The Most Ambitious Summer Ever.

One idyllic early spring day, we loaded up the fam and headed to our favorite sledding spot outside of Cloudcroft. The sun was streaming in the car, and the kids were actually being nice to each other. I had that delicious, drowsy, sun-drunk feeling. I may have actually been drunk because what I said next set us in motion to one of the most insanely fantastic/exhausting times in our lives. I casually mentioned, hey, wouldn’t it be cool to take off a month in the summer and drive all around the west? I only said it because ONE, I thought Jared’s work would never allow it and TWO, I was high on our life and the preciousness of our darling, well behaved children.

A little backstory for ya. Jared and I have been afflicted with wanderlust since we moved to New Mexico four years ago. It started partly because we spent two years living in 234 square feet. When you’re four deep in a camper and the weekend is looming, you gotta get out of there or someone might not make it to Monday. The other part was we wanted to show the boys the great outdoors, and discover it for ourselves. So we went everywhere we could feasibly drive in a weekend. Camping, hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, scouting, waterfall chasing (which is exceptionally difficult in New Mexico). We fell in love with the Land of Enchantment.

So back to the day of my fateful blurting, Jared was 100% in before I had the chance to backtrack. He was already making a game plan on how to convince his boss taking a month off. And I was still cheerfully playing along because I love to plan. We talked and schemed and planned the rest of the day and went to bed happy, with the promise of adventure in our future.

Then, Jared miraculously got the go ahead from his boss. At this point, I had done the math, and because I’ve been in a car with our three kids before, mapped out how far we could reasonably get each day before the boys devolved to Lord of Flies status. I tried to talk Jared into two weeks instead of the entire month of July but he couldn’t be convinced.

So a 6000 mile, 30 day journey through New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado was officially set in motion.

As if prepping for the ultimate road trip through the West wasn’t enough, we decided to buy a new house and turn our old house into an Airbnb too. We thought, “What the heck, we’re youngish, with low amounts of energy and a nine o’clock bedtime, so why not? ” And we figured that even though here 60 day closing periods are the norm, we’d still have time to move before we left on our adventure.

Wrong. Delay after delay and our final closing date was smack in the middle of our trip. The title company balked when I told them I didn’t even know what state we’d be in on the closing date. (Turns out there are mobile notaries just about anywhere, even outside of Glacier National Park who will meet you at the nearest Starbucks, notorize the twelve thousand closing docs, and send you back on your merry way within an hour. ) We just took off and figured it’ll work out.

Our trip really was the trip of a lifetime, and more literally THE trip of our lifetime because we’re aint eva going to do something that long and crazy again! There’s so much to tell and I probably lost two thirds of ya a few paragraphs ago so check back soon. I’m going to break it all down, the good, the lessons, and the nitty gritty, real life, non instagram moments.