We left our house behind on September 2nd. That was tough. Saying goodbye was very difficult. But it is not goodbye forever, We'll be back in 9 months from now for at least a little while (a month or so), so that makes it a little easier. Someone (Jamie) suggested that we have a song that we play each time we take off from a location. Since the fifth wheel had officially been named the Big Wheel, our song naturally became CCR's Proud Mary, due to the lyric "big wheel keep on turnin". Our first stop: Lynnwood Recycle Center to get weighed. Now that we have downsized from 2150 square feet plus an oversized 2 car garage down to ~391 square feet (which, by the way, takes approximately 1100 hours or so), now it is time to see how we did. Turns out we came quite close: over by 359 pounds. Which means that we had to downsize an additional 10% or so... not too bad. Some of the items that were easy to let go of: one of the two 20 pound dumbbells, one of the 8 pound dumbbells, one 5 pounder, both 3 pounders. Also we then downsized our 50 pounds of dehydrated survival food (beans, oatmeal, powdered milk, etc) that we bought from Costco a few years ago down to 12 pounds. Of the croquet set, badminton, and tennis rackets, we got rid of the croquet set. Many other things had to go and really we had it to loose. Plenty of "maybe" items that made their way onto the Big Wheel but didn't have a place and were not as useful as we once thought they would be. Anyways, after a week in Mom and Dad's driveway in Auburn, WA, it was time to hit the road. Couldn't find a place to dump the tanks until we got over the pass to Cle Elem. And it turns out the bumper mounted receiving hitch to bicycle rack, with 4 bikes on it is not a good way to carry the bikes. It gets bouncing back there way too much. The bikes got pretty beat up coming over Snoqualmie pass, and we lost one. I had just been depending on the two flexible straps to hold in each bike. But once we lost a bike, I pulled out the ratcheting straps to lock them down tight. Even then I lost the front wheel off of another bike the next day. After a bit of research as I write this 3 weeks later, looks like the best way to mount the bikes is on top of the cab of the truck, but that set up is going to cost us about $1150 new so we are trying to find the Yakima Q-tower, Q clips, 58 inch cross bars, and 4 bike racks on craigslist or ebay but no luck yet. Anyways, we spent a night near Coeur d'alene Idaho, in the driveway of a family friend. They foster kittens so the girls were in heaven. There is nothing quite so cute and lovable to a young girl than a baby kitten. Puppies are a close second. We had previously made reservations for a time share stay a week before Amanda's sister's wedding, where Amanda is the maid of honor, Natalie is a junior bridesmaid, and Ashley is a flower girl (later turned glitter girl). With taking a voluntary layoff from Boeing which was basically an offer that I couldn't refuse, my last day was set so we had 9 days to get down to San Antonio. We honestly thought that this wouldn't be too difficult, being that I had made this drive (albeit in the opposite direction) in 4 days with the same truck and Big Wheel earlier this summer. But that was with 3 adults, no children. We have 2 adults and 3 kids, so we are officially out numbered. The passenger seat is officially the hot seat. It is action packed with keeping the kids entertained, leading up games, finding interesting things nearby on the internet, managing food and drinks, etc. This is where the Garmin really came in handy. I don't think the co-pilot could have handled that extra responsibility. Each time it was my turn to drive it was a bit of a relief. Each day was supposed to take about 5-6 hours of driving. And each day it inevitably ended up taking us 8 hours. Each morning we would leave sometime between 11am and noon. This is not leisure time, but it is spent eating breakfast, getting everyone ready, cleaned up, stowed away, then getting the outside disconnected and stowed. Then it is nearly lunch time so pack a lunch up so we don't have to stop for so long, go pee one more time before we go, and finally "Big Wheel keep on turnin". So we tended to roll-in at each stop right before or right after sunset, around 7 to 8pm. And twice we lost an hour on the way over (sort of not fair, but an investment, I suppose, since were coming back). Our three nights and two days in West Yellowstone were awesome though. The south entrance was closed due to fires, but it snowed the first night and we woke up to snow in the park for my and the kids' first ever day in Yellowstone. Luckily Amanda had convinced me to bring our winter gear with us. I had vacuum packed and tucked away most of it into the depths of the Big Wheel just a few weeks prior, but was glad we had it now. Gloves, hats, heavy coats, boots, all were needed. Back in Everett we owned 4 umbrellas. Amanda wanted to bring all 4 of them and I convinced her that that was too much, we would only need one. Well when we were walking the boardwalk at the Mid Geyser Basin and there