We really do hope to get back onto a weekly blog post schedule to make these updates more consistent. This one was entirely my fault. But in our defense, not a lot has been going on.
Well, it has, but it hasn’t.
We’re still in Tucson, as we have been for about two months, and we’ll probably be here another 2-3 weeks before we get back out on the road. Lauren has been in Denver for the last few days to see family and for a work conference, while I hosting our friend Michael from Portland who came out for a visit last weekend. And work for me has been especially hectic over the last couple of weeks. So we have been busy, just not with travel adventures.
But the big news is that the truck is no longer getting the hail damage repaired.
I know.
It feels like we have been dealing with the fallout from the Devils Tower Hail Tornado™ forever.
After getting it under the dent lights at the repair shop the damage was much more severe than originally thought. They had the local Progressive claims adjuster come back in for another look and he brought his boss. In the end, they have decided to consider the truck a total loss.
They will be paying us out what they think the truck is worth which will be somewhere under $30k, since the repair estimate was a little over $30k and they’d rather pay us for the truck than pay for the repairs. We’ll use half of that money to pay off the truck and we’ll put the rest in savings. We might get some of the hail damage repaired down the road, on our own dime, but for now we’re going to just live with it, as-is. It drives fine and has been a workhorse of a truck for us, it just currently looks like a teenager going through a rough patch of acne; pock-marks everywhere.
The payoff settlement amount is still being determined but the truck is back in our possession and we’re starting to plan out which route we’ll take on our way into Oregon this summer. My guess is we’ll leave Tucson and get on the road either May 9th or May 16th, but we have some options and we’re still trying to figure out what we might want to see on our way into the pacific northwest.
In the meantime, we’ll be taking advantage of our last few days in Tucson and finishing up some minor “home” improvement projects to make sure we are travel ready by our departure date. I know I’m certainly looking forward to getting back out on the open road and spending some time in green forests surrounded by the smell of pine trees. We’ve been in either New Mexico, Texas, or Arizona for the past 7 months and I think I’ve had my fill of the desert southwest landscapes for a bit.