The Ferraro's West Coast Road Trippin'
A month long adventure with a 1 year old
My husband grew up with all his family around, me not so much. My life has been scattered since as early as I can remember. Raised with a different set of values than each other but willing to find a way to meet in the middle. It was always a dream of mine to spend the colder months away from New Jersey. Specifically January and February if we could swing it. It can be brutal on the east coast during the winter and my time living out west showed me a different way to “do” winter. No we’re not escaping to Florida where it’s warm weather and beaches but we ventured to the Pacific Northwest and California. An adventure structured by visits to my sisters and the families they have formed there over the years.
Our trip began on January 10, 2025 with a direct flight from Newark, NJ to Portland, OR. Work was the reason our trip was starting in Portland as Anthony was hired to help launch an accessible game viewing device specifically crafted for the NBA and the Portland Trail Blazers were the first to go live with it. Since NBA games are super loud and intense environments I opted to stay in the hotel room with our baby and Anthony went to the game with our dear friend Jimmy. Jimmy actually owns Findlay hats — the hats I literally wear all the time that they made me custom one love in Braille line that we’re launching again soon. Jimmy filmed scenes for Anthony and they sent me the clips and I made this video that ended up bringing a lot of attention to the device.
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Quickly rewind to when we arrived in Portland, Anthony opened up is guitar case to find the headstock completely broken off. On the first day of a 28 day journey we now had a dream of working more in music but now no guitar. We made a short video showing the heartbreak of the situation and were met with an overwhelming amount of positivity and love spread out from across the internet universe. Offers to send free guitars, to fix the current one, to buy us a new one overflowed our inbox. Messages about how much joy Anthony and his story and videos have brought people over the years and how they want to help support him in music also. It was like something seemingly so bad happened with the break but that had to happen to know how much love and support we truly have from endless strangers who have become friends through the platforms. To say thank you isn’t even enough but thank you.
If you’ve ever ventured to the Pacific Northwest corner of America it will be obvious to you why rumors of Bigfoot are even a thing. Let me just say there are endless Forrest’s and wilderness with only a few roads to get places. My sister and her family live off Route 299 in Trinity County, CA so an 8 hour road trip from Portland was the most direct route. Unsure if we would have to make the drive over 2 days or if the baby would be strong enough to make it in 1, we were prepared for either scenario and boom she slayed it. A gorgeous drive for me and the same drive as going anywhere in the world for Anthony. Thankfully he draws strength from my joy and knowing I was taking in the beauty of our drive allowed him to keep going as the best back-seat Dad to ever live.
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My sister, her husband and their 2 kids welcomed us on Sunday evening and a week of connecting to each other and joining our families had commenced. This exact week was the week leading up to the “TikTok ban” everyone seemed to be talking about but no one could answer what would happen. As a couple who has relied on TikTok as a major founding block of our success this news and all the unknowns were stressful. Instead of joining in all week with the sad videos and assumptions we did the opposite and basically took the entire week offline. We soaked up the nature around us and the joy of our family. It was a week we didn’t know we needed but if we never took it both of us can’t even imagine where we would have been mentally.
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After a week of merged families TikTok went black and we began to spiral a little. Anthony went to sleep and when we woke up the app was back (for now) and it was time to move on to the next portion of our trip.
As we said our goodbyes and headed south to Mendocino we drove through redwood forests and reflected on the emotional roller coaster we were taken on by this platform. As the crisp air from the Redwoods filled the car we held hands as our baby napped in the back. It was coming up on 4 years since we had last been on this drive together. It was in 2020 when we planned and executed Anthony Ferraro’s Blind Busking Tour with hopes to get some traction online. We would live stream Anthony playing guitar in beautiful places and the funny part was there were usually only about 5 people on the lives at the time. That tour brought us together in a way we could have never imagined and now all these years later we have the opportunity to take a small portion of the same drive now married as parents and with our whole little family we have formed.
After 2 nights in Mendocino we headed south yet again to hit the San Francisco airport. We stopped at one of my favorite spots near the Golden Gate Bridge and then headed to our plane. We decided to skip LA when the original plan was to be heading there and spend 3 nights before driving to San Diego. The air quality from the fires was too intense for us to venture in with a baby and a blind man so San Diego livin’ it was plus having a sister who lives there was also a big up. Between Anthony’s cousins and my sister and her family we have a lot of people we love in SD.
We moved into a cottage in Ocean Beach about a block from the sand with a porch as big as the house itself that you could see the ocean from. It was a dream home of mine. I had always wanted to live in OB specifically and see what it would be like to have a family there. Well let’s just say for 2 weeks I was able to live out this dream in fast forward. Anthony lost a dear friend back home and decided to fly to NJ to go to the funeral. I stayed in California with our baby and our dog. Fully immersed in this living situation I now was quite literally experiencing what it would be like to not only live here but to be here when my husband was away. Nothing makes you realize how much love and support you have around you until you opt to leave it for a month.
The little girl inside of me will always wonder what it would have been like if I had never left California all those years ago. If I never became a member of East Coast society. Maybe at the end of the day I will always have to fight that pull to come back. I’ve been back many times, moved back even and all roads continue to lead me to where I am now. The love I have found in Anthony and the family we have formed surpasses anything I could have ever dreamed for myself. It is bigger than living in a place that rarely goes under 50 degrees. The family I have acquired since marrying Anthony is so big and they all love so hard and so uniquely. I am so blessed my daughter and I get to grow up with a literal village of not only family but friends and acquaintances who know us and love us and support our journey to the unknown.
After 2 weeks living out what I thought was a dream I realized I am living a dream already. Dreams can change as you grow into yourself. I used to think if someone shared a dream with me and never did it then they were weak and didn’t work hard enough to pursue it. I now realize that I couldn’t have been more wrong. As I have grown as a person my dreams have changed and that’s ok because the ultimate dream of having an incredible loving husband and a child has already come true for me.
As February began our month long trip was coming to an end. We packed up and headed to the airport on the 4th taking our memories of this journey with us. Over 1,500 miles driven, 2 rental cars, 2 flights, 5 accommodations, what a journey it was for this Ferraro Family. I am thankful to Anthony for being willing to leave it all behind with me for the month. We missed a frozen lake back home and lots of cold weather that I can’t be sad about. We missed our family and our friends. We’re grateful we could go but even more grateful we get to come back. Home for us is a great place to be when we are here. I wonder how it will change over the years as we keep dreaming and living.
One love.
