How it all started

Genesis

Everyone always wonders how the story begins. For some it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment an idea becomes a dream. For others it’s imbedded in the memory bank. I’m the latter. My wife and I have been talking for years about what we wanted to do when our kids were in college. We would be empty nesters, and young ones at that. We definitely enjoy the occasional night on the town, but are more than happy to keep ourselves occupied in our own solitude. We started thinking about all the different places we could move, and what that would mean. We realized all we really wanted was each other, some land, a place for the kids to come visit, and some peace and quiet. We started narrowing down the list and realized the easiest way to do it was to figure out where we didn’t want to end up. That path eventually led us to small town in Montana. Grass Range. Population 110. Give or take 5.

Fast forward a few months. We bought the land. 50 acres of barren, pristine Montana range land. Ours for the making. Yeah, that happened. Purchased sight unseen, (we did have drone videos) after countless hours of painstaking research done by by my wonderful wife, to find just the right spot spot for us. A dream and a prayer, that’s what we had. We spent a few days there a couple years ago camping on our land. And as we came down the road and turned into the lot, we knew that’s where we were destined to be. As we got or hands into the dirt and walked the fields we hope our grandchildren will one day run, we realized we were finally home. It was absolutely perfect. But something was telling us it wasn’t quite time yet. We are still young, and while the quiet and months long snow-induced solitude is something we both want, we felt we still had some adventuring to do.

Since we’ve been together we’ve always tossed around the idea of just getting in an RV and travelling the country. The only thing really holding us back was the fact that I worked in a restaurant and our own reservations. But wouldn’t it be something if we actually did the thing that everybody talks about doing….

Simmer

December 2023. We’re on a much needed vacation getting ready to celebrate the new year. We know the time is coming to make a decision on what our plan is. We have the land in Montana. We have children attending colleges on the east coast. We still fell we have some wild oats to sow. We start talking about the idea again. What’s stopping us? Why couldn’t we do it? What would that mean? We made a decision that December night to take the idea from dream to reality, and not look back. We were all in. Time was the only thing holding us back. We still had almost 2 years to go before this dream could be realized. What did that mean? Where did that leave us? How could we turn this dream into a plan?