Rices on the Road-November

In September of 2026, we sold our house & bought a 2026 Brinkley 3610!

Randy & I both work remotely, so we are now living in our camper & working remotely from wherever. I say it’s not a “forever” decision, but a “for right now” decision. All of our chicks have left the nest & it just felt right to us! We know there will be ups & downs, but we are feeling incredibly grateful to be able to travel & explore during this season of life. I will be sharing monthly about where we’ve been & what we are up to.

We spent the first few days of November staying at Cottonwood Grove in Hesston, KS. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s super close to a lot of the people we love! There aren’t any great campground views, but we LOVED going for lunch time walks at Dyck Arboretum! It has the best walking paths!!

Personally, I think fall in Kansas is pretty incredible!

Whenever we are in the area, I like to get some of Paige Wedel’s sourdough bread that she sells through Wing & a Prayer. My mouth is watering just looking at these pictures. So good!!

Since the weather was turning colder, we headed south for a couple weeks!

Our first stop was for lunch at Pub W in Edmond, OK! I think this is my favorite meal yet. It was absolutely delicious!

I got the power bowl & Randy had the bacon avocado burger.

Then we shared the ooey gooey chocolate cake! It was amazing!! & shockingly it was gluten free. (This place has lots of gluten free, vegan & vegetarian options).

We used our Harvest Hosts membership for an overnight stay in Waxahachie, TX at Out 2 Pasture Ranch.

Ya’ll when I woke up the next morning & looked out the window, this was our view!

I snapped this picture of their home before we left. The hosts, Danna & David were lovely & I am certain we will be requesting a stay there again soon!

We bought some farm fresh eggs from them & used them for a scramble later that week.

A friend asked me recently what we’ve learned so far or if there’s been anything unexpected. I knew my answer right away.

-less urgency/more time-

It’s something we noticed almost immediately. I’m still pondering it.. was it a self induced sense of urgency we were living with? Do others feel it? Was it just us? I didn’t even realize it at the time. But now it’s so evident. It just feels like we are living at a much slower pace.

A few examples..

- each morning I boil water in the tea kettle on the stove & then Randy makes our coffee in the french press.

- as we were driving a few weeks ago, we saw a long line wrapped around a restaurant. We immediately pulled off & got in that line to wait over an hour to order lunch.

- on a walk the other day, Randy noticed a praying mantis that was bigger than my hand. We stood there watching it for a very long time. Long enough for it to finish eating a bug.

- this morning we didn’t jump out of bed right away, instead we watched long horn cattle out our bedroom window.

It happened organically for us, no yard or house to take care of & way less stuff. But is that just the excuse I’m giving myself for not being more intentional with my time? I’m not sure. Still pondering..

I took this pic at a truck stop because it made me smile!

While we drove, we listened to this audio book by Carlos Whitaker, Reconnected: How 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover the Lost Art of Being Human & I cannot stop thinking about it! It’s the perfect mix of entertaining & mind blowing. Do yourself a favor & read it or listen to it! Carlos reads it himself & we really enjoyed that!

As we were driving, we started seeing signs for peach ice cream. Yes, please!! Listen, we are all about finding local foods to try & the peach pie shakes from Cooper Farms were the perfect afternoon treat!

If you find yourself traveling near Fairfield, TX you should definitely stop! (pic below taken from their website bc Randy & I are not good bloggers yet)

I should add here that pulling a 42 foot 5th wheel through Dallas & Houston traffic is not for the faint of heart!!

Finally, we arrived in Galveston, TX at Dellanera RV Park, our home for the next two weeks!

When I stepped out of the truck & saw our view, I almost had to pinch myself. It truly felt like a dream. THIS right here was so far beyond my imagination of what life was going to be like. Incredible!

I took these pictures from inside to show our kids that this was really our view!

Our first full day in Galveston was kinda chilly, but that didn’t stop me from spending my lunch hour on the beach! (I just grabbed my quilt that my friend, Kelly made me :)

Randy & I walked a mile on the beach each morning we were there.

We loved it!

This was the little path from our campground to the beach. If you look far enough out there, you can see our beach chairs. We would set them up in the morning each day so that we could pop down on lunch & right after work. So amazing getting to experience life on the beach like that!

This sign was posted near the path & we assumed it was just there for liability sake ya know?

Well one day as we were walking back to the camper, I was just ahead of Randy & heard him gasp.

Apparently, I was less than a foot away from stepping ON. A. SNAKE!!

If you know me at all, then you know that I always made Randy walked ahead of me after that + I was certain their were snakes in our camper lol

I love spending my lunch break reading on the beach!

Here is a pic of our camper that I took from the beach!

We learned pretty quickly on this adventure, that we want to be sure we are staying in places for at least 2 weeks, so we have time to explore on the weekend in between. We had a great weekend in Galveston!

I cannot even begin to tell you how hard we laughed & how thankful we are that our kids weren’t here to see how embarrassing we are! Life is short!

