I’ll be honest with you; I’m writing this a bit late. We arrived at our new property in Texas on Feb 21^st and it is now March. Three days of driving with small children, sleeping in a Home Depot parking lot, and eating way more fast food than I’d like to admit to will really take it out of you. And by “it,” I mean the will to live. 

I think we’ve sort of regained a bit of that, though, so allow me to take you back in time…

The Build Up

Thursday morning, February 15^th, 07:30. Packers arrive at the house. It actually wasn’t half bad. They were great people, professional and courteous and astoundingly efficient. We really didn’t have much to do except keep the munchkins out of the way while the packers did their thing. Afterwards, we enjoyed our last night with furniture.

Friday morning, February 16^th, 09:30. The truck driver arrives. 2 hours late. Without a loading crew. They showed up a solid half hour later. Unfortunately, the driver looked around at everything that was packed and informed us that there simply wasn’t enough room on his semi for the load. Dang. Loading crew bailed. Many calls commenced. Us to the moving company. Driver to the moving company. Us to the Navy. Navy to the moving company. Moving company to us. Navy to us. Us to the driver. Wait. Us to the driver? Oh yeah, he left. Hopefully, he just went to grab his lunch…

Friday, February 16^th, 12:30. Truck driver returns. Did he go get his lunch? Good question. The loading crew, unfortunately, did not return. Had to wait for another crew. Finally, things got moving. The driver wasn’t exactly wrong about the space left in his trailer. Our stuff only fit because the lead of the loading crew was a Next Level Tetris player. Even with the kind of skill that earns a page in the Guinness Book of World Records, those poor guys worked till well after dark on a Friday night when they were originally supposed to be off work by lunchtime.

Saturday – Sunday, February 17^th and 18^th, all day. The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur. During the day, we loaded pigs and took down fences. At night, we set up a big blanket bed in the living room for the five of us and watched a movie on Will’s laptop before passing out. Don’t ask me what movies we watched. I wasn’t there for that part. I’m pretty sure our loading was successful, though. Especially since I’m only basing that on whether 10 pigs and 2 horses made it to Texas.

The Drive Begins

Monday, February 19^th, 06:00. We got up early Monday morning to finish loading the trailers and head out. We had spent weeks planning our every move down to the smallest detail we could think of. We gave ourselves ample time for the inevitability that something would go wrong. The plan was to head out around 08:00 and drive to a farm outside of Tuscaloosa where we could get the horses off the trailer and pitch a tent for the night. Will and I were going to trade rigs back and forth since all the kids and dogs were in the Surburban and just the snake, cat, rats, and bird were in the pick-up. And, like every good plan in the history of everything, it went cockeyed faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.

Monday, February 19^th, 12:00. Our little convoy left Hampton Roads. (If it was later than this, nobody tell me.)

Within an hour, we had no lights on the stock trailer. Pit stop. Fix the wire. Back on the road. No lights. Pit stop. Fix the wire. Back on the road. Good to go! Wait, no, sorry. Lights are out again. Stop at O’Reily’s. Do we need to rewire the whole thing? We seriously do not have time for that. Ok, let’s just grab a set of those magnet lights and–crap, the wire it comes with is shorter than the length of the trailer. And the shortest wire they have for us to patch in is 30’ long and double the price of the lights? No. Just no.

Will is here to save the day! Take wire from the faulty lights on the trailer, patch them into the line for the temporary lights. Done! We’re going to have to completely rewire the trailer now, but that sounds like a problem for Future Us. The lights work, and we’re officially on the road.

Y’all. We made it about 300 miles on day one. That night, we stopped at a rest stop between the Carolinas. While I would love to say we found a quaint little family farm somewhere who had a spare room for us and a corral for the horses, I live in whatever the opposite of a Hallmark movie is. After a check on the critters, Will and I put our pillows in the floorboards for the twins, then he and Buck reclined in the front seats. I elected to climb into the back and curl up between the suitcases with the bloodhound.

Tuesday, February something^th, before dawn. Aching and tired all over, we drug ourselves back into our seats and set out again. Then we drove. And drove. And drove. And drove some more. There must have been stops in there. We had to fill the water buckets…and eat…and we were driving with a 4yo. I’d tell you how many bathroom breaks that kid needed, but I’m not sure I can count that high.

Since Day 2 took us way past Alabama, it would’ve been foolish to stop at the place we had originally reserved. We did want to give the horses a chance to stretch though, so we pulled into a Home Depot parking lot in Louisiana and walked them around for a while. We were there as the night shift arrived and watched the last of the closing shift leave. Any bets on how many “Whoa, did you see those rednecks in the parking lot with the horses?” were said in the breakroom that night?

The next day, in February, dawn. By the time we woke up, opening shift had arrived and we were able to wave bye to the night shift. A long-haul truck driver apparently had a similar thought to ours, because there was a semi parked one aisle over with all the shutters closed and the engine idling. We watered everyone, disposed of our oldest duck who hadn’t made it through the night, stretched the horses’ legs again and set out. More driving, more stops for the weak-bladdered, and we made it to Buc-ee’s just in time to grab lunch.

Side note: for those of you who have never been to a Buc-ee’s, I’m sorry. If you ever get the chance, don’t pass it up. Buc’ee’s is a whole experience.

Since I’m not a little wooden boy with a penchant for growing appendages at inopportune moments, I’m going to say we didn’t stay long. Then we loaded the wagons and off we drove.

It’s Finally Over

A night in late February, I think. Arrival! Both sets of my parents met us at the new property. My dad and bonus mom had spent hours setting up a nice travel trailer for us to stay in temporarily, and my mom and bonus dad had mowed the front 5 acres and packed us a driveway. Hugs went all around. Mom bundled the kids into her truck and told us to get some sleep. Dad showed Will all the important things about the trailer (like where the extra propane bottles were), and my bonus mom shoved a stiff drink into my hand. It was awesome.

Unfortunately, it was also late, we were exhausted, and the pigs were already asleep; so, I’m ashamed to admit it, but the animals spent one more night on the trailer. The next thing I knew, I was waking up to warm sunshine on my face. It was the first night I’d spent on a real mattress in almost a month, so I wanted to get out of bed about as much as a hairless cat wants to make snow angels.

And that’s it. That was the trip. We went 5 mph under the speed limit most of the way and stopped at every truck stop in the southeast. Somewhere around Mississippi, I realized that I hadn’t once driven the Ford, but by that point I was entirely too tired to raise a fuss. So poor Will had to drive the whole trip by himself with just the cat and his parrot to keep him company while I had the privilege of being the only adult in the car with 3 kids and 4 dogs for 3 days. It was an adventure I have absolutely no desire to repeat…ever.

We are still thanking our lucky stars that we didn’t suffer some horrible catastrophe, though. The trailer lights not working was our worst complication, and we only lost one animal. We had no tires blow out, no traffic stops, no emergency vet visits, and no wrecks. I’m still going to call it a learning experience and hope to never have to use what we learned.

The next post in this series: Week 1: We Become Regulars at the Farm Store