How Did We Get Here?

We decided shortly after we came home from our 2010 trip that there would be another cross country trip sometime soon. When it was going to be, we didn’t really know. What we did know is that we had to tie up a bunch of loose ends and make sure that the next time we head out, we could stay on the road for as long as we wanted to.

This is our view from the bedroom window of the Airstream the morning after we got home on June 8th 2010.

A lot of things had to happen and most of them have to go our way in order for us to pull off doing this trip. What we are actually doing with our house is to sell our current one and buy another near Marlene’s parents’ house for when we eventually come home for good. We have been trying to sell our house since last November. We decided while we were on our trip to New Mexico last year that we were going to do this. With the pregnancy, now a new baby and everything else that could have potentially set the plan astray, we did not really know if we were actually going to make this happen until just a couple of weeks ago.

While our house is on the market looking for a buyer, we have been buyers ourselves looking for our future home for when we return. We are searching for a place that we would be comfortable leasing away immediately upon taking possession, but also one we can see ourselves raising our kids in until they fledge. This process has become much more tedious than originally imagined. Obviously the housing market is not very healthy right now. But we didn’t think finding a place to buy would be as difficult as it has proven to be. There is lots of inventory, prices are great and mortgage rates are at an all time low, but it seems that every property on the market either needs tons of work or is going through some kinds of short sale/foreclosure thus preventing us from closing the deal.

After an exhaustive 5 months of searching, waiting, and searching some more, with dozens of offers that went unanswered, we are finally in escrow with our future home. Coincidentally, we managed to find a buyer for our house that will hopefully close in the same week. The mad scramble is now in full effect. Not only do we need to move out of our house in less than 2 weeks, we can’t move our things into the new house because we need to find some reliable tenants who won’t trash our future dream home while we are gone. In the meantime, we need to purge and store everything down to the bare essentials and move our (not-so) little family of 5 + cat into the Airstream.

The Mish and her soon-to-be former home base.

Escrow on our current home closes on June 7th. That is less than 2 weeks from today. We will head out on June 8th 2012 and begin our next full-time adventure. Two years exactly to the day from our return in 2010.

over and out,
dan