With an ice storm in the forecast, we decided to get an airbnb and keep a low profile for a few days. We’d get some work done, figure out some logistics, and hopefully find a furnished short term rental to be our temporary home base in the southwest. Instead, we lost power.

The ice storm was extreme, the ice buildup was so thick that we couldn’t have gotten into the bus even if we’d wanted to risk driving anywhere.

With the power out, we couldn’t get done anything that we’d planned. We couldn’t cook any of the food that we’d bought. This was supposed to be our respite, our warm haven during the storm. A place to have a hot shower and get laundry done. Instead the interior temps dropped into the 50s. It was miserable.

We had a lot of time to talk. We talked a lot. We’ve really been enjoying Route 66, but there have been serious challenges with trying to make a road trip work. First, the pandemic. When we still had power we caught some of the local news, El Paso was instituting a curfew because COVID cases were overwhelming the hospitals. With case numbers higher than ever, we have not felt comfortable patronizing local businesses, and many of the little shops along Route 66 aren’t even open. Second, the weather. It’s colder than we’d expected, and we couldn’t just travel to a warmer area and wait it out, the cold is everywhere! Third, we’re in a tiny, vintage vehicle. Where an RV is self-contained and has adequate living space, we simply need more exterior amenities. The bus isn’t capable of things a modern car is, like driving when it’s icy, or covering a lot of ground quickly, or being able to drive comfortably in high wind. This just isn’t the right time to be doing this trip.

We’d already decided on getting an apartment, but with this storm we decided we’d rather home-base near our support system. We’d be so isolated in the southwest, for the time being it seems to make more sense to stay closer to family. We tapped into our networks in Michigan and rented an apartment in Grand Rapids.

We had two miserable, cold days without power. The second day, I sat in the window and watched ice daggers fall from the power lines onto the roads below. Kyle decided he’d try to fry up our burgers in our little one-burner camp stove, so we had some comfort food the second night. About an hour after burgers, the power came back on, so we baked the french fries we’d bought as well.

The view from our apartment, trees during and after the ice storm.

The next morning, we took our time, trying to fit three days worth of chores in before checkout time. We got laundry done. We took showers. We got some internet projects completed. When we got on the road, every other stoplight in OKC was dark. There weren’t just a few branches down, EVERY SINGLE TREE lost branches in that ice storm. It wasn’t just a few power outages, there must have been hundreds. Everywhere we drove that day, trees were splintered apart. But for the first time in over a week we had sunshine – it was an amazing feeling.

The next few days were a blur of driving, and a mix of hotels and campsites, depending on the temperature. We found an amazing free campground, it had about 16 sites overlooking a lake. Each site had a covered picnic table!

We watched the sun set over the lake with a cloudless sky. It felt good to be camping again.

The next morning was Halloween, so we took some photos with the pumpkin we’ve been carrying around!

One noteworthy event on the road that day: we met a ton of bucket trucks on their way south. We weren’t sure if they were headed to Oklahoma to help with the ice storm outages, or if they were headed for Louisiana to fix damage from Hurricane Zeta!

We needed to pick up a few necessities, and Havana, IL was just north of our next campsite. We had a late lunch right by the town’s claim to fame, a historic water tower. I’m starting to love that all these little towns have this one thing that they’re proud of, like the world’s biggest rocking chair.

Then to our next campsite, which was supposed to be $8/night but instead was totally abandoned. It was a huge campground stretched along the shore of a lake, and easily our best night of camping in a long time. We had the place to ourselves.

It was crazy windy, but the lake only formed little ripples. It’s hard not to compare that “swell” to the swell that same wind would have created in the anchorages we’ve stayed in. Also I was obsessed with those red trees along the shore, they were beautiful!

We went for a long walk to explore the campground. It was a really great spot, and hard to believe it was completely empty after our crazy experience just a couple hundred miles to the east a couple weeks ago.

The previous night, we regretted not having a campfire to keep us warm, so we made sure to buy firewood today. We sat by our fire and ate some dinner while we waited for the huge Halloween blue moon to rise. I don’t have the right photography equipment to capture it, but it was such a beautiful night. Absolutely amazing.

In the morning, we couldn’t feel our fingers as we tried to make coffee and pack up. I checked the weather, it was 35 degrees and a 20mph wind. We stay so warm and comfy sleeping in the bus that it never feels like it’s cold out until we open the door. That kind of wind makes for a miserable day of driving though, we get tossed around the road. I could barely feel my feet all day. We got a hotel that night, we had to get utilities sorted out for our apartment and get some work done again.

Part of me is super disappointed, doing the boring thing and living in an apartment again. I was very excited to explore the southwest and the national parks, the hiking and the photography! But we also recognize that it would have been so stressful to try to force that plan to work during a pandemic. It’s really hard to be homeless. As soon as we sold the boat, we knew we would need some sort of home base to return to in between adventures. This choice, the boring choice, moves us closer to our goal of finding a home that we can return to. Part of me is very excited, I’ll be able to have a place for my stuff and room for my hobbies. We can make forward progress on a lot of goals that have been on the backburner for several years. We have a huge fridge (it’s actually just apartment sized), we have bed that we can access from three sides (no more making the bed…while sitting on the bed!), we have regular access to hot showers, we have FIBER INTERNET. It’s a wild change.

What happens to the blog now? Maybe hibernation. I could use a break from social media, and I’ll probably go back to doing the monthly wrap-up posts since we won’t be doing as much worth writing about. That being said, when we get really sick of Michigan’s sunless winters, there’s nothing stopping us from heading down to Florida for a month. And this spring, we could finish Route 66 if we feel more comfortable with the situation. So maybe the adventures won’t stop. Who knows!