How it Began with Three Drinks on a Sunday

Impetuous? Perhaps.

Bold? Yes

Scary? Uh… definitely.

When you sell almost everything you own and jam the rest into a storage unit, and then actually admit those facts to people, you get a variety of responses. Overwhelmingly, the response is one of shock and awe, followed by the line, “I wish I could do that” or “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

We were no different. At the time, James was contemplating his date of retirement from 24 years in Law Enforcement. Donelle was neck deep in her healthcare career following 20 years of running her own business AND working for a few organizations. Years of raising two kids and running “the usual grind” were punctuated with similar thoughts: TGIF, living for the weekend, I don’t want this vacation to end. Finally, after years of talking about it, the realization that we were empty nesters boiled up into three drinks on a Sunday. Sitting on our grey basement couch, we decided to pull the pin on the existence we’d created for ourselves over the past 24 years and throw a grenade on reality. 

A realtor got called Monday, she came out on Thursday and we listed the house for sale the following Thursday night. You know all those unfinished projects that linger for years. Well, they got done in a week thanks to a wonderful friend, and many late nights. And how about all those priceless artifacts that collect over the course of two and a half decades? They needed to be sold, donated, shoved onto family and friends, stored or thrown away. Everything we were keeping was piled into the garage with a thin aisle for evacuation purposes. At this point, the '“keep” pile was much bigger than the others. Not a good start to downsizing. The house was staged for sale and we braced ourselves for weeks of trying to keep Kaia’s fur under control for the inevitable last-minute showings while we kept sorting personal belongings.

Nope. That’s not what happened.

We listed on Thursday, and had two showings on Friday.  The second party made a wonderfully fair offer. Um what? Too good to be true? Perhaps. We had to be out in 30 days.

What. Just. Happened. To say we were stunned would be an understatement. Most people would be ecstatic- we were trying to figure out how to buy a 5th wheel (a mode of abode which was brand new to us), a truck to pull said 5th wheel, and find a place to park these as yet imaginary vehicles until October when we could move into our winter rental. Did we mention that three days in a 1970’s Airstream was our sum total of RV experience?  Heck, the sum total of our camping experience consisted of roughly five tent-camping fiascos that involved significant rain, tornado warnings, freezing temperatures…and those were more than 10 years prior when the kids were younger.

There are all sorts of parables that would probably fit the narrative. Careful what you wish for… Look before you leap…Don’t be Saul’s wife Ahinoam.

There was still more packing, sorting, storing, and giving to be done.  And we needed to do all of this while working full time. Our lives were “messy”.

Commence 30 days of stress! There wasn’t a lot of joy in the process of clearing out the house. Memories everywhere. Clutter/stuff everywhere. Every item that made the house a home was evaluated to see if it made the cut to the “storage” bins. Heck, we still didn’t have a fifth-wheel trailer yet and that’s what we planned to move into. Wait- what are we going to pull it with?

We picked up a truck “that should do the trick” on Marketplace and set out in search of a 5th wheel. There are a lot of them! Despite the abundance of trailers at dealerships within a 50 mile radius of the now-someone-else’s-home we found it difficult to find the one we really wanted from our internet searching and countless hours of research. We had two deals in Iowa fall through at the 11th hour. Finally we found the one we wanted in Bismarck ND.  We paused our packing to make the 6 hour trip out to pick her up.

Our first truck which we realized was not going to cut it on hills.

OMG it’s HUGE! We stopped three times in the seller’s driveway and once on the road before even getting to our first stop sign. “Is this thing hooked up properly?” What’s that noise?” “Did I run over their mailbox?” Finally hitting the interstate we made good use of every pull off to check the hook up and make sure everything was where it should be… to the best of our limited knowledge.

We got it back to Becker near midnight and left it in the street. The next day we took more time than necessary to level and set up the camper. The excitement of outfitting her was outweighed by the volume of work left to be done in the house so the learning about what we needed to “camp” was left to evenings laying in bed scrolling YouTube.

And then it happened…the sound no homeowner wants to hear…the pinging on the roof and siding. Hail.

We really didn’t want to hear this as our house, siding, windows, and roof had just been redone from the hail storm from the year before! Our new-to-us 5th wheel, truck, and Donelle’s car was getting pounded. At first, there were quiet echoes of “oh no, oh no” and “you got to be kidding”, but that turned into the sounds of sobbing from a puddle of frayed nerves coming from the floor of the office closet. Another hurdle to overcome, a house deal in jeopardy, more time needed to repair the damage, more insurance hurdles to jump- it was just too much. We were walking through the dark forest of our fairy tale.

Things always work out. Perhaps that will be the motto of our journey. The damage was not as extensive as before, we found a place to stay in the camper initially, and we got everything out of the house on time (and into two storage units and family’s basements) to the detriment of our bodies and a little of our sanity.  We were still working full time as we officially moved into the 5th wheel.

A weight was lifted and new weights were added as we started our education on our new mobile life. The question that we asked ourself that day, having a few beverages on the grey couch in the basement shaped our future.

Is this what you want?

Please join us on this journey through our blog posts. There are sure to be lots of highlights and hopefully not too many lowlights in the weeks and months to come!