We all felt led to move at the same time. Far away from our home. An adventure, right?
Not so fast…
The title to one of the acres was, we discovered, still in the former owner’s name. And we couldn’t locate her anywhere. After four months.
No clear title? no house sale. And we had multiple offers higher than our sales price. With one we just accepted.
So…
We found property in the location where we were led to move, and bought it outright.
It had all the utilities and ammenities.
But, it had no house.
So, we bought a manufactured home to put one quickly on site.
Mortgage companies …
Mortgage companies are like working with the DMV. No sense of urgency. Nor sense of concern regarding inconveniencing the customer. And absolutely zero sense of humor.
The customer has a job? No problem! We’ll make it as painful as possible and risk you losing your job to take time off multiple times in order to fill out endless paperwork.
And make you hunt for things you had hidden somewhere in your boxes, which were in process of being packed to move. And never knew you’d ever need.
No worries…right?
Riiight…
So we were approved. Sort of.
We had to leave our original house as the buyer-to-be agreed to lease the house until the title cleared. But they needed to move in by an agreed upon date.
So…we packed up the trucks and headed out like Abraham traveling into the unknown because God told him to go.
The great adventure begins…
An entire bowl of dog food spilled into all the cracks of the cab in the moving truck. And the dog looked like it disturbed her sleep as she lay like a queen on a pillow in the passenger seat.
That was the first hour of the journey…
Hour two…
The tire sensor suddenly went out on the van.
And the fresh eggs we had from our chickens cracked in the ice chest. Ick!!!
And remember how imperfect technology is? Yeah…
Since we didn’t know where we were going, and we had no paper maps options, we used a web based GPS.
Which promptly took us, at the start of our trip, 2 hours out of the way.
And every time we had to reopen the directions when the tab decided to screw up and close on us, they changed.
So a 12 hour trip became a day and a half – with 4 hours of sleep in the middle of the night. In a deserted parking lot. Across the street from a truck gas station. With a lot of noisy semis going in and out.
Did I say sleep? Silly me!
Then…
When we were leaving another gas station the next day, the cover of the bumper on the moving truck fell off… after a 30 minutes wait while two women clerks took their time doing a shift change while we tried to pay for gas.
Then, dogs…
Yeah 11 hours into the trip, both dogs decided they had enough and bolted.
Well, kind of. One is deaf and half blind, so she slowly bolted, meandering towards the oncoming traffic. The other one booked it!
WE, however, ran faster and snatched both up from the certain jaws of death. Or more vet bills, at least.
Auto dolly…
So near the end of the journey, we discovered that both tie downs to one of the cars had slipped off. No clue for how long, but our Guardian Angel certainly held that sucker in place for us!!!
Chickens…
They were hungry. And their food wasn’t enough, apparently.
When one of the kids dropped their McGriddle by the cage, it disappeared in about 5 seconds!
Then we arrived…
And the adventure continued… in the next post.