Home?

Current location: visiting Boulder, CO


I haven't felt very inspired to write lately. I don't exactly know why, but in part I think it's because we feel unsettled. I've thought many times about writing, and even started a few, but the right words just weren't coming. And I'm not sure they're here now either, but I feel like I need to post an update. We've accomplished a lot, but yet there's not much exciting going on all at the same time.

Since ending our summer job and leaving North Shore Campground, we had a nice relaxing break in Oregon. From there, we headed up to Tracy's aunt and uncle's in the Seattle-Tacoma area, where we plan to spend the winter, or at least part of it. We spent our first week there getting to know the lay of the land and preparing for our multi-week trip back "home" to Colorado.

That's one word we stumble on a lot...."home". We find ourselves, and most of our friends and family, referring to Colorado as home. But it's not really home anymore. Our rig is our home and the entire country is our home. Yet when people ask us where we're from, we both tend to say Colorado. Our license plates and drivers licenses say Texas, we came to feel that northern California was partly our home, but the fallback is always Colorado. Will it always be or is it just that we're too recently departed from Colorado to completely detach?

Before we could leave for Colorado, however, we had arranged to take our home in for some warranty work. We had compiled a pretty long list of issues over the summer. None are major, most are just minor annoyances, but we wanted to get them fixed before getting parked for the winter. After talking with the dealer, we decided that leaving the rig with them while we're in Colorado would work the best for all parties. But dropping off our home and then driving away felt really weird. We both felt it. That's our whole life that we're leaving behind. Now we truly do feel homeless.

We were excited to get back to Colorado and reunite with friends and family. We did the drive in 2 very long days. We questioned ourselves multiple times about what we were doing. I thought our new lifestyle meant that we didn't have to do these types of marathon drives any more. Really, what was our hurry? It's not like we had to rush back to work or cram in a vacation into a short span of time. I guess, ultimately, it came down to frugality. Since we weren't towing our home, it meant that we had to sleep in hotels. We knew our gas expenses would be high, so I guess we figured we could save a few bucks by limiting ourselves to one overnight stay. I'm not sure it was worth it and we may slow down on our way back.

We've been in Colorado for about a week now. It's been nice reuniting with friends and family. We've been able to spend some quality time with each of our moms and have met up with a few friends. We have many more people to see and are trying to fit as many in as possible. We also squeezed in a quick trip to Nebraska to visit Tracy's son, some of her other relatives, and some close friends. We've crammed in a lot in a week.

Although we're having fun, we've also been feeling a bit discombobulated. We're missing our home. We miss our bed and our pillows. We're missing Jasper (he stayed behind in Washington). I think this trip has taught us yet another lesson - one of the greatest benefits of having a home on wheels is that you can take it with you. Next time, we won't leave ours behind. It's not that we aren't comfortable where we are. We have everything we could ask for. And we are very grateful for it. There's just something comforting about having your own belongings around you and living in your own space.

I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make. Maybe I'm just rambling. We've expreienced a wide range of emotions over the last few weeks and I suppose we're just trying to find our way. I guess that's just normal life, regardless of what lifestyle you're living.