Day 1 of our road trip. We are excited, and packed up! Jeff has a great system in place and everything is carefully tied to the roof of his very functional Toyota 4Runner. We camp in our town on a regular basis in his vehicle, and we are used to the comfort it provides over a tent or even a camping trailer. It’s not as decked out and convenient as the vans you see in Instagram Van Life #vanlife posts, but still it works for us. Our rescued pooch is on the custom made seat – a.k.a. perch – in between the chairs, so we all can look out the front windshield to see what is happening.
On this particular day One, all we see is SNOW! I know this may sound exciting to some, but we already been staring at winter for a few months, and were really hoping for mild weather to begin our trip… Oh well…such is life sometimes… Jeff is a professional driver, so he takes the wheel even though he has been working a night shift the day before. He’s a powerhouse on coffee, but I keep offering to take a turn so he can sleep. He refuses to give me the wheel until it’s no longer a slick road covered in snow or ice. I sit back and relax. We have conversations about the border crossing. He is convinced that I can get through customs just by showing my passport, but I know better. I have a Dutch passport, as I moved here back in 1996, but have been slacking in getting my Canadian Citizenship – although that is in the works as I am writing this. In Canada, you are innocent until proven guilty…well, when traveling with a Dutch passport into the US, it’s more like, you are guilty until proven innocent. All good of course, since I am innocent… I have been to the US a few times over the past 5 years and I know I always have to go into the building to get a 3 month visitors visa for $6 USD, along with an eye scan and fingerprints. Jeff insists that because I am traveling with him, we can just drive right through after showing our passports. Well, guess what! I was right. We giggle on the way into the office building, as I am often right haha. But we get everything sorted. Apparently my iPad felt the need to start playing music, which made most of the people there laugh, while I reached, slightly embarrassed, into my back pack to turn it off. The WiFi was not on, so I still don’t understand how it played…and why it picked that song.
After that all got sorted, we returned to the truck where Penny was patiently waiting for us, while guarding our possessions. We felt our trip finally had begun. The weather had not improved much, so it took about a couple hours before I finally was able to take over safely, so Jeff could get some sleep!
We keep driving until we reach Bozeman, Montana, so we can visit my friends there, have a quick visit and sleep over. After that we are determined to head straight south to get to some sunshine! We’re not sure how far we’ll make it but we’re going for it!
