Beauty in the Backwoods: How we arrived in The Great Northwest Part Two (On the road)

Everything we own is packed in those two trailers and vehicles that are gassed up and ready to hit the road. The thought of wrecking and all of our belongings being scattered all over the highway terrified me. I had nightmares about it. Running off the road going down a steep mountain haunted me until the day we arrived. I couldn’t sleep while we were on the road to save my life. I look at these pictures today and think, how crazy it sounded to people that we sold everything we couldn’t fit in those two trailers, quit my good government job, all to chase a dream of living a more sustainable life. The life of not being reliant upon the government, the grocery store, the water department, and living off the grid was a dream that we're determined to make a reality. We longed to find a piece of land we could call ours, land we could build a log cabin on, grow our own food, raise our own animals, the simple life, so many of us have forgotten about or don’t know. Keeping up with the Jones’ is a life we no longer want or cared about. The decision we made to leave Oklahoma was a good decision for us and God blessed our family with planting that seed.

Moving day finally arrived. We pulled out before the sunrise to get as much driving in before it got too hot. My husband’s cousin and his son drove the '72 Blazer and my husband, Billy, drove the Tundra. Billy still gets tickled to this day remembering that first day on the road. He forgot to turn the heater valves off in the Blazer his cousins were driving and by that afternoon the outside temp was over 100 degrees, even higher in the truck with the heater on. By the time we stopped that afternoon, due to the heat, he was exhausted. We got our rooms and he was so tired he didn’t even go eat with us or take a shower. He collapsed on the bed and slept all night. Poor guy.

On the second day, we headed out early again, this time Billy turned the heater valves off in the Blazer, so they wouldn’t burn up. Oh, how he would regret that, for that very afternoon we hit snow and by the time we stopped for the night, Billy’s cousins were freezing to death in the Blazer. The heater was turned off… Oops!

On the third day, Billy’s cousin had figured out the trick to the heater and he made sure that didn’t happen again. We had a good start that morning and thought we could possibly make it by night fall. Unfortunately we had a blow out on the trailer we were pulling, so we pulled over as far as we could get off the Interstate to change it. That was the good thing about traveling in pairs. You just never knew what would happen. The rim was warped so we found the nearest Wal-Mart and purchased two spare rims and tires for the trailers.