The Home Stretch to Alternative Living

September 9, 2018 - The start of our grand adventure! The remainder of summer flew by as our departure date grew near. Shortly after we moved into the new rig, I was scheduled to fly to D.C. for a few days for work. I enjoyed traveling for work. While I wouldn’t want to live in the D.C. area, I found it incredibly beneficial to have periods of face to face time with my teammates and coworkers on the east coast. This trip was extra exciting because I was finally going to let the cat out of the bag and share the details of our travel plans.

When I started my time with the company, I never intended for it to become a career. It was something to cover the bills right after we relocated to Eugene. But, while my job title changed a few different times over the course of our time in Eugene, the company I worked with did not. It is the longest I have worked anywhere and I hadn’t expected tears when I shared my new plans. Sure, on the last day, I figured I’d get a bit choked up… but all of the planning I did for telling my boss of our plans flew straight out the window when I opened my mouth to say “I’m going to be leaving the company.” The look on my boss’ face completely caught me off guard and I hurriedly explained that it was for a really good, exciting reason, with tears streaming down my face.

Initially, my boss and I discussed looking into alternative work schedules to try and accommodate our travel and still work with the company. But as I thought about it, I really didn’t know how travel would work for us; when I would have reliable internet and cell service, and what our travel style would be like to even know if we could find a balance between the two. I wanted to leave the company on a positive note, increasing my chances of returning, should that be the plan in the future. And I didn’t want to add complexities to this alternative lifestyle as we were getting the hang of things. Once we learned our travel style, then we could see what flexibility there would be to fit working hours into our weeks.

Despite the hustle of getting ready to leave, I made sure to take advantage of the RV Park’s hot tub a few times!

And so, the timeline became clear. We would roll out of town on September 9, 2018, with our first destination being Crater Lake. (For those who don’t know - we lived in Eugene for almost 9 years and never made the 3.5 hour drive to see it!) Our last day of work would be Friday, September 7th and we decided to fit in a Grand Adventure Bon Voyage party on September 8th, for one last opportunity to see friends in town.

When I was a kid, we traveled for a bit on a sailboat. Our departure ended up being a move from the permanent moorage slip to the guest dock before we actually sailed out of the area, but it counted because we were no longer tied to a home slip.  For this departure, I was determined to leave town for real on September 9th. There is something about giving up a physical address that makes you feel like you need to provision for a trip to Mars. In my preparations, I stocked up on almost anything I could think of because I felt like I wouldn’t have the opportunity to buy it once we left. Logically, I knew this wasn’t the case, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

I spent hours arranging our basement storage to make sure that everything fit and had a safe place during transit. Then, Scott brought home all of his tools from the work van on September 7th… and I had to start over on the basement organization. The space I had set aside for the tools wasn’t going to cut it, which I should have anticipated seeing as his work van wasn’t just full of standard electrical supplies. In the end, we identified a few additional items that we could leave behind to make room for his tools, with the added bonus that we were heavier but lighter all at the same time.

Trying to figure out where we could fit Scott’s tools... 😳

Some would say I was crazy to try and fit in a bon voyage party on the one free day between finishing work and driving out of town. While it didn’t go completely as I had imagined (I wanted to have the rig at the party location so that we could do an open house of sorts), I am so glad we carved out the time to pause from preparations and see our friends. I think we may have had more people at the party than we had at our wedding reception, which I say only because it really highlighted the fact that Eugene had become our home. We arrived in town with no contacts, no jobs, and no place to live, and in 8.5 incredibly short years, we had managed to find a community that appreciated our friendship as much as we did theirs, and it was enough to get them to spare a few hours in the middle of their weekend to stop by and say hi/so long.

And suddenly, this thing that I had been dreaming of/pushing Scott about for the past 4 years was here. And, no, we weren’t ready. The reorganization of the basement took up way more time than I had to give it, so the morning of Sunday, September 9th arrived with a laundry list of things to accomplish before we could hook up and drive away (yeah, laundry was on the list). My goal was to be out of the RV park by the 11:00 AM check out, but it quickly became apparent that we wouldn’t make it in time.

Ultimately, we didn’t pull out of the RV park until about 2:00 PM, and thankfully they didn’t mind. We still had a few stops to make in town before we were officially on the road around 3:30 PM, but that didn’t matter - we were on the road! Crater Lake bound! Let the lifestyle alternative begin!