I'd love to do this one day! Curious - after reading, the part about wildlife scares me. Did you ever run into genuinely worrying situations with wildlife? Hearing about Black widow spiders alone makes me want to only do this with a van following behind me to sleep in at night!
Most wildlife is somewhat afraid of humans so long as they are not taught otherwise. They know you are big and don't know if you are going to eat them so they stay away. Mountain lions are the only possible exception. So long as you don't get close and don't give them reason to get close they will generally leave you alone.
The above is why it is critical to keep food either hung in a tree or in bear proof containers. So long as bears don't see humans and think "I've found food near them" they will stay away - but once they realize humans mean food there is trouble. Wild areas rarely have problems - causal campers don't realize how important proper bear protection is and over time bears have figured it out.
The black widow and a few other spiders and insects are exceptions - they will target you. (though mostly spiders leave you alone)
That black widow spider could be inside your house right now. Houses afford us protection but not immunity from these things. Spiders are notoriously resistant to pesticides as they require direct contact since they don’t clean themselves like insects do (thus not ingesting the poison on the floor or wherever they’re creeping along).
I bike packed 2000 miles around Europe, and one time in the mountains outside San Sebastian I was chased by a black bear. Weird people were probably the most dangerous wildlife, but like OP, basically every interaction with strangers I had was positive. But, I did move my tent a few times after setting it up upon realizing that the weird person I interacted with earlier knew where I was sleeping.
Ha ha, I felt like you did when I moved to California and found them everywhere when I started looking for them. Never got bit in the 26 years I lived among them.
And people there were freaked out when they heard I was from Kansas and thought little of having grown up around the perhaps more frightening Brown Recluse.
You'll be fine.
i was a little worried about bears for the night or two i was in bear country but my fear of cars and weather was far more top of mind