Westward Migration

GO WEST MY SON... (On white buffalo, just like Joseph Smith... an old mission story reference*)

For years we have been discussion moving back west to be closer to family.  Still we loved New England, so we said "Maybe next year."  The amazing thing about next years is that it is always a year away.  So we stayed on our four acres in New Hampshire and loved it (except for the winters for Adrienne and spring for everyone).  After all, how do you leave a place like this: 

Look there is even a while little church in the background (though it is empty as NH is the 2nd or 3rd most Godless state in the nation - we still love you all).  Great lakes for swimming or just standing at the dock and messing your diaper.


I could really see myself in my older years kicking back in a green field listening to music.  I even have TWO buttons opened on my shirt.  You can nearly see a chest hair.

Despite the beauty of NH, Adrienne felt the call to finish her degree at BYU.  So we pulled the trigger.  Within about 6 weeks, we got permission to work remotely, put an offer on a new house, backed up our old house and hit the road.

Since this was a non-work related move, we had to foot the entire bill.  I found the cheapest route was U-Haul's answer to PODS.  I picked up 6 of these shipping boxes one-by-one on a trailer, filled them up and drove them home.  The box said if you loaded heavy stuff in them, only fill them 1/3 full.  I noticed this sign after I had crammed junk into every nook and cranny of the 6 boxes.  I am sure that they factor in a 3X safety factor into these boxes, right?   After some nervous trips on the freeway and
several comments by the U-Haul staff that "These boxes seem heavy," we were ready to go.

Well that was not entirely true.  We had ton of junk that did not fit that we had to give away or throw away.  I was definitely stressed.  Still, we got everything packed and finally hit the road.  We thought of taking the trip slowly show we could see things along the way.  But after consulting the first day of class, we realized we had to bust a move.  We did make time for a couple of hours at Niagara Falls.

The next several days all looked pretty much like this, with the kid in the back peeing every 30 minutes.  Notice the Jed Clampett nature of the back of my truck with the chair, lawn mower, and bike. 

Since we were bringing both vehicles back, we both did lots of driving, though we did have Adrienne's brother there to help.  Patrick volunteered to drive to, but declined.

I did reach 100,00 miles on this trip. 

We found  a good little Mexican restaurant in the middle of Wyoming.  You can tell by the wry expressions on everyone's face that it has been a long trip.

I know a lot of folks bad mouth Wyoming, but I really enjoy the change of scenery.

Well, we finally made it to Mapleton.  It took longer to close on out house than we thought and I had to run of to Germany only a couple of days after we moved in, but we survived.  So now is a sunrise to a new chapter in our lives.

I will always love our New Hampshire years and our little white house in the woods (please let me know if you would like to buy it).

Still, I look forward to new memories and a new phase in life in Mapleton.

One thing I have learned from life is that you can never go back to the "good old days," but each day is a new chance to make a new memories for yourself that you look back on in years to come.



(* Every so often we would have a "fake" investigator on my mission who was only there to learn English, but were claiming they were reading the Book of Mormon  We would ask them what they thought of the part where Joseph Smith rode across the plains on the white buffalo.  If they said it was beautiful, we knew they were lying.)