At The Start

There are no words that can describe the actual process we went through when getting ourselves ready for the long road trip.

This has been a dream of mine for years to tour our country .. see all the amazing places we usually only read about.

About 12 months ago we decided that it was time to go on our road trip.

The first emotion was excitement beyond comprehension

We were finally achieving a long-term goal.

Leaving the everyday challenges behind.

We were about to start living the dream.

Well yes, that was true …. however, what happened next really surprised me.

I figured that the next 12 months would be the longest of my life it usually appears to take forever waiting for a date to eventuate.

So I did very little getting ready except research a few places and worked out a mud map we would follow and decided the van needed to be refreshed.

After all, there is no rush to get back to suburban life so who needs a schedule.

We just hitch the van up and follow our noses.

We had bought an old caravan 7 years ago and had used it a few times on short trips.

 

As I said it was old and we had it sitting around for almost 7 years so I thought I would give it a facelift.

After a bit of checking around, I came to the conclusion the easiest and most effective facelift would be a coat of paint.

It looked dated as many of the earlier model caravans had the wood grain finish which was faded and stained.

It also needed a good clean … sitting around in the back yard in the rain and heat mold had formed in various places.

The next horrifying discovery the floor had started to rot.

While I was advised to change the floorboard, I built a false floor covering the rotten floorboard.

Our plan was to spend at least 12 months on the road and then decide where we want to live.

We had decided to put most of our possessions into storage until we did the round trip.

Then when we come back, we would have most of the things we need to set up a house.

Life went along and because the date was so far in the future, we did not see the urgency to start our packing or reorganising our lives yet.

Towards the end of last year, we realized that time was ticking, and we needed to organize ourselves or we would not be ready.

Now we still had 2 months before we moved out however the next months were hell.

I have never felt more stressed … remember it is the small things that need to be attended to that can cause you the worst headaches.

We did decide to keep some of our furniture but there were heaps of stuff that had to go. Either sell them or give them away.

So why am I boring you with all this information?

It is better to get yourself organized early even if time seems to stand still once you are ready to go because the stress I felt by procrastinating almost caused us to cancel the journey.