We’re back!

We know, we know… It has been a little over four months since our last update.  Not much happens in four months, right?  Ha!

When we left off, Lauren had just written about our “hail tornado” experience in Devils Tower, Wyoming. When the dust (or hail) settled after that exciting adventure we limped our way down to Denver to stay with Lauren’s family while we got started on the 5^th wheel and truck repairs. Luckily we found a shop that could handle all of the 5^th wheel repairs but the hail damage on the truck was going to take a lot more time to repair so we just got the side mirrors replaced and we will take care of the rest of the hail damage at a later date.

What else have we been up to? Well, in an effort to catch you all up (and to save time from having to write dozens of posts) here is a quick recap the highlights…

• We spent the two months in Denver living out of the (newly finished) basement at Lauren’s mom’s house. It was SO nice to have a safe (and free!) place to stay while we were getting our feet back under us and getting to spend more time with family is always a good thing!
• Lauren and I both had work conferences we had to fly off to in September.
• We had a “sports weekend” seeing a Timbers/Rapids game on Saturday and a Cubs/Rockies game on Sunday.

• We both caught COVID and were knocked out for a week or so, and missed out on some family events. I was COVID-free a few days before Lauren and got to attend a concert from the symphony Lauren’s sister plays in.
• When we were both feeling better near the end of September we took a drive through the mountains to see the fall color.

• While our extended stay in Denver for the repairs meant missing the balloon festival in Albuquerque, we did get to have Sage and Lillith fly out from Portland for a visit. During their time in Colorado we saw a Broncos game, spent time up at Lauren’s mom’s cabin (and saw the comet!), made lots of food and played lots of games, and we went to Meow Wolf before they had to fly back.

• Around the middle of October the 5^th wheel was just about done with the repairs so we started running a bunch of errands and stocking up on supplies to get ready to get back on the road.
• Halloween was our last night in Denver and we spent the first two weekends in November traveling non-stop to get through New Mexico as quickly as possible.
• All the time spent on the repairs also meant we missed the big chili cook-off in Terlingua (first weekend in November) but we finally made it back to Texas on November 9^th, made it down to Terlingua on the 10^th, and moved back out to our property on the 16^th.

We’ve spent a good portion of the first 6 weeks down here taking care of things so we can start claiming Texas as our domicile state in 2025:

• We got a po box at the Terlingua post office so we can get mail and deliveries.
• We registered the truck and 5^th wheel in Texas (both are sporting shiny, new Texas plates) and will be getting our Texas drivers licenses just as soon as Lauren gets a copy of her birth certificate in the mail.
• I switched over my health insurance at work so I can start booking doctor and dentist appointments down here and I officially changed my address with work so we can stop paying Oregon income taxes starting in 2025.

We’ve also been making some progress on solving our water situation. That probably deserves a post on its own, but we’re excited to have the work start up at the beginning of the new year. And we had our first Thanksgiving and Christmas out on the property.  Hopefully in the next year or two we’ll be set up to be able to host friends and family for the holidays but for now we’ll just have to enjoy these winter nights on our own…