Great Expectations

“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations 

 And so a journey begins, with one memorable day. This was our day, May 17, 2019.

Look Grandma, a heart-shaped rock!

 Expectation: noun /ˌekspekˈtāSH(ə)n/   1. A strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.    2. A belief that someone will or should achieve something.

 
When setting out on a new journey, what expectations, or "beliefs about what you will or should achieve", do you tend to have? Ambitious? Realistic? High? Low? Hopeful? Fearful? Excited? Curious? A jumbled mix of all of these seems only natural. But the expectations we have tend to shape the journeys we take in interesting and vital ways.

Hitched and ready!

One defining expectation we had in mind, now in hindsight I can see more clearly, was that our journey was not about the destinations. It was about learning to live more intentionally together. I know "intentional" is a bit of a buzzword lately, but it's one I happen to really like. For us it meant: choosing our stops based on the experiences we wanted to have rather than on packing in as many visits to cool places as possible. For example, we'd rather stay longer in places - not sightseeing at all - because we need some days to work on relationships, personal goals, habits, just down time. It meant that when problems happened, we'd stop and deal with them. It would mean adding something into our plan last minute because we felt led to try it. It meant not having our itinerary planned out to the day or minute. Open and yet defined. My kind of travel. And how grateful I am now that we set those kind of expectations. Our trip did NOT go according to plan in some big ways, but even though we haven't traveled in the RV in nearly five months, I very much still consider our journey open ended and ongoing, in a more stationary kind of way for now. More on that later.

Of course there were some general goals and hopes that we were hoping to achieve (mentioned in last week's post), and some parameters we set for ourselves ahead of time (e.g. avoid driving at night, stick to stretches less than 300 miles a day, alternate 'travel days' and longer stops to enjoy more of the 'slow travel feel' as much as possible). But in general, we just planned to stay super flexible.

C was Nate's right hand man when it came to hooking up.

Another thing we invested in was good quality bike racks. Having a way to be mobile beyond our mobile home proved to be well worth it. We kept our kitchen supplies pretty bare bones, sticking to one plate and set of utensils per person, a few cooking tools, and just three appliances: the Instant Pot, a stick blender and the microwave for when we could plug in to electricity. I scoured websites and blogs for ideas of meals would be very basic but healthy and had a good pantry of basics. Clothes were very limited - each child had two plastic storage cubes for their week's worth of clothes. We had a clothesline, plastic bags, soap and quarters for laundry. One fast drying microfiber towel and washcloth per person. We had essential school supplies and some favorite books. Toys and personal items were almost nil, basically whatever they could fit in a backpack.

There was still a lot to do inside the trailer organizationally, but since we needed to get to our first reserved campsite at Half Moon Bay in two days, we let it go and trusted that we would just figure it out as we went.

So, finally, after preparing for weeks and months, by the time the RV was finally all packed and the house cleaned up on Thursday, it was of course too late in the day to actually start driving. So we decided to just kick things off by camping in our own driveway - a perfect first campsite! And it gave me a chance to throw in one more load of laundry in the comfort of my home that night and grab those last forgotten items in the morning.

Our first provisioning stop

We woke in our own backyard on an overcast Friday in May, made sure everything was hooked up right and the 'moving' checklist complete, then excitedly pulled out, honking at our friends and relatives as we drove past! Nate asked me to ride (illegally) in the trailer for a few minutes to get a sense for how things would rattle or crash as we drove. Not too bad. The borrowed electric keyboard stayed safe (phew), and we made some adjustments to a few little things like the trash can.

 I had downloaded a few apps to help with locating campsites, especially free ones for boondocking. Thank goodness we had already tried this out once in a rental with my brother and his family the year before, so it wasn't a total lifestyle shock for us. Since we didn't know exactly how far we would get that first night I found a few options along our planned route. We settled on an out-of-the-way place on BLM land right off the freeway in Carlin Canyon, Nevada that looked nice and quiet for our first offical campsite. It was kind of windy and cold that first night but we were just glad to finally be on our way! We tried to avoid using the water as much as possible that first day since we were newbies and not looking forward to dumping anytime soon.

The rock face next to our site provided ample climbing terrain for restless legs

The next morning we took our time getting up and organized, made oatmeal for breakfast, and then we decided we'd get bikes out. We'd read on Campendium about a dirt bike trail up ahead, so me and the boys pent some time exploring the canyons right by the campsite. It was awesome to put the bikes to use right away both on the very quiet road and on the dirt trails up the canyon! It was such a lucky find!

Ahh! A room with a view! Such a glorious campsite to start our journey.

In the 15 hours we were there we saw only one other car drive by!

"So much scope for the imagination!" - Anne of Green Gables

We're right on track, X marks the spot!

This was B's first time trying to pedal a bike with training wheels!

Adventures with my biking buddies

It was hard to leave! We loved Carlin Canyon and would have loved to stay another day or two and just explore (boy did we get used to that feeling with each place we stayed!) After such a huge push to just get out the door it felt nice to just unwind and explore a bit. But, we did have a reservation to meet (one of the few we ever booked in advance), so it was time to move on.

We felt SO blessed to finally be living our little dream. Next stop, Granite Bay, CA.

Day 1 Summary: 326 miles from Blackfoot, ID to Carlin Canyon, NV. 

View of mountains in our new 'backyard' - does it get any better? Well,  except maybe the ocean...stay tuned!

We left our campsite with a cairn and heart shaped rock mosaic (in honor of my Mom).