THE BALTICS
Adopting Bella meant a pivot away from bicycling. This left me with more time for touring in my van. My friends, Lisa and John, moved from the the United States to Estonia a while back, and I thought: “Why not visit them.” So… I did!
SCENES ALONG THE ROAD
I left Romania and the drive took me through Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, then into Estonia.
ESTONIA
I met Lisa Kivirist when she visited Florida and interviewed me for her book Soil Sisters. We have kept in touch and I was delighted when Lisa, John and Liam, their son, all relocated to Estonia - where Lisa’s family is from. It is such a pleasure to connect with friends in a new place. Especially when they have a garden and love preparing delicious food!
Lisa and I had fun collecting up wood from the tree John chopped down, taking many wheelbarrow loads to the log pile and stacking it up for winter use.
Check out Lisa’s Substack about their transition to living in Estonia.
NIGULA NATIONAL PARK
The Nigula Nature Reserve is one of the oldest bog reserves in Estonia. It spans over 15,800 acres and contains one of the largest old-growth forests in the country. There are several species of sphagnum moss that give the bog its brilliant red color.
A group camped for the weekend and brought their portable sauna!
The park is enchanting to walk through and the last half of the trail didn’t have a boardwalk. At first sinking into the bog felt cold on the overcast day but soon enough walking generated heat. The biggest challenge was the terrain. I probably should have taken a swig or two from the bottle of spirits someone left on the lookout tower.
GERMANY
I started my European Van Trip with dog sitting the fantastic Secondo at my cousin’s in Freiburg, Germany. As I was leaving Estonia, heading south looking for sunshine, I reached out about visiting again. I found the sun in Freiburg and another dog sit - this time with the addition of the charming, Bella. A good time was had by all!
STATS
On this adventure, I’ve driven over 13,000 miles visiting 23 countries and 48 National Parks/Preserves and have recorded 232 hiking miles.
It served me and Bella well to focus on national parks as we were always close to a trail, and experienced the best of each country’s natural wonders. I feel like I just dipped my toe into the beauty here and can’t wait to come back for a deeper immersion.
Across all the miles, I keep noticing that in Europe, instead of a lot of stop signs, there are round-a-bouts everywhere. It is such an efficient way to keep traffic moving.
In the Baltics, the highway overpasses are elegantly designed.
Driving in Europe was efficient for me. I used a Starlink Mini and thus had my own WiFi and good access to navigational info. This also allowed me to bypass the normal unwieldy WiFi routine where you get a sim card for each country. Since navigation uses a lot of data, having Starlink also assured more regular and stable internet connections.
GRATITUDE
This trip provided the opportunity to dig deeper into the rewards of long term travel. The most important discovery I made was that travel, with its abundance of spontaneous connections, leads to the development of solid friendships when you have an open ended itinerary. I have extreme gratitude for this!
I am also very grateful that Bella adopted me. I embraced the unexpected and found an awesome companion!
This trip was chock full of educational moments. Shipping a van? Shipping a dog? There was a huge learning curve, but these still turned out to be no problem! Where to spend the night? Easy Peazy! Trust intuition!
I realized I have learned to navigate with ease and grace wherever I am. That feels really good!