It was after bedtime, but I couldn’t bring myself to call my daughters into our camper. Occasional bursts of giggles and beams from a flashlight told me they were fine. Our RV was parked at an alpaca ranch in Montana, and my girls were scaling hay bales and chasing barn cats with two Black sisters from Chicago and a gaggle of Mormon brothers who lived on the farm.

This moment — watching my kids explore new cultures, places and experiences — was exactly what I envisioned when, months earlier, I had decided to pack up my family and leave our rural New Hampshire home for an open-ended road trip around America.