How We Got here: Part 1

We're currently in Houston. been here since October when we decided to take the plunge and landed here at the insistence of our friend, Sean. Prior to that we had been on the road for the majority of the summer, in an interesting  albeit less than financially profitable experience  The prior two summers we traveled to Alaska to work and did pretty well both times, with an epic road trip to the Kenai Peninsula and back from Deep South Texas in a Kia Sportage towing a small teardrop trailer.

Along the twelve thousand driving miles that summer, we both were captivated with the enormity and shear majesty of the continent west of the Rockies. It was a resonant chord in us both, and for me a reconnection with the high, wide open space I loved and lived in so long ago. You can literally become a road nomad in these wide open spaces, traveling from one mind boggling vista to another in an infinite suspension of time as we understand it. The lure was instantly as strong as any I have ever experienced. It was one of an intense, relentless criss crossing of the intricate spiderweb of roads in this beautiful land, in order to  hedonistically consuming its beauty.

In the spring of 2019 our friend Sean, who knew of our newly found nomadic lifestyle offered for our consideration a position running a storage unit for him in exchange for rent and utilities in an, as he described it "nice trailer", a house trailer in the Pasadena area of Houston. He said he was simply throwing the idea out there because he knew how much we detested big cities like Houston. We chatted about it on several occasions. Although we rarely got to see Sean in the recent years, we were never more than a frequent phone call away from each other and through the years we shared common interests in thing like surfing, sailing , fishing, hunting and ranching. A warm kinship developed over the course of decades which found us musing about being road nomads. Seemed like a comparable progression for those of us who are seekers, searchers, the not easily satisfied. 

Over the course the summer of 2019, from Wyoming to Washington, through Montana, Idaho and ultimately south, back to Texas we traveled the majority of the summer with our teardrop until we decided to look for a larger  trailer no bigger than 22 feet, to upgrade our living conditions. In Yellowstone we had worked for a short while using the teardrop and an attached SUV tent as well as a pop up shelter for a regular third world situation. It was adequate, we even have a propane heated portable shower and a port-poti to round out the gypsy camp. We had by this time decided to work from the road, maybe swing over to North Dakota and work the sugar beet harvest in the fall.

When we located a 1994 Wilderness 22 foot trailer in Rexburg Idaho, we closed the book and paid for her after a precursory once over. We loaded all of our things from the teardrop aboard the old girl, left the teardrop in storage there in Rexburg and began the process of getting ready to cover the miles. Tires were in good shape and fairly new, heavy ply so I really didn't worry much about that. There were other issues to attend to, hitch, equalizers and sway bar to name a few so for the next week we remained in a small municipal park on the western edge of town with the greatest name ever, Beaver Dick. 

Heading south through Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and into Texas to frighteningly increasing temperatures we rolled east of the divide heading to South Texas to visit family and do some upgrades to the blacktop conestoga. Descending from 6 thousand feet average, where we had spent the majority of the summer among the mountains forests and streams down into the featureless dusty Texas flatland was an experience.