We said goodbye to our home (the house we called our home in Holland, Michigan) on Friday, December 4, 2015.
After “bunking in” with some generous friends, we left Michigan in early June for a Great Adventure and a Grand Quest. As I write this (now mid-October), we have been on the road for four months. Living for a month on my childhood farm in Northern Minnesota was wonderful. The trip across country to Washington state, though long and hot, was amazing. Our Sollom Clan Reunion, with all our kids joining us in Seattle, was perfect. (Annie, age 32, lives in Holland, MI. Nathan, age 29, lives in Seattle, WA. John, age 27, lives in Grand Rapids, MI.)
We left Seattle in early August and made our way through Cannon Beach and Grants Pass, Oregon followed by the Avenue of the Giants and the Mendocino Coastline of Northern California. By mid-August, we headed inland and stayed with friends who live outside of Nevada City, California. We were in the beautiful foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. (We lived in that part of California twenty-five years ago.) Early September found us for an all-too-brief stay with friends at a camp on the shores of Lake Tahoe.
We are presently in Monterey, California with much-loved, long-time friends. We intend to be here until Christmas. We lived on the Monterey Bay for most of the 1980s. Those were good years and this has a feeling of coming home.
The feeling of being “home,” as elusive as it may be, is one of the things we are hoping to find.
Mike Sollom 