Chapter 2 - The Maiden Voyage

In my last post I mentioned what inspired us to ditch everything we own and hit the road, besides the popular belief that we are experiencing a midlife crisis. Which we're not.  I think.

But today I'm going to start by talking about one of the key things that is making this new lifestyle even possible for us... telecommuting.

For most of the last decade my jobs have allowed me to work remotely from home, which is an amazing perk to have.  Except that it shouldn't be amazing!  It SHOULD be the norm, but that's a different topic for a different day.  The important thing is that as long as I have an internet connection I can do my job, which allows me the freedom to do it pretty much anywhere in the world (i.e. Hawaii, Las Vegas, in the passenger seat heading down Route 66)... provided I work during CST hours that is.

So, once the last of our kids had moved out there was really nothing preventing Charli and me from hauling anchor and moving on.  Which is where I left off with my previous post.

Dec 13, 2014

Since then, here's what we've been to: 

A slow ride to Vegas

Because our son Brandon wanted our living room couches, we decided to wrap them up, put them in our utility trailer and hand them off to him in Las Vegas where we all met up for Christmas. However, because this trailer had little baby wheels, I had to keep the speed down to 60 mph the entire 1600 miles, which also meant that I needed to stay off the interstates and take only state and county highways.

A fun side note... while driving through Colorado, we spent an entire day creeping down a 2-lane road in a raging blizzard at 30 mph, until we finally gave up and got a room in La Junta because we (and our Prius) just couldn't take it anymore.

A  very Vegas Christmas

Rosie and Charli at Red Rock Canyon

Why Christmas in Las Vegas?  Simple... it was a convenient meeting spot for our boys to drive to since one lives in Phoenix and the other in southern CA, and Rosie had to fly in from Hawaii anyway so it didn't matter where she ended up.  And to make it even more special, our bonus son DJ drove all the way out to Las Vegas by himself to make our family Christmas complete.

So yeah, we did the nightlife thing and it was awesome. Cirque du
Soleil's Mystère was beyond amazing and the magic of downtown Vegas did not disappoint.  But it was the day trips out to Red Rock Canyon National Conservatory, Valley of Fire State Park and Hoover Dam/Lake Mead that really made it special.

Here we hiked for miles, found ancient native American petroglyphs, toured the inside of Hoover Dam and even walked on the dried up bed on part of Lake Mead. These are the things that balance out the neon and make the Las Vegas area a truly amazing place to visit.

Eastbound!

Finally after 2 wonderful weeks with all our children, including our boys' wonderful girlfriends, it was time to turn the car around and head out to Connecticut to start our 3 month house sitting gig in South Kent.  But along the 4 day journey we also had the opportunity to meet up with many friends and family!

First we stopped in St. Louis where we spent an evening with Charli's dad, brother and sister-in-law. Then the next day we had lunch in Indianapolis with Ray, my very best friend who used to live next door to us in St. Cloud for many years. On the third night we met up with Brenda and Lauren in Akron, OH... old friends from waaaay back, who we actually met the first time 24 years ago in our prenatal birthing class!


Finally on our last day on the road we had lunch with my good blogging buddy Kathy and her niece at a cool restaurant in Pennsylvania!





Which leads us to here and now... at a beautiful house nestled in the foothills of the Berkshires on the Housatonic River, just a few miles from the Appalachian trail. A dream come true for house sitting types like us.

Coming up next: Chapter 3 - Beauty and the Beasts