Go! Go! Go! with the Howards

* This post hasn’t been edited yet so spare me any grammar notes. I’ll do better.

We’ve been preparing for this trip for what feels like months, but the truth is there’s a large element of unpredictability involved, so adaptation is the name of this game.

Once the house sold we had 30 days to closing – sometime around January 15 – and then another 29 days we could use to get on the road if needed, which meant we’d at least have an empty home to stay in through mid-February. Stephanie had her heart set on hitting the road almost immediately after closing, but I had a feeling the gravitational pull of California would keep us there a bit longer. It did, but given how much we accomplished from the beginning of January until today, I’m still a bit impressed we managed to leave at all.

Our first big challenge was getting the future of our belongings figured out, and so we sorted them broadly into four categories:

• Stuff we could pack and ship cross-country
• Stuff we would take with us on the road
• Stuff we might need between the time we packed, and the time we departed
• And stuff we would get rid of through any means necessary

This ontology may seem mighty orderly, but it was an organic and messy process. We had a 16 foot POD container arrive a week after accepting our buyer’s offer, and it seemed both enormous and impossibly small, but it was a start and it helped us focus – the first order of business was attempting to fill exactly one POD, which initially felt like it’d be too easy. After almost two weeks of packing, loading, and the most physically exerting game of Tetris ever, we had managed to perfectly pack and fill exactly one 16 foot container. It’s a lot of stuff, but we were mercenary about not keeping things that didn’t have either true utility value or irreplaceable emotional value. This step accomplished we scheduled the POD for pickup.

While this was going on, we were also looking for a truck – we had a lot of possibilities, but eventually settled on a few criteria:

• 3/4 ton, like a Ford F250 or a GM 2500-series
• Four door, so the backseat would be as roomy as any big car or SUV
• 4×4, because obviously
• Diesel, because they are notoriously long-lived, have enormous torque and reliability for towing, and because in the event of the apocalypse, we could put it up on blocks and use it to provide power to our commune by burning fryer oil, charcoal, and just about anything else
• Reasonable mileage, under $15,000, and in good mechanical condition

Weeks of looking lead us to a number of Ford F250 variants, but try as we might, none were just right – either the price was unreasonable, the sellers were flakey, or some other red flag came up along the way. Just as we were getting frustrated, we decided to go back to a used dealership near the house to check out their inventory, and we saw a great truck we’d previously overlooked because it didn’t exactly meet all of our requirements -not a diesel, and it had an extended cab, not the full four doors, but it started to look like a fantastic truck. A 2003 Silverado 2500HD LT with the 8.1L gas engine and heavy duty transmission, a long bed with an immaculate top, it had only 100K miles and was impeccably cared – the engine compartment is almost as clean as the spotless leather interior – and we negotiated a great price, including a decent mechanical warranty.

With a truck suitable for towing, and the POD out of the driveway, the next step was to buy a trailer. We already knew roughly what we wanted – a 20 to 24 foot toy hauler, something we could comfortably live in, with a motorcycle inside, without being too ridiculously big or pricey. It had to have the right layout for both living and cargo, a functional kitchen and bathroom, and all the systems – heater and A/C, fresh water and septic, generator, batteries, and propane – needed to work well. We surfed Craigslist constantly, and then started driving all over the southland to check them out. After striking out with several that looked way better online than in person, we finally went to see one we had spotted early on and were sold: a 24ft 2003 Ragin’ Toy Hauler. While no showroom queen, everything seemed to work, the interior was clean and well setup, and it fit all our needs perfectly, so we took her home to begin the outfitting for our trip. Naturally, there was a ton of work to do now, which I’ll cover in the next entry.

Welcome to our travelblog as the Howards – Stephanie, Roger, and Wes – document our trip across this big country, from Long Beach, CA to our new life in New Hope, PA.