Easing into "re-entry" after travel

A snapshot of my transition back to real life after two weeks away, from food and tech to garden and chickens.

Jul 13, 2025

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Hi Friend,

Around 7 PM yesterday, Eric and I arrived home after two weeks of being away.

It was a combined work/play trip: we stayed in our new/old RV in Manistique, working in our retail store for about ten days. But we also managed to squeeze in three nights and four days in the Keweenaw Peninsula, where we hiked, kayaked, read on the beach and relaxed in the wilds of far-far-northern Michigan.

I’ll be sharing more about our adventures soon, but today my mind is on the transition back to regular life.

So let’s talk about “re-entry” after travel.

This transition used to be really hard for me, to be honest. I think that’s because I used to look at travel, whether for work or play, as an escape from my “real” life.

I see it differently now: travel is a nice change of pace, but I enjoy my normal home life so much, and find so much peace and joy in it, that I am as happy to return to it as I am to experience new things for a while.

I’ve also gotten in a lot of practice. With the business up north, we’ve done a lot of this kind of travel over the past couple of years, and everything from the drive itself to our packing/unpacking routines have gotten more streamlined and simplified.

That all said, being gone for two weeks does cause quite a bit of disruption, and I’ve found I enjoy the little routines and rituals of re-entry the most when I give myself plenty of time to ease in. I kept today mostly open just so I could putter and put things to rights, and thought it would be fun to share what that’s looking like with you.

I hope you enjoy this snapshot of my “re-entry”, category by category:

Chickens

Leaving our flock - especially the mama and babies - after experiencing multiple losses in June gave me a bit of anxiety. My 21-year-old son Will was house/pet sitting for us, but I think he read the room enough to realize that keeping those four babies and the little family thriving was actually his number-one job. And I’m happy to say he succeeded: the babies have been growing like crazy in our absence and were safe and well-cared-for tucked away in the enclosure with Mom while the other chickens got used to them from a safe distance.

That said, when Will and I went down to check on the little family last night, they were all - perhaps Mama most of all - very much feeling ready to get out and explore. So we opened up the enclosure, and they had a glorious romp in the big wide world.

I had a fair amount of anxiety about integrating the babies with the rest of the flock after what happened to the other babies. But Stu, our intrepid rooster, came running right over and - after quickly ruffling up Mama’s feathers with their first romantic interlude in many weeks - he adopted a protective stance and guarded the little family as Mama showed the babies how to take a dust bath!

The other hens wandered over and they’ve all been running around together since. Last I checked, everything seemed calm and peaceful in our little flock, now bigger by four awkward adolescent birds.

Food

For this trip, we challenged ourselves to eat as much as possible at our RV (and vacation rental) rather than eating out.

Well…maybe not so much “we”. Eric can happily eat wherever he is and whatever he finds, mixing together odd assortments of leftovers or just going without until it’s a more convenient time - whereas I’m more particular, wanting food that I recognize as actual meals, in regular intervals.

So suffice it to say, the “challenge” was mostly mine - but, I’m happy to report, I rose to it! We only ate out a handful of times, mostly to socialize, and the cooler we brought home was empty except for leftover canned drinks, half a stick of butter, and my sourdough starter. (Yes, I traveled with my sourdough starter - and baked with it - in an RV. I feel like I’ve crossed over some kind of homesteader fantasy threshold.)

So unpacking the food was easy, but I also came home to some surprises: namely, our CSA share, which was delivered on Thursday and had been waiting for us in the fridge. I’d forgotten what was in it, so today felt a little like produce Christmas: “Ooh, beets! Ahhh, dill!”

And when I went to pick up our milk from a local farmer this morning, I also bought some summer squash, sweet peppers, and a lovely little bouquet from his stand.

I’ve got the slow cooker going with a batch of yogurt, will make another batch of granola later, and when I get done writing this, I’ll be doing some cozy meal planning to make good use of our bonanza.

Speaking of produce…

While I was away, my little garden exploded. My tulsi and Thai basil plants are huge, all my greens are ready to be eaten, there’s a pepper plant that needs support stat, the broccoli should have been harvested a week ago, and my tomatillo plant…well…

The fruit trees are also producing well! The pears are growing fast, and we have two trees full of nearly-ready peaches. (Off to search “how and when to harvest peaches”…)

Returning home to so much bounty is a bit overwhelming for this little-experienced gardener, so I’m taking it one step at a time. This morning I cut some fennel and ate it on my scrambled eggs (eggs being another “crop” that piled up in my absence!). I harvested the leggy broccoli and will do something with it for dinner tonight. The Swiss chard can wait for tomorrow. I’ll cut back the tulsi (holy basil) and dry it for tea, and the Thai basil will be harvested and the extra dried or gifted. As for tomatillo, I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do at this point, but from reading I don’t think they are ready to be picked yet so I still have some time to figure it out.

It’s good to know that I don’t have to oversee every little detail of a garden’s daily care to still yield a harvest. Yes, there are things that would have been done differently if I’d been home to manage it, but the garden also grew well with nothing more than an every-other-day watering and the work of the sun. And so did my perennial garden, which was still a little tepid looking when I left, and now is bursting with color.

Tech

During our trip I deleted half a dozen apps so I could more thoroughly unplug. Now, I’m trying to decide which of them I want to re-install, which led to this question: what do I actually want to be able to do on my phone? And the answer, it turns out, is “not much.” I don’t really want to read on my phone, I definitely don’t want to write on my phone, I one thousand percent do not want to read or respond to email on my phone. So…for now, I’m just leaving most of the apps off, knowing that I can always quickly download one if I really need it for a short-term use.

My smart watch also died about halfway through the trip and I’d forgotten to bring the charger, so I’ve been without a watch for over a week. More on “wearable tech” in a future post, but for now I’ll offer only this assurance: if an app didn’t log your three-mile hike, it still did happen, promise.

Work

The days in the store were long, busy, and tactile in a way that’s a nice change from my usual Very Online work. And if there’s any part of re-entry that’s going to be hard, it’s making the switch back to mostly working on a screen. This week, however, I am going to be doing something brand-new: recording the audio version of The Last Parenting Book You’ll Ever Read!

Even with the thousands of hours I’ve spent on the mic as a podcaster and radio host, I’m still feeling a little intimidated. Reading aloud (especially my own book!) is such a different animal from off-the-cuff conversation. I’ll be sure to report back; in the meantime, wish me luck!

Reading

I read several enjoyable books on this trip, but this one was my favorite.

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett is set in turn-of-the-century New England, and since there’s something kind of New England-y about the Lake Superior town where we stayed, even the settings felt appropriate. And this book has all the ingredients I adore in a piece of historic storytelling: sketches of quaint small towns and their inhabitants, lush descriptions of wildlife, deep insights about human behavior, and lots of regional flavor including charming dialogue in the local dialect. (If you love L.M. Montgomery, give Jewett a try!)

The version I am reading (which is similar to the one I linked above) includes four bonus stories at the end and charming illustrations by Shirley Burke throughout.

I’ve saved the final story to read before bed tonight. What a delight it’s been!

Okay, it’s time to stop writing about re-entry and get back to it now, friends. This newsletter was definitely not intended to read as advice, but if I had one piece of it to offer, it would be this: to make re-entry after travel easier, first build a day-to-day life that you love enough that you don’t need to escape it. Then your travels will feel like a delicious addition to, not a distraction from, daily life.