September 2023: Welding, cleaning, packing, and leaving.

Disclaimer from Chelsea: The photos in the last few posts (and this one) have been less than stellar (read: embarrassingly bad) because documenting our lead-up to leaving has been an afterthought during an otherwise INCREDIBLY stressful time. Please excuse the poor quality photos…I promise they’ll improve soon.

The airbags were slowly losing the fight, as I mashed, folded and squished them into submission. At first, I was suspicious of the quality and strength of the polyurethane material, but after beating the snot out of the bags during install, I became more confident that they would stand up to the abuses of the road. To install the airbags without completely removing the springs, we had to jack up the van, place a jack stand under the control arm, remove a tire, and drop the van as much as we dared. This allowed us to expand the coil, and barely wrestle the bags into place. With a bunch of grunting, pushing, and prodding, we managed to get them in.

As I showed off my handiwork to Chelsea, she spotted a broken weld on the axle mount. I was crawling around in front of the axle, broken welds out of view, just staring back at Chelsea, shaking my head. There was no way we had a broken weld, we had barely done anything with the van, there was no way, but lo-and-behold, she was right. The break didn’t look new, so I have no idea how long we had been driving on it, but it definitely needed fixing. I was absolutely beside myself, and in my anxiety-spiral I got worried that the trip was over. I sent a quick text to my friend, Wayne the Welder, who I already had a standing appointment with the next morning to finish the roof rack, and tried to tell myself it would be ok. We’ve been looking forward to this trip for years, and to have it possibly ripped from our grasp before it even started was almost too much to handle.

The next morning Wayne and I surveyed the damage further, and we both came to the same conclusion that the crack had probably been there for a long while and that the axle hadn’t moved out of line. The van had been driving like a dream, with no crabbing or lane drift, so we decided to weld it back in place as it stood. I wrapped the newly installed airbag in fiberglass mat, Wayne readied his tools, and in no time the cracks were cleaned up and welded shut. I am pretty confident that we found a problem early and addressed it before it got any worse, but I will definitely be nervously keeping an eye on that axle mount forever.

While at the shop, Wayne also completed fabrication of the last of this season’s metal projects: a fairing (wind deflector) for the solar panel. The van had long since lost most of its aerodynamic qualities to roof storage, but the drag and road noise created by the solar panel was just too much. We folded some cardboard around the panel, traced our desired shape onto a spare sheet of aluminum, and fired up the plasma cutter. A can of black spray paint and a handful of rivets later, we had a much quieter ride and Walter had a snazzy new mohawk.

Folding the airbags into place.

Cracked welds found by Chelsea, nine days before departure!

pointing out the welds, not stoked.

Wayne the wleder doing what he does best.

Repaired and repainted and ready for the road.

Folding the new fairing.

Installing the new fairing.

Top-down shot of our roof storage solutions.

As the days slipped away, and late summer quickly turned into early fall, our list of things to get done seemed to only get longer and longer. Gracie had to go to the vet to get documentation and updated vaccines, which was incredibly lucky as our veterinarian informed us that the US border had recently gotten a lot tighter on canines returning to the US - if we hadn’t had a vet visit when we did, there was a chance we would have been stuck in Mexico until July!

We had some big projects to get crossed off the list, in addition to entirely moving out of the house. We finally installed some snow cleats on the roof to stop ice creeping off the eaves, I rebuilt some of the plumbing for our sump pump, and caulked a bunch of gaps around doors and windows that had been bugging us for years. Projects finally done (or done enough), we moved everything out of the house, stored all the good stuff, and tossed the rest. The house is small, the van is smaller, and we had to remind ourselves that if we were going to get away from it all, we couldn’t bring it all with us.

In between getting everything done, Chelsea kept shooting for the paper, documenting the big events in the community until the very end. She couldn’t say no to the photojournalist inside her, and we both agreed that the community deserved to have their story told, even if that meant Chelsea would be on the sidelines of the high school’s homecoming football game the night before our departure, a mere 12 hours left on our game clock before we had planned to roll out of the driveway.

On departure day some cold rain moved in, as if the valley was finally letting go of its grasp on summer now that we didn’t need it anymore. We did a final clean on the house, finished our packing, and got ready to take off. Chelsea put her drone in the sky for a few goodbye aerial shots of the property, we gassed up Walter with the last of our local fuel discounts, and headed off into the sunset, hoping we didn’t forget anything, and telling ourselves that it didn’t really matter if we had because we were finally on the road again.

We don’t love going to the vet.

fixing the sump pump is becoming a pre-trip tradition.

installing snow cleats on the roof so our tenant won’t have to manage creeping ice flows.

Boxing, bagging, tossing and cleaning for days.

We began to smile while packing becasue the end was in sight.

12ish hours until departure and chelsea is STILL working! She couldn’t say no to shooting the high school homecoming football game.

packing, sorting, and packing some more - everything has its place.

The rain had moved in but we had moved out. Summer was over and it was time to roll.

All the important things packed away: passports, clothes, Dog, Etc.

One quick aerial shot as we pulled out.

Fueling up for the first leg of the journey, a cool seven hour drive into the night.

Rolling into the west.

Moody skies leading into Oregon, but we were running away from the storm.

We don’t let Gracie drive yet so she just naps instead.