Venture Visits #1: Carly and Silkworm from Zauberbear

I am happy to finally debut the first part in this long awaited series, Venture Visits! Venture went off to visit a good blogger friend of mine, Carly and her pet magical bear Silkworm (from the infamous site, Zauberbear) Venture had  a bumpy start getting his adventures started (due to a caffeine-lacking me and strange postal computers.) I finally got him on his way about August 21st. I wanted to build up a few posts so that I would have guaranteed content for this segment, every month for a few months.So every post you see is going to be from the past. 

I'm about to turn things over to Carly, but I wanted to remind you guys that Venture is always on the look out for hosts, so just check out this post for info and if you're interested email me at cwaftycreations(at)gmail(dot)com or comment below.

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It's August 23rd. My mom comes in the front door from a trip down the sidewalk to get the mail and delivers a flat cardboard package to me (and Silkworm, who's sitting on my shoulder). We already know what--or rather, who--is inside.

Venture the traveling gnome comes with us on our evening bike ride so we can introduce him to our tiny town. We show him the bridge where we always try to catch the train going under and we visit the duckies at the duck farm. For the most part, our adventures with him don't grow much bigger. We think to take him to the beach or a park somewhere, but keeping busy with other projects makes us forget completely.

But then, two weeks later, we get to take Venture on a "real" adventure, a road trip through a total of four different New England states. Even though he's only supposed to stay with us for about two weeks, his mommy RaChil gives him permission to stay a little longer because she's trying to get Venture to as many different places as possible, and a road trip to four different states sounds like a good idea to make that happen.

We take two different ferries, one during which Venture has to stay seated and drive miles and miles through New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The scenery is surprisingly very different in each and we're pretty good at telling when we cross a state border. One night, we stay in a hotel, and another night, we go camping when the temperature drops to the mid 40's Fahrenheit. I hoped to see a moose, but no such luck. The mountains were a treat, though, since we live surrounded by only small hills if anything, and beaches.

The trip is meant to last a week or two, but all of us save Venture can only last three days before the stress of a spontaneous adventure gets to us. For the two nights we have to find a place to stay, we don't have an easy way to go about looking for a place, i.e. a smartphone.  In the end, Silkworm and I are pretty sure we're not made to be far-and-wide travelers. And Venture lets us know that's okay. We had more fun in our hometown anyway.

I like to think Venture kind of taught us a lesson about adventuring. Maybe it was a lesson we already knew in the back of our heads, but we feel a little better about believing it when we heard it again: Adventure doesn't necessarily mean going on some extravagant vacation. Adventure is exploring and observing and discovering. You don't need to go very far to do that if you don't want to or if it makes you uncomfortable.

We threw Venture a little going away party on the 15th, and as of the morning of September 16th, he's on his way to his new host's house, wearing a surprise gift. We'll miss him, but we wish him and his second host buckets of fun and adventure!
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Venture went off to visit my pal Katie over at Punk Projects next. You can see how that adventure played out next month!

For now, here is a map to help keep track of Venture's overall journey. The purple pin is home base, and that green pin is for his first stop.

Want to have Venture come visit you? Email, comment, or message me on any of my social media sites!

Til Next Time!