Are you ready?

So with just under two weeks until we depart, we’re very much full of excitement, anticipation and wonder for what will become our life on the road.

We’ve spent the last year building the plan of what is a lifelong dream. It’s felt like such a long time coming but we’re so close now. The winter was spent planning routes, the build of the rig, lots of admin and research on what visas, documents, insurance etc that we needed. And the last few months have been putting that all into action.

James has spent every minute of his spare time building the rig we had designed for the back of the LandCruiser. He had amazing support from his good friend Tom who is a carpenter. The guys shared most Saturdays at Tom’s workshop, James bringing the BBQ and Tom on the tools. The back unit comes with slide out drawers for all our storage boxes and even holds an 80L fridge/freezer (for all the ice cream, beer and sometimes food!). I was really glad that the boys got to share that time together and come up with something they’re both super proud of. James then also turned his hand to electrics and plumbing, sorting out all the cabling, laying the solar panels on the roof and even fitting a heat exchanger to the engine to allow us to have hot showers on the road. He has amazed me every step of this journey, pushing himself to learn new things and persevere when things didn’t quite go to plan and I’m sure he will sit down on our first night on the road, with a can of cider, enjoying the LED disco lights he installed, and think ‘Wow, I did good’!

Meanwhile, I’ve been scouring over maps, route planning, clueing myself up on all the different types of camping along the way, looking at where we should aim to be in certain seasons and became chief project planner for all our farewells! We’ve spent the last few months trying to see as many of our friends and family as possible and whilst it’s been quite emotional, we feel super lucky to have so many wonderful people in our lives that want to wish us well on our journey.

For now, we have one more week left at work. A few more goodbyes to be said and just the small matter of clearing the house out before our renters move in. We fly to New York on the 5^th August and were hoping our ship was due to arrive on the 8^th however, as I’m sure will become the new norm, things didn’t quite turn out as planned. The shipping was delayed by a few weeks, so whilst we wait for our trusty stead, we will be heading to Texas and New Orleans. Both these places were on our itinerary but rather than deplete our budget on New York hotels whilst we wait for the truck, we decided to jump on some cheap flights, hostel it up and explore the South on foot. We can then reroute and cut off 1000 miles of our journey when we finally do make the trip across to the West.

So thanks for reading, I’m hoping you’re excited to see future blog posts when we are actually on the move. Feel free to follow us on our social media accounts. We look forward to sharing our journey with you.