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The First Weekend

13/05/2015 | Comments: 0 | Posted by: modgeos | In: Adventure, Car Living, Food

The points we’ve hit from 5/1 – 5/5 are Star Command (our casa in Utah) >> Capitol Reef, UT >> Bryce Canyon, UT >> Henrieville, UT >> Zion National Park, UT >> Kanab, UT, Grand Canyon, AZ >> Flagstaff, AZ

Since we’ve hit the road we’ve slept in the car twice, stayed with friends/family twice, eaten dried and rehydrated refried beans, creamy pasta, peanut butter & honey, summer sausage and crackers, water, sour gummy worms, apples, bananas, and pistachios. (Not a bad gig.)

We are enjoying being on this trek, and surprised it’s really (finally) happening. We spent months specifically planning this trip, and who knows how many years we individually looked forward to such a journey.

The weather has been cool and rainy in spots. We love our perscription sunglasses to combat the brilliant sun.

The roof top carrier had trouble locking securely, but once we had a second opinion, we figured it was just more stuff than the front portion could handle. We pulled some things out from the top and kept it in the main portion of the car and all seems to be well.

A major thing we look forward to doing is finding a place for each item we have in our car-home. We brought a few extra items with us to take to C’s family’s home. Once that stuff is out and put away it should be a breeze putting things in a proper place.

When we took off, we felt good about the amount of food, clothes, camera gear, toiletries, and medicine that we had packed. We did a nice job planning ahead and down-sizing appropriately.

C has been doing some work for a hospital-grade mattress company. They were so generous to provide a specially-made, Intellibed mattress for us. It is a dream. Prior to this we had planned to sleep on a king-size memory foam folded in half. We have both with us so we can leave the old one at C’s place. Having both stacked on top of each other to sleep on is a bit of a joke. We have a lot less wiggle room and the ceiling of the car is closer than before.

We feel like the real adventure will begin once we leave Flagstaff. Though we’ve been getting used to car-life for the last couple days, the general areas we’ve gone through have been familiar. Once we head toward New Mexico all bets are off and we’ll really be off into the unknown.

The Plan

01/04/2015 | Comments: 0 | Posted by: modgeos | In: Adventure, Car Living, Food, Plans & Prep

When we talk with people about the trip, often their first question is, “Wow, where are going to go?” Followed quickly by, “Are you going to hit all fifty states?” We’d love to share with you the sketch-of-a-plan we have for your reading pleasure.

First: We are going to travel in a counterclockwise loop from Arizona > New Mexico > Texas > Louisiana, and on from there. Our trip will then take us north along the eastern states to Prince Edward Island in Canada, back across the US (following the perimeter) from Wisconsin > Washington > California, and home. This will take us roughly 15 weeks.

Second: As you may have interpreted from the above explanation, no, we will not be hitting all fifty states. A) because Hawaii and Alaska are pretty tough to tackle, and B) we are focusing on the diverse continental US loop, hitting as many unique and wonderful places as we can with the time that we have.

We have friends that have asked to come along for pieces of the journey. We’re calling these friends “hop ons.” We’re stoked to shares portions of our trip with them. We also have friends (sometimes friends of friends) who have graciously left open invitations for us to stop by their homes as we pass through their city for a nice place to sleep and/or a yummy meal or two. We cannot express how grateful we are for the sincere kindnesses that have already been shown to us.