.
The remaining 19 goals are a summation of New England nostalgia and land time, Myrtle Beach orientation, and finally, our much needed slow-down.
To clarify our timeline for the summer, we started off already in our cottage on Memorial Day Weekend. We were still in the process of moving in and getting settled, but that weekend was the first time we all started sleeping there. We stayed there until the second week in June, at which point we all took the RV up to NC to get our inverter replaced. We had no summer goals for these few days, and given how it all turned out, we're really glad for this. Then we returned to the cottage for a little over a week, before we embarked on our New England trip. We got back to Myrtle Beach on July 28 and spent the rest of the summer at our cottage. In total, we spent 69 nights at the cottage and 39 nights in the RV.
The trifecta of Memorial Day check marks:
Celebrate a milestone; walk on the beach; do a craft project
Tanner's 13th adoptaversary fell on Memorial Day, and we had a day packed with celebrations. Tanner is getting older – he turned 14 and a half later that week – and so we're making sure to commemorate all our remaining moments with him. Not only that, but his fur-sister Lily passed away on her 13th adoptaversary, so it wasn't lost on us how special it was to see Tanner thriving during his.
Our plan was to take a morning beach walk, which has quickly become one of Tanner's favorite activities in Myrtle Beach. In the summer season, dogs are allowed on the beaches until 10am daily, which meant we could get our walks in before the temperatures got too hot.
We added a little project to our beach walk. I ordered a pet-friendly paw print kit so we could make a Tanner paw print out of sand. The kit included a stamp pad, paper, and picture frames. I stamped Tanner's paw print before we left and went to the beach with multiple copies in case we messed any up. I planned to put glue on the paw print and adhere the sand to it.
Mess up, we did! The sand wouldn't stick to the paw print enough to cover the dark ink. So I pivoted. Instead, we kept the paw print as-is and sprinkled some sand to make a border. We expected to frame just the paw print, but then I took pictures of Tanner with the paw print, and this was even better! I printed one of the photos and framed it. It's the first piece of art we put in the cottage.
Of course, many other walks on the beach happened throughout the summer, including one that yielded our choice for "ocean photo" for our "pretty mountain and ocean photos" goal. But more on that later.
Livestream with subs
It's funny to think that we started our summer as part-time RVers, and we hadn't even announced it yet! We shared this update with our subscribers in a livestream on June 2, followed by a public blog post the following week.
Nicole Anderson
Nicole Anderson
Get out on the water
We always think we'll get out on the water more than we actually do, and this year, even getting out once was a feat! We contended with extreme temperatures and lots of storms. Then, the one time we committed to a boat tour, it was supposed to be a jet boat tour for my birthday, but it got delayed, and eventually canceled. We switched to a dolphin cruise with the same company, and a week after my birthday, headed out on the Intracoastal Waterway. We saw one pod of dolphins, certainly not our best sighting of the year, but our boat ride was a goal checked off and a way to experience the sea life of Myrtle Beach.
Myrtle Beach has countless options for water-based activities, and we do have some on our list for the future. We're just patiently waiting for the weather to be less "hot soup" and more "crisp cucumber."
Do something authentically "southern"
When we added this to our goals list, we thought long and hard about what this could entail. Lots of southerners joke that they don't have traditions. They're just like everyone else! But in reality, all regions boast their own unique pastimes. We thought about taking a country line dancing class, or even indigo dyeing! Heck, we could set up a couple chairs on our front stoop and watch the neighbors go by (in our neighborhood, "porch sitting" is still alive and well, and it's a vibe). But soon we realized, we don't need to actively seek out a "southern" activity. We already started to embody the culture naturally! Our Yankee standoffishness gave way to polite smiles and "How're yas" – occasionally sometimes even graduating to a "y'all." While out around town, we'd strike up conversations with random strangers who would talk to us like we're old friends, and they'd even remember us the next time they saw us.
But the real clincher came at the beginning of our New England trip. You might recall that our drive to NC wasn't the smoothest, and we pulled into our campsite in a very smelly truck. The next day, we called around to see if anyone could give us an emergency interior detailing of our backseat, and that's when we met Darnell. We mentioned in our blog post that he and his partner showed us "southern hospitality," but there were details we didn't share. Among the hoopla of trying to fit the detailing in on short notice was the fact that we, of course, only had one vehicle. Darnell offered to drive Anthony back to the RV park after dropping off the truck, so Anthony could continue his work day. Then, when the detailing was done, Darnell came back to pick up Anthony. I watched out the window with a smirk on my face, thinking about the places we've traveled where "getting in cars with strangers" isn't just okay – it's normal! The South is definitely one of those places. Later I found out that Darnell and Anthony even made a pit stop at one of the local gas stations during one of their drives. To us Bostonians, this type of experience isn't common and definitely pushes us out of our comfort zones. Maybe our time living in the South will expand our comfort bubbles just a bit.
Right: Darnell helping Anthony assess the situation. Left: Darnell picking up Anthony to bring him to the shop at the end of the day.
That officially puts us in our "travel" part of the summer, where we left SC and ventured north to New England. After our stop in NC, we went to VA for our friend's wedding, and then continued to the Northeast, where we first stopped in NJ at our only Harvest Host of the summer.
Fun Harvest Host/Boondockers Welcome
We've added this goal to our list in previous years always thinking we'll have ample opportunities to stay at a Harvest Host. Most years, though, we just don't. This is mainly because our summer plans get so busy and the temperatures get hot, so we book ahead and make sure we have hookups (most Harvest Host locations don't have hookups, though some have partial). In 2022, we needed to be on electric hookups after our RV got struck by lightning, causing us to lose our full electric capabilities. This year, we felt like we came full circle. Our electric stopped functioning again, and due to the high heat and our quick change of travel plans, we struggled to even complete one Harvest Host stay.
But we still kept the one stay that we had already booked. I shared our reasons why in this blog post, where I also detailed our Harvest Host stay – a farm outside of Philly that specializes in pasture-raised chicken.
Considering I had an emotional breakdown that night and we almost called off our whole New England trip, I can't say the stay was necessarily fun, but this had nothing to do with the Harvest Host and everything to do with our situation at the time. Under normal circumstances, we would have enjoyed ourselves. The owners were wonderful, the food selection was great, the night was quiet (except for my sobbing), and we got to feed the animals. Also, now that we've cooked the chicken we purchased from there, we can attest to the fact that it's delicious.
Now that we'll likely be going back and forth between SC and New England more often, we're sure another stay at this Harvest Host is in our future, so hopefully someday, we can do it right.
We didn't check off anymore goals until we reached New England. There, we dove into nostalgia-filled activities, plus a few new experiences that set the pace for our eventual life in NH. We'll cover those goals and more in the next blog post, as we continue our Summer to Remember 2026 recap.
