Escaping the Everyday

Escaping the Everday
Diaries

2,968 miles to go!

Before we get into the nitty gritty of our trip, I wanted to let everyone know that we got MARRIED! It was a small intimate ceremony with just immediate family in Scarborough, Maine and it was the perfect day. It was everything we wanted and hoped for. Here are a few snippets from the day 🙂

p.s. – Ella (our cat) was home all snuggled up, it wasn’t her kind of scene. She greeted us with kisses when we got home though.

April 5th, 2024

Our last day in Maine before we embark on our journey as a married couple with our fur babies. We started loading up the car with all of our belongings and we had a couple moments of “oh gosh, is everything going to fit?!” We started with vacuum sealing all of our clothes and putting them in the cargo bin on the roof of the car.

If you’re thinking, “How’d they think of that?!” Well, I was watching one my shows and a commercial came on about vacuum sealing meat. It dawned on me that we should totally vacuum seal our clothes! Kind of a weird “light bulb” moment but it’ll save us so much room! It’s been hard getting rid of things to live a somewhat minimalist lifestyle.

A part of me was struggling to give away, donate or throw out items because I feel like I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve built in my life and I was just throwing away all my hard work. It was a huge eye opener for me though because I wasn’t throwing away all my hard work, I’m actually starting to build the life that I want and have dreamt of. I also wouldn’t be able to do this adventure without the hard work I’ve put into building what I have so far. I also get to start building this life with Jake!

Anyways, we also decided that we are going to set Cassie’s crate up in the car to make Ella a little makeshift home for the trip. We realized we still need to use Cassie’s crate on Saturday so we can’t finish packing the car tonight, but we have a plan!

I won’t bore you with the list of things we completed today but it’s those last minute items like dumpster runs, Hannaford trip for snacks, packing clothes we need for the week, and other stuff. The list continues on for tomorrow!

April 6th, 2024

I can’t believe it; the day has come! At 8pm, we officially start our journey to Montana! If you were wondering, that’s a 2,968-mile trip across the United States from Maine.

We knew this was going to be too big of a challenge to do it all in one swoop, so we decided to make a couple pit stops along the way. But before we get to the pitstops, we still have a lot to do!

We knew before we started packing, we were going to hit a couple road blocks, well today we hit a few but we powered through!

We started our day going to Foley’s for one last work out and say goodbye to some of our gym buddies. Next on the list was to get the U-Haul and bring our large items to our storage unit for safe keeping. This is when things got a little sticky. Our friend, Tim, helped us with moving things into the storage unit which we are so grateful for. We get everything in the truck, the last thing to do is the washer. We go to bring the washer down to the truck but we can’t unscrew the back hoses for the life of us! A friend brought some tools over but no luck, Jake went to the store to get a bigger wrench but still no luck, it’s too tight. We are just like “What the heck are we going to do, Samsung screwed these on way too tight!”

I finally say… “Screw it, let’s cut the hose and we’ll deal with it later and let the complex charge us for the hose”.

We did have an “oh sh*t” moment because when Jake was cutting through the hose, it started spewing water! Jake quickly blocked the hole with his hand and we both look up at each other wide eye. Guess we forgot to turn off the water! Crisis averted.

The kitchen steak knife saved the day though! We finally got everything in the storage unit and it fit like a glove.

So far, we’ve packed the cargo bin, we’ve packed our storage unit now it’s time to pack the car!

I can’t believe it but we did it!! After a couple slips, bumps and bruises because I’m clumsy, we packed our WHOLE life in our SUV. The dog crate for Ella, Cassie’s bed, hiking gear, skiing gear, pet stuff, clothes, shoes, EVERYTHING.

I would just like to say we are off to a good start as I haven’t had a melt down from the stress of moving and I only got hangry once. That is one thing that I love about Jake is that we balance each other out. His strengths are my weaknesses and my strengths are his weaknesses.

We had a great plan going into the day, we got everything done in time to leave but could we have done things better and more efficiently? Definitely. This is how we are going to learn and packing up on the next leg will be a breeze.

Now it’s time to hit the road! We’ll talk to you after our next destination… NASHVILLE!