Part 2 - Road Trip!!!

Part 2 - Road Trip

We both quit our jobs in October of 2017, taking a leap of faith that a traveling job would be as good as it seemed.

Obviously, living in a camper meant that we would have to head South for the Winter if we wanted to be comfortable and not risk any damage to our new camper-home. So Scott took a travelling job in the Microbiology lab at Banner University Medical Center of Tucson. The contract started on October 27th of 2017.

We left Peoria on October 22nd, late in the evening, with our camper in tow. We drove at night to avoid traffic and any chance of overheating our tow vehicle's engine.  Our route would parallel Old Route 66 all the way to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Illinois wasn't going to let us go without a fight though. It started to rain, the wind kicked up, and the camper began to sway back and forth badly. About this time, I saw police lights flashing behind me, and realized we were being pulled over.

"I pulled you over 'cuz you were swerving back there". Then I had to explain to him the physics of hauling a large camper...with a tiny truck...in the wind...on a wet road. He saw the wisdom of my argument (aka...realized I wasn't drunk) and let us go on our way.

First gas stop of the trip. About got stuck here trying to get around other cars. 

One last challenge from Illinois right before we crossed the Mississippi River. A battery light illuminated the dashboard. After a bit of troubleshooting, we discovered that the alternator was failing to charge the battery. Lucky for us, Scott put in a new alternator before we left and kept the old alternator as a back-up. After a quick change in the parking lot of a Walmart near East Saint Louis, the truck was happy again and we were ready to roll on through St Louis to I-44.

We stopped for dinner at Denny's somewhere in Missouri at a random truck stop. Dinner was more amazing than it should have been, especially when compared to the junk food we ate in the truck. We were stuffed, and the strange smell coming from this RV across from us, made us decide we needed to get some sleep for the night.

The Cannabus.

It was a cold night and the animals were cuddling up.

We didn't make it much farther into Missouri the next morning when our dashboard flashed the dreaded battery light again. After pulling over at a truck-stop, and with no other option, we were forced to call a local roadside assistance company to bring us another alternator. This time, we opted to go up from the 105 amp to 130 amp version.  Alternator #3 installed, and we were on our way to Oklahoma.

All I can say about I-44 through Oklahoma...don't do it!!! The tollways were a nightmare!  In fact we gave Oklahoma a new name...O-Fuck-lahoma...due to how much we hated driving through there. So we drove on through Amarillo, Texas, and we made it to New Mexico. We were happy to find some amazing New Mexican food at the Silver Moon Cafe in Santa Rosa.

This place had the BEST food!!!

A little beer to go with my chili peppers. 

We took a slight detour off the interstate to go through Roswell and encountered steep grade, mountain highways that our rig was not equipped to handle. The transmission temperatures were dangerously high and the truck would not allow us to go more than 20 mph through most of the climbs. Leaving the interstate in a mountainous area is a novice mistake that we will not make again.

The drive from Las Cruces on I-10 West was a beautiful drive (minus the Immigration checkpoints) that took us through sandy, barren desert that gave way to the lush vegetation of the Sonoran Desert as we neared Tucson.

Stay tuned for our review of Tucson and Desert Trails RV Park.

Here is a link to our previous article.

Part 1 - In the Beginning

The next article:

Part 3 - Star-i-zona.

Part 1 - In the beginning...

Part 1 - In the Beginning...

PIA.  Its the abbreviation for the Peoria Airport. It's also the abbreviation for Pain In the ASS!!!  That pretty much sums up the vibe of our hometown. We had a wanderlust the cornfields of Illinois could never squelch and we knew that we were not meant to take root there.

 Scott was working as a microbiologist at a local hospital and had been playing in an Irish Band that was part of the Peoria St Pats festivities for the last 6 years. Jenny had been at the same job as an Environmental Lab Technician for about 6 years as well.

Even though we were fortunate enough to have decent jobs and great friends/family, we just weren't happy. We lived in a trashy town full of trashy people.  We wanted out. By we wanted out, I mean we could hardly think of anything but leaving that town far behind. We worked on updating the house on our minimal incomes. Board by board, weekend by weekend, we worked away. Painting, paneling, and tiling.

After an unsuccessful round of dropping all our plans to the whims of potential buyers, we gave up trying to sell the house with a realtor. We thought about selling by owner, but with no experience we figured it would be too complicated for us. At the urging of a friend that had recently let go of their realtor and sold by owner we followed suit. We bought a book, called "Check, Check, Sold", and continued house renovations.

In the spring of 2017 we felt confident in listing the house ourselves. We took our own pictures and uploaded them to websites like Zillow, just like a real estate agent would. After about 8 unsuccessful months with a realtor, we managed to find a buyer with our very first showing.
A long awaited journey, but we learned a lot by selling ourselves. We also were able to save thousands of dollars. We cut out the cost of a realtor. The buyers had their own realtor which was a small fee for us, but worked out well considering they had the necessary documents readily available. We paid $100 to a lawyer to go over the documents and that was it. Super easy and selling the house by owner was the only way we were going to make any money. In fact we talked to 3 real estate agents that didn't even want to list the house as high as we sold it for.

We had less than a month to get out of our house, but we couldn't be happier.

We bought a pull behind travel trailer and picked it up the same day we had to hand over the keys to our house. We got a small storage unit for furniture and moved the rest of our belongings into a 37 foot camper.

We parked at Jen's parents "farm" with crude hookups for water and electric. It wasn't ideal, but it was cheap. We spent the summer saving money and kayaking with family and friends. Our 6 year anniversary fell just about one week after moving into an RV full-time, so Jenny got flowers at work to commemorate the moment.

The next few months were dedicated to Scott applying to several staffing agencies for traveling Med Lab Tech work. This allowed us to be a "free agent" and contract with facilities for 13 weeks at a time, instead of just signing up to spend your life in one place. It would be the beginning of a new life for us as a couple of air conditioned gypsy adventurers.

If you want to read more about us, and get to know us better, you can read our first 3 blog articles here:

Act 1 - They Meet

Here is a link to the next entry:

Part 2 - Road Trip!!!