To be eating together, healthy, in such a beautiful place, at the beginning of such a big adventure, is a tremendous blessing in any year, and an overwhelming one in 2020.

As a result of the Purple tier, many private parks and nearly all state park campgrounds are closed. There is a curfew from 10pm-5am, and nearly all nonessential business are closed. This has made travel through California very challenging, as they intend. Nobody should be coming here from out of state just for fun. Of course, we're from out of state, but we can't exactly go back home.

Saturday we headed south, finally leaving familiar freeways and taking I-5 to Cave Junction by way of Grants Pass and OR-199. This was a significant travel day, as now, free of obligations in the northwest, we could truly go somewhere new! I've traveled by car down I-5 to California several times, but never like this. I've no recollection of Cave Junction or this corner of Oregon. I know I've been to the Redwoods once, but nobody else with us has. This - this is something truly new.

We went to bed Friday not knowing what would come next. In the morning we would get a call, and we would find out which way we would point our wheels that day.

Having the cats cry for hours in the truck was very hard, and I moved quickly on Monday to ask at work if there was someone willing to take them for a year while we travel. It is something of a long shot of an ask, so we weren't hoping for much, but it was definitely worth trying. They really hated driving.

While our time in Seattle was busy with maintenance and fixing stuff, working was made easier by a proper desk and wifi (though masked Zoom meetings are weird), and I at least felt really comforted by just being home. It's been nearly a year since I saw my parents, and they were so happy to have us, so welcoming and helpful, it filled my heart to be there. We're doing some crazy stuff this year, and doing it alongside them helped me feel like I was launching from solid ground.

By the time we were connected and ready to roll, I was feeling right in the middle. I imagined this moment for a long time. We're all here, our home on our backs as it were, ready to leave Portland on a long adventure. What a crazy opportunity! What glorious potential! How momentous a move! But the morning was wet, and hectic, and the to-do list is long, and the cats are yowling. It's not like the videos, or the plans. It doesn't feel momentous, just momentary. We prayed, we high-fived, and I carefully pulled out of the site.

We severely underestimated how much stuff we really had in the house. We also overestimated how much of it would fit, even in 40 feet.

We spent our first night in the RV, just right on the street by our house, and nobody slept that well but hey, we did it! That was the easy part. Now everything else has to come in, and do so in time for us to hitch up (for only the second time), load the cats (for one of their few drives), navigate out of the neighborhood (much harder than getting in), and drive our new home with all our possessions down the road.

After about 30 minutes of sweaty backing and turning, the daylight was fading fast. It was time to leave the farm.

Based on my extensive experience watching YouTube, I can tell RV living has plenty of challenges. I did not expect the moving out part to be quite so strange. Nobody makes thrilling videos with the scenery of empty rooms, moving trucks, and storage units. As the stock music swells, and you dream of home contractor bids and beautifully clean carpets, the dream of travel... is far from your mind.

Here’s our 2019 F450 Platinum - we call her Sheila - and Solitude (as yet unnamed) that will be our movable home for the next year or so! Just gotta finish all that pesky moving in…