*below is from a facebook post I made on 11/16*

I want to be sure I’m not just sharing the good parts. Yes, we are having big adventures & seeing amazing places.. but some days are hard. I seem to wake up every Sunday feeling a bit empty. I miss our church. I miss our kids. I miss our friends. I miss hugging someone that isn’t Randy lol.
This morning we headed to a church in Galveston, Coastal Community Church. A church that just happened to be full of twenty somethings. Gulp. I was really missing our kids & kept getting teary.
A young man came in the row in front of us & sat down alone. I decided to pray, Lord if our kids don’t have anyone to go to church with, give them the courage to go alone. A while later, two young ladies walked up & asked him if they could join him. They sat on each side of him. I decided to pray, Lord fill our kids with kindness to offer to sit with someone sitting alone.
The worship music & the message reminded me a lot of our church & I felt so grateful.
When it was over, I decided to chat with the group in front of us & give them each a little Jesus I had in my bag. I got teary as I told them how I was missing our kids & what a blessing they had been to me. They loved the little Jesus & asked if they could give me a hug. Heck yes!! Thank you, Jesus! The last gal was very teary as she came in to hug me. She said, my parents are in Boston & I’m really missing them this morning.
God knows the desires of our hearts & He shows up when things feel hard. So very grateful!

Let’s talk about food for a bit. Randy & I are foodies. We love to find off the beaten path restaurants & eating out is always a highlight of our travels, even before we started traveling full time.

Since we eat out a lot, our lunches typically look like some version of this…

Some people call that girl lunch, but in our family, we call it a snack plate. Most lunches are some kind of snack plate.
We do cook in our camper some & we have a full kitchen, including an island. (maybe I will try to show you that next month)

What & where we ate in Galveston:

pizza from Papas Pizza

clam chowder & a shrimp po boy from Millers Seawall Grill

we had yummy drinks..

& shared the seafood platter at The Spot! This was our favorite place for sure!

shrimp peques & crispy catfish etouffee at Nick’s Kitchen & Beach Bar

We are big fans of getting to eat outside!!

& here is where we didn’t eat! Randy went to grab some take out for us one night & this was the restaurant he had picked online. When he go there & saw the place & the lack of people in line, he decided to pass lol.

& here is a not fun part of our adventure… do you see Randy’s feet under there?

& are you wondering what the heck he is doing? Well, he was looking for this..

& I cannot even begin to tell you how many hours over the course of a few weeks that he spent looking for it! Alli was the first to get notified that an air tag was following her after she had been riding with us. Then the other girls got notifications too. Randy & I had not! Which we later realized was because we didn’t have notifications turned on it settings. (so here’s a safety tip for you- do that!) We knew there was one near us for weeks & we knew that it didn’t belong to us. I’ll be honest, I was getting freaked out! Ethan helped Randy with some apps you can use & Randy had a couple conversations with some long time friends of ours in law enforcement, one of which works for the FBI. We could not hear it when we tried to ping it, but the apps did show him when he was in close proximity. & after a lot of searching.. he finally found it!!

It was wrapped in black fabric tape & hid underneath the plastic part of the floorboard by the back passenger door! While we have no idea, who put it there, (it was not registered to anyone) we are assuming that it was the previous owner of our pickup (that we bought used). So glad Randy finally found it & destroyed it!!

We absolutely loved our time in Galveston & felt so grateful to be living this adventure! We loved it so much that we booked another stay before we left, ha!

We left Galveston to head back to Kansas to be with family for Thanksgiving! The first night we stayed at Huntsville State Park.

It was beautiful!!

We could not get over how tall the trees were!

We met this fella on our morning walk the next day. His name was Nathan & he was living a similar adventure to us! Just kidding!! You are looking at his vehicle & shelter!

So for all of you that think we are crazy, it could be worse! ha! We loved getting to meet Nathan & sharing parts of our story with him as he shared parts of his with us. Our favorite part was when he asked if we could all pray together as we said goodbye. Godspeed, Nathan! We pray you are doing well.

We traveled through SO MUCH RAIN that day to get to our next overnight. We have ZERO pictures because it was still raining & we had to use our 4 wheel drive to pull into our spot. I’m sure Lone Oak RV Ranch & Retreat is a great place, but it was not that night!

We were so happy to get back to Kansas! But when I got in the camper to open the slides, we had a mess.. our microwave had opened & the plate had came out & broken everywhere…ugh such a mess!

The next day, we celebrated Erin & Beau’s wedding. She was an absolutely stunning bride!!

& so was the mother of the bride!

So very thankful for these dear friends of mine!

We spent the week of Thanksgiving at Cheney State Park & I didn’t take any pictures out there at all. We did enjoy the walking trails & we had our family out to watch the Chiefs game which was super fun!

Ethan flew in from St Louis, so all of our kids were there & we were so very thankful!