A Week Under the Hood (well sort of)

In order to get to anything in the front, you have to remove all the front and side panels from the Smart Car (plus the wheels).

If you’ve been wondering what we’re up to over here and assuming that we were basking in the glow of vacation – you couldn’t be more wrong. Take a look at the pic of Archimedes/Smarty above… The process to get the Smart Car ready to be towed is a pretty big project! This has been our full-time job for the past week and we still have a little ways to go. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is the perfect phrase for what’s gone down this week. This has been an unbelievable amount of work (we thought priming/painting and curtain making was tough!) – it’s been both physical and mental (and emotional – it’s brought me to tears a few times already). On top of it all – we’ve had to contend with a heat wave (over 100 every day) and a lot of smoke and ash from the fires nearby. Thank goodness our good friends Keli and Jeremy let us use their garage and a lot of their tools – it would have been almost impossible without this help! While it’s been an incredible undertaking – we’re so happy with what we’ve done and feel good about the work. Here are few more pics of what we’ve been up to:

We had tentatively planned to be gone by this weekend – but this monster of a project has pushed our departure for at least a week. We still have to finish this tow-related project, sell my car, wrap up a number of other loose ends, and get Merlin prepared for departure. As we had been warned a number of times – life “on the road” and in an RV requires a tremendous amount of patience and is fraught with unexpected issues. This has definitely been the case so far and I’m trying my best to adapt and adjust (for my close friends, you’ll know this will be tough for me!). This is a HUGE change and while we’re still getting settled into this entirely new life – I do think all of us (including Gemma and Schnabbies) are rolling with it pretty well. I’m finding a lot of solace in following the blogs of other folks that have done or are currently doing the full-time RV thing (Gone with the Wynns and The Wandering Dolphin). Just today I read this quote that definitely helped put things in perspective for me:

“There are always challenges in life and being a full time traveler comes with its own set of challenges.  So if you’re currently in a life-in-limbo period, know that it happens to all of us and the beautiful thing is there is light at the end of this tunnel, no matter how dark it may seem.” – Nikki Wynn

I hope the next time I write we’ll be a lot closer to setting sail! At this point, our plan is to hop on US Route 395 towards Mammoth, spend a little time at/around June Lake, hit up Mammoth, then move onto Lake Tahoe, cut across Nevada and see all that it has to offer, make our way to Salt Lake City, UT, and then shoot up to Montana to do Glacier National Park before we get pushed out by cold and/or snow. Since we’re not working on any strict plan or timeline – this is all subject to change, but these are our ideas at the moment.