Empty House

Summer Solstice, June 21, 2018

We always tell our kids that luck is the crossroad of knowledge and preparation. The Summer Solstice marked the beginning of our lucky journey, a 14-month driving trip to the tip of South America and back. We have spent several years preparing for this adventure – reading detailed travel blogs, gathering best practices, and harnessing our dreams. We arranged our jobs, put our belongings in storage, sold our other vehicles and rented our house. Armed with the knowledge that together we can handle almost anything, we set out on a rainy Thursday evening to travel the Americas. On the longest day of the year, we drove into the night.

Our 2006 Toyota Tundra will serve as home for the next year. It is equipped with a Tepui rooftop tent, decked out with a meticulously designed cargo storage system (built by my very own MacGyver), and filled with only the few essentials we know we will need. We spent time packing and unpacking, carefully considering what we used and didn’t use last summer on our trial run to Alaska. Our clothing whittled down to four small flat bins, the kitchen/cooking stuff shrunk to fit with plenty of room, and a couple of camping chairs and a small table fit nicely into the middle storage section now that we added a big box on top of the truck. We moved from our 1200-square foot house into our 120-square foot truck, and still have nook, crannies and empty bins to spare!

This week, we will cover over 6000 km (almost 4000 miles) as we visit friends and family across the US on our way from Spokane, Washington to Miami, Florida. The truck goes to port on June 29th to prepare for its crossing to Cartagena, Colombia via ship. We will meet it there ready to wander…

We are indeed lucky.

This week’s theme – Shrink your life by a factor of 10 to expand your horizons by a factor of 10,000.