Sorry it’s been awhile since I’ve posted.  The last few weeks (and especially the last few days) have been insanely busy trying to get ready for the trip.  Just 2 more days til we leave and still so much to do! Our plans are falling into place though.  Even though we haven’t planned out a timeline for our trip and won’t know where we’ll be at any given point in our journey, there has been a massive amount of planning and preparing for our departure!

After everything involved with the planning process, the last thing I wanted to worry about was having to style my hair while on the road in a trailer.  Just the thought of blow-drying my hair in a tiny RV bathroom causes me to start sweating and hyperventilating from claustrophobia.  Haha! So I had two options: 1) shave my head or 2) get my hair braided for a low-to-no-maintenance hairstyle.

As tempting as it was to just shave my head, I opted for the latter and decided to get my hair braided into individual braids.  I had done it years ago for several summers back in my high school days.  I loved how easy the braids were compared to the daily torturous styling methods of blow-drying, flat-ironing and curling for my natural hair.  Plus, by having synthetic hair braided in with my own hair, I was able to add some fun colors! I love funky hair colors, but having a professional job for the past 4+ years limited the amount of funk my hair could have.  I had to take advantage and have fun with it now that I’m not working! 🙂

• 

  Me with braids back in high school

• 

  Getting my hair did

• 

  All done (over 10 hours later)!

• 

  Ta-Da!!!

Recent braids by Stephanie of Natural Hair Styles by Stephanie.

Back to the planning process though.  As I mentioned, there were countless hours spent planning and preparing for this extensive trip.  Some (key word: “some”) of the steps involved included the following:

• Sell Justin’s 2 motorcycles (Justin literally shed a tear over the Harley.)
• Sell both of our cars (Including my Lexus…boo hoo! 🙁 )
• Sell most of our furniture (Countless trips to meet random Craigslist buyers at Chevron.)
• Buy a travel trailer (We ended up buying one from Michigan as it was much cheaper than getting one in California.  We have to pick it up from Michigan though.)
• Buy a truck to tow the trailer (What a frustrating process it was trying to find the exact truck we need to tow the trailer! The buying process was also a headache.)
• Find a storage unit and move remaining items into it (We thought we could fit everything into a 5×10 unit.  However, even after everything we sold, a 5×10 just wasn’t enough.  We didn’t want to have to move everything we already put into the 5×10 unit though and move it into a bigger 10×10 unit, so we ended up renting an additional 5×10 unit.  Such a nightmare! A word of advice, spend a little extra money for a bigger unit upfront rather than stress about trying to make everything fit into a smaller one.  It’s amazing how much stuff you accumulate and how much space it takes up.  “The things you own end up owning you.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club)
• Have mail forwarded
• Update auto insurance plan
• Get health insurance
• Get the pups up-to-date on their vaccinations and stocked up on flea & tick control medications
• Find a home for our aquatic turtle Betty (Justin’s co-worker took her for his 5-year-old daughter.  She loves Betty and drew a picture of them together!)
• Change address for all accounts and cancel utilities/services
• Update website and set “away” email message for makeup & hair business
• Clean townhome rental to move out

And those are just the main items on our ridiculously long to-do list.  There are so many other little details that were involved with planning this trip.  I could go on for days telling you about all of them along with the hurdles we faced along the way.  But I won’t bore you with all of that.  I’m just glad we survived the planning process and got to this point – just days away from setting out on a journey of a lifetime!