We set a target leave date of March 1, 2023. Aaron did have to be at his company’s office in Freemont, CA by March 15. That gave us 2 weeks to spend some time in Louisiana with family and friends and get from the east coast out to the west coast. Tentatively, we planned our route and started saying goodbye to the house we knew and had called home for the past seven years. And as we said goodbye, we also started to say hello to our future of freedom and the unknown.
A week before our leave date, I completely moved into the camper. Boy am I glad I did! It gave us some time to figure out the functionality of living in a much smaller space and after a few days, we made some changes. We added shelves in a closet, found that a mattress topper actually worked more comfortably under than on top of the thin camper mattress, added hooks inside doors, added finishing touches and bought decorative pillows. After 30ish years together, I was surprised to find out that Aaron is quite picky about decorative pillows. TJ Maxx didn’t have what we wanted, neither did HomeGoods, Walmart, Bed Bath and Beyond, Ross or Hobby Lobby. We did find some cool arrows at Hobby Lobby that we hung in the bedroom. A few days later Aaron and I ventured to Target. Finally! We went with a sunshine and rainbows feel with a lizard pillow thrown in for good measure. The inside of our Airstream was quite brown and grey. We needed some color to liven it up and make it feel like a home, because home it was becoming.
February 27 came along and we were ready to go. The kids had settled into the house, we were settled in our rolling house and anxious to get started. Originally, we had planned on making the drive from Florida to Louisiana in one day. After talking it over, we decided that was not the best idea. So, I booked a spot at a campground about 4 hours from our launching point and we left the next day, February 28. A whole day early!!! And the journey began.
Lesson learned…checklists only work if you utilize them. Aaron loves his plants, and I have the black thumb of death. We had these 2 cute dog shaped planters with tiny air plants in them on a ledge above the table and sofa. Guess who forgot to take them down and secure them? You guessed it, black thumb of death strikes again. One of the poor doggie planters lost 3 of his legs and the plant didn’t fare too well either. The other escaped unharmed, that time.
We settled in for the evening, enjoyed the lovely Three Rivers State Park and relaxed. We both agreed that driving 3-4 hours (according to Google Maps) made for a long enough day, as we had to stop multiple times for work calls, gas, and restroom breaks. It was more like five to six hours in total. We prepared our dinner, toasted our new journey, went to bed. Ready to move on the next day.
Wandering Cindi 