We quit, packed and drove: An uninspiring story of being in our twenties.

Jeff and I quit our jobs, packed our shit and left my home state of Michigan to drive across the country to his home state of California. Yosemite National Park to be exact … which is on fire and in severe drought most of the time. Why did we do this? To live in the mountains and amongst the tall beautiful trees and to be far from the stinky cities and hordes of people. The following is our adventure across the country in a 16ft budget truck. It will mostly be pictures.

The budget truck on our Michigan driveway.

Our first day on the road did not start until 5pm. We packed our entire two bedroom house into the truck (which we couldn’t pick up until noon) including Jeff’s motorcycle and a couch in about 4 hours, sweating and “hangry” the entire time because we didn’t really think to buy food before we left. The plan was to sell my car that day as well. We had someone lined up to pick it up around 4:30 pm, praying to God he wouldn’t bail or conveniently not have the right amount of cash or something of the like. Around 4:00 when everything had been sufficiently stuffed into the truck I realized that I did not have the title to the car I was selling. It was somewhere in the many boxes we had just packed. That’s probably about when I almost lost it and broke down. Fortunately that didn’t happen. I started going through the boxes that I thought it might be in and finally found it.

Jeff driving his motorcycle into the truck

Dork stance.

I sold my car officially at 5pm without a hiccup and we immediately started driving north to visit our wonderful friends, Andy and Andrea in Marquette, arriving around midnight. The things coming out of mouth stopped making sense around 10:30pm and Jeff was on his own as far as getting any good directions were concerned. It was lovely to see Andy and Andrea again and their their dog Patch as well. Unfortunately, Patch was so excited he had to pee all over us in the morning which was an interesting way to wake up.

Driving over the Mackinaw Bridge

Andy, Andrea and Patch

Stealing Patch

We drove through my old college town of Marquette and went to Target to buy a new and very fashionable comforter. Then we were off again! This time to Duluth to visit my sister and brother-in-law. I was mentally prepared for a very relaxing 5 hour drive along Lake Superior’s coast line. And for the most part that was how it was. About 2 hours away from Duluth the radio station did that errr eeeeeee er er er errrrrrrrr noise it does when it’s doing that practice weather warning thing that’s always a practice and never real life. Except this time it was real life…

It had been raining pretty steadily for a bit and there were some nice clouds forming in the distance but it didn’t look life it was going to be anything terrible by any means. Then the robot voice came on after all those weird warning noises and said something about quarter size hail and 60 mph wind gusts in Ashland County which was 20 miles up the road. If my memory serves me right the rain immediately became more intense and the sky became really dark and I thought I was going to die. Am I being overly dramatic? That’s very likely. Was that how it felt? For me, yes. Driving in the rain is one of my few fears. So I clutched whatever handle was nearby and Jeff gave me worried sideways glances and told me to find a different radio station.

When we reached the town of Ashland it was barely a drizzle outside and my eyeballs had returned to their normal size. We never saw any hail.

Giant Puddle

Finally we arrived in Duluth unscathed and very happy to see my beautiful sister grilling chicken for dinner. We spent two nights in Duluth touring around to my brother-in-law’s brew pubs (Fitger’s Brewhouse), drinking and eating for free. We had an amazing time and I had a bit of trouble leaving.

We left Duluth and drove about 900 miles to a rest stop just south of Billings, Montana and just outside of Yellowstone. 900 miles turned out to take a bit of a toll and my cranky danger level was probably HIGH on the Smokey the Bear sign. Our conversations became a little more weird the longer we drove. It became mainly conversations in northern accents about how short the trees are out there, aye. We started pretending that Penske and Uhaul were are rivals. Jeff pondered the amount of bugs we hit, “I wonder how many bugs are killed by driving. I bet that’s a lot of fucking bugs.” Some of the bugs seemed like they may have been something else, “Pretty sure we hit a few bats.” And we definitely hit a bird too.

This was our first night staying in the back of the truck on our couch. It was really quite comfortable if a bit cramped. The only thing that turned out to be a real annoyance was the mouse we had somehow adopted somewhere.

Our first night in the truck

The next day was dedicated to Yellowstone. The mountains in Yellowstone are very different from those in Yosemite. It was a gorgeous day to spend in the park watching the buffalo and the geysers. All very different from Yosemite. The crowds were an annoyance but that is how it is everywhere this time of year.

We stayed the night in the Tetons once we were done in Yellowstone in a little campground that was quite lovely. We did receive quite a few weird looks from other campers as we pulled up in a budget truck.

We drove casually through the Tetons stopping for lunch and enjoying the sights and then we continued on hwy 60 to 89 which was a wonderful route. We did stop at a bar for a beer and burgers in a small town with the largest elk antler arch in the world. Little did we know that we stopped during a local event and we ended up sitting on top of our budget truck for the entirety of their parade while people tried to throw candy up to us. It was delightful. When the firetruck went by we were hosed down by some kids sitting on top which was pretty hilarious.

That night we stayed at another campground in Utah’s mountains on route 89. It was one of our favorite spots on the trip. Just a beautiful little campground tucked away between the canyon walls along a little river. Shaded wonderfully so that almost every spot was hidden. We had our last bonfire that night knowing all too well the drought we were going back to.

From there we drove all the way back to the lodge. Yet another dreadfully long day. I do not fair well on long car rides. We got to Yosemite Park at sunset and were lucky enough to see Half Dome lit up with the pink sunset.

Arriving at the lodge was surreal. Not many people were around at that point and we really just had to go to bed and get ready to unpack the next day.

Now we have settled in comfortably and it’s almost like we never left. We are old news at the lodge. Camping has commenced and I am happy to be under these big trees again!