This summer, we took a great vacation. For those of you regular readers of this little blog, you’ll remember our vacation of last summer: A Vacation the Hard Ways, where we rolled dice while on a road trip to see where we ended up.

This year, we determined that the east coast was where we wanted to be, but since we can’t have just a normal, nice vacation, we needed a theme. This year’s theme was the Vacation of Awkward Experiences. (My brilliant husband came up with that). Again, it was in the car, (the new mini!) and it was road-trip based.

The goal of this vacation would be to challenge ourselves by doing things we’ve never done before – things that may make us feel awkward or uncomfortable. Pulling ourselves out of our comfort zone. Turning over new leaves. Experiencing things we normally would be too timid to do.

We took 2 weeks at the beginning of July and started driving.

The first Awkward Experience we encountered was staying at a friend’s house, a friend we don’t really know very well. I have a really good work friend, David, who I respect and admire. He lives in a gorgeous part of New Hampshire, and invited us to stop by and spend the night at his 1766-built farmhouse.

We had made it to Vermont, and made our way through the narrow state to New Hampshire. We called our friend David at around 9:00 AM, with the plan that we would meet them for dinner around their house and stay at a hotel nearby. We had even researched the hotels. But David insisted that we stay overnight at his house – and since this would be the perfect official start to awkwardness, we said yes.

The country that David lives in is very different than Chicago – lots of giant rolling hills, forests, and even moose-crossing signs. We were very excited about the moose crossing signs – but we’ve since learned that they aren’t out just walking around, crossing streets, disrupting traffic. They are a little more elusive than that – we never saw a moose, sadly. Or a bear. Every person we asked, “Have you seen a lot of moose?” and the response was always “oh, when I was a kid once, I saw one” or “At the zoo”. Very disappointing.

We got to David and Mary’s gorgeous house around 5 PM. It’s pretty crazy to be in a house that old – it felt like staying in a historic site. David made dinner, picked fresh from the organic co-op farm they belong to (it was delicious!), and his daughter introduced us to the goat and two sheep.

The night passed restlessly, as we felt too awkward to sleep. It was nothing that David had done or said – we felt very welcomed. But it was the first time we had stayed overnight at someone’s house who wasn’t related to us. Usually we’re in hotels! So Awkward.

The story continues as the journey does – and as this is the second official day of NabloPoMo – (National Blog Posting Month) you’ll have to wait to see what happens next.