was sideways snow, she let me have the umbrella because Jovie fell asleep and I was carrying her. Needless to say we wished we had all 4 umbrellas. But of the tens of thousands of objects that were evaluated one at a time during the downsizing process we haven't run into very many things that we have needed that we got rid of (maybe less than 5 after 3 weeks). It is a testament to the hard work that Amanda put into getting us ready to go. When we left West Yellowstone, the closures in the park forced us to exit via East Yellowstone, down through Cody, Wyoming, through the Wind River Canyon and into Shoshoni, Wyoming. That was certainly the most beautiful of any of our 7 days of traveling. We stayed at Raspberry deLight Farm through Harvest Host. After some back and forth consulting about how I would maneuver the Big Wheel and where exactly to place it, and needing my 4-wheel drive for the first time through the compacted fields, we were set. The girls picked corn on the cob for dinner and picked raspberries for a pie they made later that night. One of the three videos below is from the farm. Then we pressed on to Loveland, CO, the next night, Capulin, New Mexico, the next night, then Sweetwater, Texas, the following night and finally Canyon Lake, Texas. By the time we got to Loveland we were all getting tired of being in the truck. The girls were champs about it though. We listened to several audiobooks (The Last Battle, The Jungle Book, Come on Sea Biscuit). The last 1 or 2 hours of the drive each day were always the most difficult. So if the drives would have actually taken just 5 to 6 hours then our drives would have been just fine. By the time we reached Canyon Lake, our final destination, we all promised we would never drive so long in such a short amount of time again. But we were here, and it was time to store the Big Wheel and stay in our timeshares for the next 19 days. We reserved the 3 timeshares (in Canyon Lake, then Lake Travis, then Galveston) long before we even considered full time RVing, so we kept the reservations. A video camera and mobile hotspot allow me to keep an eye on the Big Wheel while I am away, which is pretty cool. - Brian Natalie: In Idaho we met kittens and they were so cute. When I grow up I want to have 2 kittens at all times and 2 cats. We saw the colorful pools in Yellowstone and they were pretty cool. I helped pick and wash raspberries and then we had a raspberry pie. In Colorado we played in a big cool playground. In New Mexico we saw a red moon. We saw a ton of windmills in Texas. Ashley: There were kittens in Idaho and they were cute. One of the kittens was clawing and playing with my sock. They were super cute. I could have stayed and played with the cute kittens for two days but we had to leave after one day. It was snowing in Yellowstone. Some of the snow falling off of the trees landed right in front of my face. We got to see a waterfall bigger than Snoqualmie Falls. There was a coyote in Yellowstone. Then we went to a raspberry farm and we ate corn on the cob that we picked and we got it for free because we were staying there. We got raspberry sugar from their store. We listened to the Frozen Soundtrack so many times that we got bored of it, but it was Jovie's favorite and she would say "drink of frozen again" so we kept playing it over and over. When we got to Texas it was 95 degrees. Amanda: Pretty crazy going into Yellowstone that first day...the visibility was pretty low at some points and we certainly couldn't see out to the mountains that were around us. The buffalo pictured below looked like a bear to me when he first stepped out of the woods and onto the road in front of us...there was a slight moment of terror! Old Faithful was slightly anticlimactic in front of a totally white snow-scape....white on white on white.... Yet driving around in the cold with the steam all around certainly pointed out the fact that we were on a volcano...simply amazing! The girls earned their Junior Ranger badges and received a cool wooden pin marking the 100th anniversary of the National Parks. The Every Kid in a Park program for 4th graders and their families saved us $90 in entrance fees over our time visiting. It is very strange coming back from such adventures to the comfort and familiarity of our own home, no matter where we are. I saw an oil rig for the first time in Wyoming. In Sweetwater, TX, we saw windmills as far as the eye could see. We also saw the pieces of one being driven on oversized load trucks...those blades are behemoth! The day time mosquitos are buggers in Canyon Lake, TX. I tried a mosquito bracelet and the darn mosquitos bit me right next to it...! My good bug spray that I researched (Sawyer Picaridin) seems to be doing an okay job...I think they are just excited for some fresh meat?? Jovie: Let it go! Let it go! Let it go! For the first time in forever... The cold never bothered me anyway. Plop.
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AuthorBrian - Health Coach, You Better Health Archives
December 2016
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