It’s begun!  The journey part that is.  For those that don’t know we’re currently living in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho for the month of July and starting in August I’ll be taking 2 months off work where we’ll be doing a road trip with the goal of reaching somewhere cool in Mexico.  The steps leading up to this journey started months ago and that’s really what this first post is about.  This journey began months ago, and there were so many things that had to happen to even begin.

Around February Kim and I began talking about traveling abroad with the kids – again.  This is something we’ve both known we wanted to do since before we had kids.  And something we’ve already been doing to some degree with Geneveve since she’s been born on trips up to 3 weeks long including Alaska, Hawaii, Thailand, Vermont, Florida and more.  But a longer trip with young kids had been a “someday” kind of thing that was too overwhelming to consider when Xena was so young that even 15 minute car rides resulted in wailing and screaming.  However, Xena had begun to tolerate the car, those Portland winter doldrums had set in and I was feeling antsy for a big adventure now that life with the kids had started to become less hectic and manageable.  So we decided that this was the year we’d take a bigger trip.

Thus began the planning phase.  There was so much to do that we resorted to what I do for work: tracking what needed to be done with “tickets” on a “board”.  We used Trello and started brainstorming all things we had to do such as vaccinations (us, kids, dog), checkups, car tune up, arranging things with my work, making sure we had the correct gear, and perhaps biggest of all renting out our house.  We figured if we were going to be gone for an extended period we might as well make some money from rent.

Getting the house prepped to rent was a massive undertaking.  It’s been almost 7 years in this house and between that amount of time and having 2 kids we had a *lot* of stuff we didn’t have when we moved in.  Kim started purging things months in advance, first maybe a bag of stuff every week or so, then by the last month literally car loads every week.  We started eating through our freezer and pantry, so Kim got pretty good at meal planning to fit what we had available.  We sold some stuff, mostly on craigslist, and more and more on nextdoor, and gave away a lot more including clothes, furniture, food, small appliances and more.  Going through and getting rid of stuff like that is one of the more freeing things I can think of.  It’s like a burden has been lifted off me that I didn’t know existed.  However, it’s also one of the more exhausting and draining things I can think of.  It requires a lot of mental energy to think through what we actually need and use, and what has just somehow accumulated and sat unused for years.

Anyway, last week we did it.  We packed almost all our stuff we wouldn’t need for the trip into storage, and loaded up a u-haul trailer to take to my parent’s house.  Kim’s parents actually came to visit a few weeks before we left which helped give Kim kid free time to continue the purging.  And then my parents came the week of the move and helped with the kids, the moving and much more.  Thank goodness for family help.  Even with all that help we hired someone from Task Rabbit for 4 hours to help pack, and all this time didn’t even include the cleaning needed to get the house rental ready since we hired people to do that after we moved out.  We also have someone managing our property while we’re gone.  It really took a lot of people and time to get this done.  There were so many details and little roadblocks (kids getting sick, trailer lights not working when I picked it up, lease negotiations, minor house repairs) that I couldn’t begin to mention them all, I’m just glad that we persevered through it all to get where we are now.

Phew.  So I’m working remotely this month, and next month the actual road trip begins.  We only have a vague outline of what that trip will be.  We’re pretty sure we want to go see the Grand Canyon on the way to Mexico.  Other than that very few details have been decided upon yet in terms of route or itinerary.  This month we’ll be starting to make that plan, but since we’ll be in a car with a decent chunk of time part of the appeal of this trip is that it’ll be somewhat open and flexible, and more about enjoying some slower time with family than about getting to the next stop on an itinerary.

In a way this whole plan didn’t feel real to me until I walked through my empty house and got in our loaded up car to begin the trip.  Now that it’s begun and it feels real I’m less overwhelmed by all the preparation and very excited.