Week One: With Family in Philly

Comforting like a Philly Cheesesteak. Unfazed like the Liberty Bell.

West Chester and Philadelphia, PA
June 26 - 28, 2025

Family memory verse: “Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10

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Despite two weeks of what felt like continual things breaking, we left Virginia Beach on June 26, on time and as planned. We took a few family pictures before we left our site.

It appears we’re really doing this.

In the quiet mid-morning of a sunny summer Thursday, we logged our starting mileage and pulled away from the Navy base where Nick has served all but two of the last 10 years.

We drove through Virginia Beach, waving goodbye to favorite places along the way. Goodbye Broad Bay. Goodbye Long Creek. The Chesapeake Bay was especially calm, and we all drooled over the prospect of what a great fishing day it might have been.

The familiar drive through the long Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, then country roads in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware were relatively quiet. Once we reached Pennsylvania, we only had to be on I-95 for two miles. But, as expected, there was traffic.

Traffic on I-95: An unfamiliar site to no one.

Even with I-95, the drive was thankfully uneventful—a calm first drive day. All the ‘events,’ however, started as soon as we pulled up to Nick’s Aunt Nikki’s house in West Chester, PA. (Not a name coincidence. They are both namesakes of Nick’s beloved grandfather, Nicholas Baldino).

We knew it was going to be tight backing our trailer into Aunt Nikki’s driveway. We’d done it before with our shorter travel trailer a few years ago on our way to Acadia National Park in Maine. Based on driveway photos Aunt Nikki sent a few days earlier, we were confident the trailer would fit, but actually maneuvering it into the driveway was going to be tricky with trees, a mailbox, and a power pole guarding the entrance on both sides.

We got it parked in the driveway, just accidentally dug a big divot in a little slice of the neighbor’s grass and smashed some of their tree-lining flower bed (oops).

You can hardly even see the divot…

This highlights why it’s somewhat tricky to try to see friends and family while towing. It all comes down to having a place to park. Staying at an RV park is much easier logistically, but in this case the closest RV park was 25 minutes away, which would eat into our already too-short visit time of one day and two nights in West Chester.

We got the rig parked and plugged in to a household outlet so the fridge/freezer would stay cold. Next up on our first day of the long-awaited trip, did Nick grab a cold drink? Go inside and get settled?

Nope. He jumped at the chance to change the truck’s fuel/water separator filter. This regular maintenance needed to happen with a mostly empty fuel tank to prevent fuel from siphoning out. Generally, RV parks don’t allow you to do vehicle maintenance at the sites because of the risk of spills. So this was something we really needed to do here at a residence, and after the drive, our tank was empty enough.

So Nick took the next 20 minutes to lie on the road under the truck on a flat piece of cardboard with a ratchet and replace the fuel filter. Then we packed up and headed to his cousin David’s house for dinner, where the real fun of the first stop began.

David, Nick and (in the frame on the wall) their grandfather, PopPop

We had a wonderful time visiting with two of Nick’s cousins, Kevin and David, and Nick’s aunts, Nikki and Mary Jo. We were thankful storms held off until the evening.

Nick’s cousin, Kevin, and Nate

They made the evening a birthday celebration for all the summer birthdays.

And wouldn’t you know, on the first night of our yearlong journey, a rainbow appeared in the sky above David’s backyard. For any of us with first-day trip jitters, the reminder of God’s faithfulness was a welcome sight.

Double rainbow :)

Always sunny in Philadelphia

The next day (which, ahem, was rainy and cloudy), we took the train from West Chester to Philadelphia—Nate’s first train ride in a big city. We saw the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. The kids earned their first Junior Ranger badge of the trip.

If you haven’t been to Philadelphia in a while, you may be surprised to hear that the Liberty Bell is no longer out in the open anymore. After some lunatic tried to strike it with a hammer a few years back, they have enclosed it. Now you go through airport-style security followed by a long room of Smithsonian-like exhibits explaining the bell’s history and significance in our country’s early history and beyond. A little rusty on colonial history, I was not upset for the reminder.

The Liberty Bell on display in front of Independence Hall

After having so many things break during the two weeks before, I felt a little camaraderie with the bell. Its brokenness only seemed to increase its significance. Despite its imperfections, it was paraded through city streets all over the country.

At Independence Hall, a park ranger gave a spirited talk about what happened in the House of Representatives, the same room we were seated in during the tour. He told of the first election for our country’s new government, then eight years in, an historic peaceful transfer of executive power from George Washington to John Adams. He spoke of how remarkable it was that, unlike the monarchies of the past, no leader had to die for power to transfer. He reminded us what a landmark departure from previous government traditions that was, setting the United States apart from its inception.

On the drive to Philadelphia the day before, our family had listened to an audiobook from the wonderful Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne. We appreciate these books for both the storytelling and their ability to illustrate and simplify important moments in U.S. history. In this story, To the Future, Ben Franklin!, main characters Annie and Jack travel back in time to meet Ben Franklin in Old Philadelphia in 1787. At that moment, Dr. Franklin was refusing to sign the U.S. Constitution because he, like delegates from other states, didn’t agree with everything in it.

Annie and Jack took Ben Franklin for a spin in the Magic Treehouse to present day (2019), so Dr. Franklin could see how the signing of the Constitution impacts our country nearly 250 years later. (It’s an amusing moment when Ben Franklin gets to experience the internet).

With the future of the nation in mind, Ben Franklin returned to 1787 and convinced his colleagues to sign the Constitution, with the idea that they could make changes and add to it in the years to come (Bill of Rights, amendments, etc.). The Constitution was a desperately needed starting point for the federal government to have central taxation authority to provide for things everyone needed, like infrastructure and a military to protect from foreign invasion.

Over the years, our family has read and listened to dozens of Magic Treehouse books as a family, but this is the first time I found myself a bit choked up. Perhaps with everything going on in Washington, and for us at the end of our military journey, thinking of travels ahead through the lower 48, our unity as a country has not in my lifetime felt more pressing.

I appreciated the chance to think back to this pivotal moment in our nation’s history when politicians put their differences aside and voted with hope for the nation’s best possible future.

We rounded off our visit to downtown Philly with a rather overstimulating visit to jam-packed Reading Market, an international food court on steroids. Sadie insisted on a Philly cheese steak while Nate opted for pretzel dogs—two signature Philadelphia food groups.

That Friday night, Nick and I sheepishly turned down an offer to walk through the cute downtown streets of Kevin’s new town and grab dinner out. After so much craziness leading up to our departure, we were craving a quiet evening at home—even if it wasn’t our home. So we pulled out the plentiful leftovers from first night’s BBQ feast and enjoyed another wonderful dinner catching up with family tableside.

The next morning we enjoyed breakfast together, gathered our things, and hitched up the trailer. As our drive north and west was about to begin, we gave big hugs not knowing when or where we’d see these family members next.

The warm welcome, the home-cooked meals, the easy conversation, and the timely reminder of our country’s pivotal moment of unity all came together to make for an incredibly comforting first stop of the trip.

Thank you for everything, Aunt Nikki, Mary Jo, David & Kevin!

Nikki’s neighbors were glad to see us go

Until next time! :)

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For those just finding us, hello! Inspired by the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25, our family is embarking on a yearlong RV road trip in 2025 to celebrate my husband’s retirement from 20 years in Naval Special Warfare. We hope to reset and reflect before civilian life begins.

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