It’s mid-April 2022 and we woke to a dusting of snow.  All the more reason to pack up Birdie and head towards warmer weather!  We’ve been working hard getting our Minimal Viable Product (MVP) list done the last several weeks to prepare for our first trip.  We’ll have a few things to finalize when we return but Birdie is ready for her first maiden voyage.  We spent the morning packing everything we imaged we would need and headed out of town for our first overnight destination near The Dalles, Oregon.  We made a few stops in town for our favorite pizza and desert crepe and then headed down the highway.

We spent the last year preparing for this moment – adjusting to sabbatical life, buying and converting a van to a comfortable living space, playing as much disc golf as possible and planning travel routes.  Our expectations of excitement were being crowded by a cold, worries about the weight we added to the van (even though we weighed Birdie a few days earlier and were well within the limit) and a bit of apprehension about the unknown.  But excitement won – the sun had melted the snow and it was a beautiful day for our first leg of the voyage.

Fast forward several hours and we pulled in to our first boondockish site for our very first night in the van.  Literally.  We hadn’t slept in the van yet…we talked about sleeping in it overnight but it seemed silly to sleep in our driveway!  After driving several hours, we pulled into a little park by the Columbia river off I-84, Celilo Park, just in time for a beautiful sunset.  There were other campers and vans parked with plenty of space between vehicles and we felt comfortable staying there. The train tracks were about 50 feet away, but how many trains could pass through during the night?  Eight.  At least.  And since the tracks were near an intersection, the trains all blew their horns.  Several times.  But we slept well in between, our heater worked, we were warm and cozy and had successfully stayed the night in our new home for the next 6 weeks.

There’s something extremely satisfying about building your own living space and then living in it!