Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn

Randy Reed
Jul 17
6 min read

Updated: Jul 24

“Looking through the glass as the moon rolls over, church and steeple, hill and harbor. Do you ever wonder what it is inside us? Do you ever wonder where it is inside us?”

“Smashing” Ray LaMontagne

Written during his time renting a cottage in Maine

June 12 – June 30 2025

1150 miles to Maine camp in Brooklin, ME.

2653 miles round trip.

Part 1

Here we are, just past the halfway mark in the year and I’m making my first blog post. This is because we just got back from our big summer adventure in the Airstream – a trip to Maine.

A quick recap of the first half of the year - we visited my mom in Sarasota Florida, spent well over a month in the Outer Banks of NC across several visits, I visited one of my best mates in Bozeman for some epic hang time, skiing and hiking, and Heidi went on an all-women surf adventure in Morocco.

Since last I wrote, Koko, our beloved 1965 Airstream has been reinforced and upgraded…she spent the winter in Asheville NC at RŌM Customs, a vintage airstream specialist.

For those who followed our 3 month, 10,000 mile National Parks sojourn last summer you will recall that we had an incident in Indiana, 5 days before the end of the trip. The Airstream frame broke….in two… where the tongue meets the frame. Through the kindness of new friends and strangers we had a welder come to our campsite and get us all patched up for the last miles home.

Last Fall I dropped Koko off at RŌM Customs with a laundry list of ideas to improve a number of things to take her to the next level for years to come and most importantly, conduct a full frame inspection and fix/strengthen/bolster any part of the frame that needed attention. They went deep. Here are some nerdy details of what transpired:

Underneath

•They removed the entire belly pan and performed a full frame inspection. They reinforced the frame in a couple places but overall, it was in good shape. They painted the entire frame with rust preventative paint.

• They insulated the entire under carriage using 2 inch insulation board,

•They removed original axles and installed new Dexter Torflex axles and new wheel assemblies. They also installed a 3-inch lift kit so it rides a bit higher than it used to.

Roof waterproofing

• Elastomeric roof paint on the roof

•RV self-leveling caulk on all vents, skylights, solar mounting bolts, awning rail/ anything with a potential for leaking.

Exterior

•Exterior patchwork - Patched everything that needed rivets or patches

•Paint job - Repainted and clear coated the exterior of the Airstream in the same color and pattern but with high grade automotive paint. The painting in progress: https://www.instagram.com/p/DIcNijZhfwI/

Interior

KITCHEN FAUCET - installed new faucet and plumbing

Part 2

Let’s get into our road trip adventure…

Our first stop was Caledonia State Park near Chambersburg, PA. It was just a single night stop over but it was a lovely park and there was some nice single track to exercise the mountain bike.

Next stop was Kingston NY where we spent a couple days with our friends the LeWinters. We spent a truly enjoyable day at Storm King Art Center – a 500 acre outdoor museum that features many large scale metal sculptures as well as site specific commissions across it’s many acres of rolling hills, forests and meadows. We were particularly interested in seeing our first Andy Goldsworthy installation, his Storm King Wall. As a family we have watched the Rivers and Tides documentary film on Andy’s work untold times since Eloise was a toddler and this very wall is featured in the film. It was really fun to experience it together.

https://andygoldsworthystudio.com/

https://welcome.stormking.org/

From Kingston, NY we headed to York, Maine to stay with our friends the Schumanns, at their lovely cottage on the coast. They have been telling me for years that there is a consistent surf break at their local beach - and lo and behold - we took the longboards out surfing every day we were there. The water wavered between about 58 and 60 and I borrowed a very warm wetsuit that kept me quite toasty! We also bought Eloise her first wetsuit at a local surf shop.

While in York we took one day to travel to Salem, MA to meet with our Bostonian friends Binita, Neil and their new son Karan. We had a lovely catch up over lunch and while walking around the very kitschy witchy town center.

One of the dozens of witch related tourist shops

Our final push further north into Maine kept us on the coast at a lovely small family run campground called Reach Knolls in Brooklin, ME where we camped for 11 days. The anchor for the trip was a summer day camp that Eloise was attending with some of her homeschool friends who are fellow students in Falcons, the online homeschool collective that Eloise attends online two days a week during the school year. The camp was organized by the Falcons founder/teacher – who lives in Maine and graciously hosted the camp.

https://falconsedu.com/

We spent a couple days exploring Acadia National Park and did some bike rides on their famous carriage trails. We spent time hiking in the Maine woods and along rocky coastlines, paddle boarding and dipping in the cold Atlantic of the north. We spent the solstice sunset in Acadia atop the Cadillac Road overlook. Heidi and I also visited Four Seasons Farm, infamous in organic gardening circles, and founded by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman in 1968. What a different and even wilder place rural Maine must have been back then.

https://www.fourseasonfarm.com/

During a trip to Acadia and Bar Harbor we stopped by the College of the Atlantic to check out the campus and Andy Goldsworthy’s recent installation there – Road Line

In closing, here are a few things I noticed and appreciated during the trip:

Several local people around Sedgwick, Maine commented “it doesn’t snow much here”. I looked it up. It averages 5.5 feet of snow each winter. In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where we reside it averages 14 inches annually.

What a different annual calendar they keep culturally and in their minds in this part of the north. So many people still hadn’t put their boats in the water or fully stocked/refurbished their stores and shops by mid June. They all spoke of the start of the season as July 4 weekend. "We will have it all ready for the start of the season" they would say. When I asked about the end of the season…Labor Day. My mind was internally racing with “You have 3 boats in your front yard and you get to use them for 60 days a year?!!?

There was so much life in the clear bay water that our campground was situated on:

Clams, mussels, snails, razor clams, crabs, urchins, starfish, lobster...and that's just start of a much longer list, but alas I don't know the names of so much of this marine life, it's crustaceans, grasses, fish...

I became an adoring fan of the New England connected farmhouse. It was at first so foreign to my sensibility to have a barn directly connected to your house - what about the mice? I learned that architecture professor Thomas L Hubka popularized the phrase - "Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn".

Big House – the main living quarters

Little House – the kitchen, but also often the first building built as a tiny house to live in while the rest is built over time

Back House - carriage house (garage these days) or workshop

Barn – often a big ol’ livestock barn connected last in the line.