I took a long break from writing. Part ennui, part crazy busy-ness. I feel somewhat settled now, with enough table space to break out the laptop and a keyboard. My thoughts are still a little disjointed, but oh well. So, here’s what’s been going on:
After a crazy rush to the finish line, we finally left our empty house on Saturday, Dec. 24, 2016. Yup, Christmas Eve.
Why did we not stay until after the holidays? After multiple delays, I could not stand to stay in the cold another week. Plus, our families seem extraordinarily fragmented this year and there were no real celebrations planned. We had dinners with various friends and relatives to wish us on our way over the last month.
All belongings were either stowed in the trailer, donated, sold, or temporarily stashed in the temperature-controlled storage unit with our motorcycles.
Yes, I know that looks like a lot.But I’ve seen photos from others who are also undergoing this lifestyle change, and trust me, it’s not that much.
Some of this stuff — cart, grill, sewing machine, bow & arrows, etc. — will hopefully join us once we buy our next trailer with more storage. Quite a lot is sentimental stuff like photos which I will scan into digital format. In about 6 months we’ll come back to Michigan and re-sort everything and probably part with 50% of it. Maybe. Maybe not.
Back to the narrative! The cleaners came and went, the realtor sign went up, we hitched up Big Red and I trailed Shawn in my little red Juke with Elvis as copilot (safely enclosed in his travel crate on the back seat).
We took two days and drove as far as Memphis. There we stayed a week so Shawn could work and we could try to catch up on sleep and de-stress a little bit. More on Memphis in the next post.
We took the following weekend to drive to San Antonio, arriving on New Year’s Eve. We plan to stay in SA for 2 months or more, getting used to RV life and exploring the area.
I tell ya, it’s really weird to watch your entire life — husband, home, possessions — travel down the road, mile after mile. Kind of mind-boggling.
We’ve actually adapted pretty quickly to sharing the space. We spar a little bit, but we are a couple that’s always spent a lot of time together, so that helps.
We still haven’t figured out where to store everything, or developed our new routines yet. And I sure as heck haven’t figured out how to do any meal planning yet with this tiny refrigerator! But that’s ok – there’s no timetable.
We’re both still amazed that THIS IS OUR LIFE now. This isn’t just a weeklong camping trip. There’s no house to go back to (well, at least once it’s sold).
I miss our friends back home, but the awful truth is that aside from a very few close friends, we’ve had more Facebook interactions than actual face time for the last couple of years. We plan to make many more new acquaintances and friends on the road as our journey unfolds.
More stories from the road to follow. Stay tuned!
Postscript: We’ve decided to sell the motorcycles – drop me a line if you know anyone looking for one/two awesome Yamaha dual sport cycles.
40 Foot House 
Glad to see you made it safe!!!
Greetings and welcome to your new life on the road. Just a small bit of advice – we generally travel 250 miles per day at 55 MPH. We try to stay at least two days when we stop. Don’t worry about planning too far in the future, unless campground reservations dictate otherwise. Stay in one spot long enough to enjoy it. I had a gentleman tell me once that they had seen Yellowstone. I asked how long they stayed there. When he replied two days, I said have you tried three weeks yet?
Let us know if we can help.
Thanks for the offer! With Shawn working full-time, we can really only explore each new area on the weekends. So if we stay in one place for 4 weeks, allowing for weekend “vacationing,” we’ll need to make up the drive time on the next weekend as we head to the next spot. So yes, we will have longer drives, but hopefully not at the rate we had to this winter. Leaving the frozen north so late in the season necessitated those 2 long weekends. We’re none the worse for it, though; I discovered that I enjoy a good audio book, and we take frequent breaks to refuel and stretch.
Any and all suggestions are welcomed! https://stuburbia.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/where-would-you-send-us/