What is the Penelope Weekly?
Travel, Travel Tips, Book Reviews, History, and Historical Personalities!
Travel: Current travel around my family member who has dementia. My past travels which I was doing Vanlife Travel around family needs and life.
Travel Tips: The things that I learned when I traveled through my life.
Book Reviews: I love to read and I have been using audiobooks when I drive or to get to sleep when traveling. I love to talk about those books.
History: I love history and reviewing the past to see what will happen in the future. Some things change but it seems that we as humans we have to redo all the history that came before again with just different places and new names.
Join me in my new adventures! And Olive Oil, the Pug!
My Short History
I grow up in California and moved to Alaska for College. Then married military which took me back to California then Hawaii then West Virginia them I moved to Pittsburgh, PA. In 2019, I decided that life was to short to be sitting behind a desk and watching my butt grow bigger. My last child was moving out and I was free to do as I wanted too. I closed my business and was getting rid of things and getting my place together to sell and I was going to travel the world. Then Covid19 came up and I got stuck in a 4000 square foot build alone.
In April of 2000, I started hiking the Great Allegheny Passage which is a trail that starts in Pittsburgh and goes down to DC. It is an old rail road tracks that through many volunteers and other resources created it as a bike trail. I did Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland except for about 20 miles and back between April and about June. It was to get me out of the house but still be safe. I would drive to a point and hike as far as I could and then turn and go back to the van that I had. I was doing less the 3 to 5 miles on the days that it was nice to go.
I did a few other short trips around but keeping with the keeping to myself and Covid19 rules, i.e. trips to local waterfalls, state and federal parks, outdoor trails, etc. Then I sold my place with the all clear and throw everything in my minivan and started traveling around to the state parks, federal parks, lighthouses, other natural wonders, museums, etc.. Only stopping to hike the Appalachian Trail but only stayed on it for a month, i.e. anything that could go wrong did plus my back just refused to go anymore.
I was licking my wounds and got a place in Georgia to reset and heal my body. I was travel a bit here and there and I had a website penelopepercivaltravels.com. The only issue was that I had some family members that need a bit of help because they were ill or need operations. You know, since I did not have anything better to do. (Eye roll.) After all it was just for six weeks which turned in to a lot longer, i.e. October of 2023 which turned into them not being health until March because it go infected and they had to have it redone. Me needing a root canal which keep me down getting appointments and it done.
Then for my birthday, I realized that they had a bigger issue and should not and/or could not live alone, i.e. dementia. I couldn’t leave at that point. It is my 21st birthday all over again, i.e. found out I was pregnant for that one. Therefore, I will not be traveling a lot only a few times a year and only places that are not that far away and only for a short time.
But I still have a lot to say about traveling, traveling tips that I learned, travel Vanlife (Vanlife but short trips), about the place that I went and will be going, history, and books. This site will be dedicated to those items and will be weekly on Wednesday plus if I am feeling it, a few other times a week if I find something interesting. Bear with me as I work around my family members schedule, Etsy which pays my bills so I don’t have to work outside the house, and life in general.