“I am everyday people.” Sly & The Family Stone

As an introduction, my name is Heather Wilkins. I’m 33 years old and am currently a part-time instructor at a local community college and teach Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign to Graphic Design students. You were wondering if I love my job? I ABSOLUTELY love my job! Every day I am teaching, I’m learning. It’s a great feeling and I’ve learned a lot about myself through my students. Being a graphic designer for 6 years has opened up a world to me that I never would have known and I attribute so much of my growth to that. Unfortunately this will be the last semester that I will teach because this fall I plan on attending the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for Interpreter Preparation Concentration (Interpreter of the Deaf)! I’m really stoked about that. In one hand I’m sad but in the other I’m excited and happy that I’m finding a new path. You’re probably wondering why I’m leaving something that I love…well…I have so much more of me that I want to give and more I want to learn. I’ve always been interested in sign language and recently became more interested in the Deaf Community. I think being an interpreter will open up a whole new world for me. I won’t quit designing – NEVER! I will always be a designer. Just veering off onto another path. 🙂

  Now, about the trip. So, if you haven’t read about it in my, “About This Journey” section in the menu, I’ve started this blog to document a cross country trip that myself and my parents are taking in May. We will leave May 14th by plane, land in California and stay with our cousins in Penryn for about 4 days. After that we will purchase a Nissan Quest minivan from them and drive it up the coast and arrive in Aberdeen Washington. My sister lives there along with my nieces (of whom I’m SO excited to see). We will stay there for two months (give or take a couple of days) then drive ALL THE WAY back in the Quest to North Carolina. For the journey back we are taking the middle route. So this is how the trip looks from start to finish:

Belhaven NC –> Penryn CA –> Aberdeen WA

Aberdeen WA –> ID –> MT–> WY –> CO –> KS –> MO –> IL –> KY –> TN –> Belhaven NC (You can also view this visual in the photo on the homepage.)

There are many sites we will visit and things we’ll do. One of our main purposes of taking this trip is to watch my 18 yr. old niece graduate high school! My heart swells when I think of her being so grown. 🙂 We will visit a couple of National Parks, visit Canada, go camping in Washington and several other things that I will share! We don’t have everything written down and nothing is set in stone. We have ideas and plans to go to certain places and we’ll let other events waft in as we go.

We’re just trying to have a good time and take it all in and really enjoy this trip. I mean, how many opportunities do you get to travel across this great nation?!