Before Our Journey Begins

As promised, our new blog is now live, so friends and family can follow along on our journey! Admittedly there’s not much here yet. Which is sort of a perfect metaphor for the status of our grand adventure. There’s not much to it yet.

Just before Thanksgiving we sold our house and moved out with dreams of piling into an RV with our son (and dog and 2 cats) and traveling America! Ahead of us lay the Grand Canyon! The mighty Mississippi! The Everglades! Mini-Golf! Whoo-Hoo! Here we go!

The first leg of our Journey? Only 50 miles.

We drove 50 miles and stopped.

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And then, apparently, YOU TAKE A HUGE PAUSE.

Since we left Los Angeles we have been staying with family in Ventura, CA. That was always the plan, two-ish weeks in Ventura, then off we go! Well, first, there was Thanksgiving, then an escrow error (now resolved) that delayed our funds, a stomach flu we passed around… you know, life stuff.

The bottom line is, we didn’t get the RV, or the truck to pull it, in just two weeks like we planned…

Patience, Grasshopper.

Pointing out the reasons for not being on the road yet could be viewed as making excuses, but the truth is, this is a huge life change for all of us and there’s no need to rush. In fact, rushing and tight schedules is part of what we are getting away from. We are shedding years of living under debt, months of hard work preparing to sell our house, and those final days of moving out of our house tapped our energy completely. So, we’ve decided to stay here, with family through Christmas – to give us time to regroup, heal, and discover our momentum.

Somehow I both knew we would need this time and I forgot.

Last summer while telling friends and neighbors of our plan, I would often say that I was 100% focused on selling the house and packing up. We had a dream and a sketchy timeline… but since we couldn’t purchase the RV and truck until after we sold the house those pesky details would get sorted out after. Welcome to after.

We’re using our time to re-evaluate some of the clothing and belongings we brought and have made trips to the storage unit to pack things we don’t need, and pull out some things we won’t ever need. We’ve also been doing the deep dive into finding the right RV and truck at the right price. Plus we get to spend Christmas season at Grandma’s house! But mostly we are taking time to decompress from the stresses of the life we left behind – more time reading, walks on the beach, and soaking up some beautiful Ventura sunsets.

Sunset at San Buenaventura State Beach

Oh, and I finally sat down and got the bones of this site up and running. We promised our friends we’d blog as we traveled, and here it is – nothing fancy, but it’s a start! (I also set up our social media accounts. Feel free to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.)

And I have to say, it’s beautiful here in Ventura. If you are going to spend time healing and regrouping, this is not a bad place to do it!

But with all that behind us we are getting closer to the truck and RV and the grand journey!

Well, at least there’s a blog post…