It took us 4 days to make it from Washington to Colorado. Day 1 and day 4 consisted of about 3 1/2 hours each, the middle two days were a healthy day of driving. Everything we owned managed to fit into my Honda Crosstour, his eighty something Nissan Pickup truck, and the trailer that we had packed with only the things we were keeping in it. (I still feel like it’s entirely to much stuff but I’ll give myself some time and an adjustment period.)

The truck made it. Took the weight of the load like a champ —  We were prepared to rent a truck halfway down but we were pleasantly surprised! 🙂 I would say average speed for us was about 60 mph… Low as 35 uphill/over a mountain pass.

Really tho — Ben was the real MVP. He drove 4 days in that thing with vinyl seating, no A/C, heat on so it wouldn’t overheat, and it was 90 degrees the whole way. I don’t think I would’ve volunteered to drive it, but I don’t really have a manual down to a smooth process, so I didn’t have to put that question to the test!

So day one (a Thursday), we drove to my in-laws and stayed the night there. We slept for the first time in the thing and let me tell you, it was not too shabby my friends… If you look at face value it seems very shabby, but look at the potential and it’s a whole new ball game. It’s like a grown up fort.

What I discovered immediately was it wasn’t stuffy without a window like I thought it would be. The vent on the top almost serves as a cool fan. (Almost) The wind funnels down the vent and the trailer is constantly fed with new fresh air. Not to say that it doesn’t get pretty warm in here cause it sure does! We purchased a fan to help with that issue and are trying this one out. We plan to get a little A/C unit, but since summer is coming to a close we can give that decision more time and thought… and now with insulation it might do just fine. 🙂 We also found a little floor heater fan from a yard sale that will do the job on the colder nights, of course paired with some insulation — I digress. So it’s okay to sleep in and be in without a window… For now, but there will be windows put in… I’ll get into that more later.

The one thing I’m not liking so much anymore is the rush, and the need to be somewhere right away etc. So Friday morning we took our time getting up (as we did each morning) saying goodbye, and just left as the time came. We didn’t really pull out of Spokane until 1 PM PT.  We had some last ends to tie up (break lights) and cool gadgets to buy for the adventure 🙂 We drove until about Butte, MT. and stopped at an OHV recreation area out in the middle of nowhere and tested out night number two in the trailer. (We are still in the process of naming it).

Where we stayed night 2.

It was so silent and in the middle of what seemed nowhere, probably was, and the stars were beyond stunning. I feel like I’ve never seen the Milky Way so big and bright before… or at least it’s been a VERY long time. We have a converter plug, and an extension cord so we were able to run the lights and electric in the trailer, so it really was quite the set up.

Saturday morning silently came without any issues or surprises and we slowly got going yet again.  We pulled up to this park in Wyoming called Natural Bridge, a public campground, that night when it was time to call it. We had been driving since about 9AM or so that day and it was about 7:30PM when we pulled in, and we picked the wrong night and time to come apparently. We had wanted to stay at this camp the last time we drove through, however it was booked full (there’s only about 5 campsites). It’s supposed to be a cool historic natural landmark and we wanted to check it out! When we got there this time there was no one there to hog the campsites — but there was quite the drama between the one other set of campers and the managers. “Sick of dealing with people” and not wanting to hear that we didn’t know the others (case of bad timing I guess) they rudely kicked us out of the campground. SO as exhausted and hungry as we were, we packed up again in the middle of nowhere headed to find SOMEWHERE to stay the night. THANKFULLY KOA has overnight check in so we were able to find a place and bed down for a few hours, and have a fresh shower.

Somewhere on the drive… 

Oh the 3rd night was in Douglas, WY… so we only had about 4 hours to drive on Sunday. So when morning came, we slid out of there like molasses and arrived Sunday afternoon and didn’t do a damn thing when we got to our destination.

And it never felt so good.

Ben during one of our many stops along the way