December update

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 So much has happened since we last updated. We are blessed and God is good!! As I sit here and write this I hardly know where to begin. I suppose I need to just give a massive info dump and let everyone navigate to the social media tab on this website to see all the corresponding pictures and posts. Going forward we can give much more thorough explanations (we will begin blogging weekly now that our travels are in full swing), but for the sake of getting caught up... forgive me for just downloading in this blog entry.

We did leave Cleveland in mid November as planned. We headed straight to Kentucky about 45 minutes south of Cincinnati, Ohio. The trip up through the mountains was unfortunately marred by high winds, intense rain, and heavy fog... all of which made our maiden voyage a white knuckle driving experience to say the least. We arrived safely in a small town 10 minutes from the Ark Encounter, where we camped for the week. We had a blast! During our time in KY we saw the Ark Encounter, the Kentucky Horse Park, and spent some time sightseeing in Cincinnati. It was a great trip to kick off our journey! Check out our social media tab above for some pictures and more details. 

After Kentucky, we quickly drove back home to Cleveland, TN for Thanksgiving with our extended families. I know we had only been gone a week, but it was still nice to be back home however brief a stay it may have been. Sherry, the kids, and I enjoyed two Thanksgiving dinners and additionally some much needed time with dear friends, as well.

The goodbyes were as hard as always as we pulled out of town heading for south GA the first week of December. We were on our way to Metter, GA just west of Savannah for a few weeks stay with some other dear friends. Our goals for our time in Metter were not all met, but we spent lots of quality time with some of the greatest people on earth and made many new friends which seems to us to be way more important. While we were in GA, the whole family volunteered for several days with Buy A Tree Change A Life. We had also intended to touch up paint the outside of the bus and paint a few items inside of the bus as well (we left a few painting items to do on the road so we could begin our journey sooner). We are excited to announce that the outside of the bus is now beautiful, but the inside.... well we had lots of fun with our friends instead. We will get it finished at some point.

On the 22nd of December we left our friends (old and new) in Metter to meet up with my family for a Disney adventure in Orlando. If you have never been to Orlando or Disney at Christmas .. nothing can adequately describe the crowds or the traffic. We had a great wonderful time with my family, despite the sea of humanity, in our large vacation home with a private pool. Although Christmas seemed a little out of sync with the norm we still managed to replicate much of the essential Hamons family traditions despite being away from home. Great memories were made by all. 

This morning we said goodbye to my family and headed back to retrieve our bus (we had left it north of Orlando at an extended family member's house for the week). Weirdly, as nice and cozy as the vacation home was... I told Sherry on a few occasions that I really missed our bus. It was great to see her safe and sound, when we pulled up. As we were leaving the bus's parking location, we had a bit of a scare. The host family lived nearly a mile down a sandy road and as we were backing down the  drive and attempting a 3-point turn we hit a patch of quick sand (yes quick sand!) and the bus began to sink fast. 36,000 lbs in sinking sand is enough to make anyone panic. I am still not sure how we got the bus out of the pit we had created.. the ruts were over 2 foot deep. Thankfully the neighbor, whose yard we had destroyed, was very sympathetic and understanding. We made it 40 miles down the road to Ormond Beach without further incident. Ormond Beach is where I am currently writing this blog entry. It's beautiful! It was misty at the beach today, but the kids had a blast collecting shells and playing in the water and sand in the near 70 degree temps. 

Our future plans are uncertain. We have committed ourselves to be a leaf in the wind and go with the flow. No real plan or agenda. We want to spend January hitting all the major beaches along the full perimeter of Florida ending in the western end of the panhandle. The goal is to write blog entries and reviews about each location and then turn it into a new Ebook to sell. We have an expo that Serenity (our bus) will be on display at in central FL in the beginning of Febuary and right after that there is a Skoolie rally "Skoolie Swarm" that we will be attending in central Florida as well. 

Well, thats all for now. Thanks so much for all of the support and prayers. We love and appreciate you all. As always you can help us fund our journey by clicking the donate link on this website. 

All our love,
-The Serenity Bus Crew