Arrival

the view from the west side, down toward the road

Brown fields and a small, white, vintage double-wide.

We arrived, January 2019.

from the back, looking downhill

It's a very small home (pick-up included for scale, above!) on a long, open hillside.

Moving in consisted of driving up, resetting the house heater and setting up the mini heater for Sarah's parakeet, Percy.  Bringing in the dogs, Dulcie and Betty.  Some luggage and, after a while, an air mattress.

The air mattress was a difficulty.  We had inadvertently stored it in the back of the pick-up within range of my largest cactus.  Need I say more?  We soon replaced it with a couple of foam pads while we waited for an opportunity to bring our furniture and boxes the long drive up to our new home.

In the meantime, the decorating was decidedly minimalist!  Betty had no objections to that.  It left her more room to look out the windows.

Our trip to pick up our stuff from storage was delayed by weather...

...mostly in the form of ice.

There was also a flat-out refusal to start, on the part of our truck, the morning we had scheduled to leave.  What between repairs and another bout of weather, we slept on those foam pads for another week.

At last we were able to hit the road.

The longest of winter sunsets glowing across the hills and trees in southern Missouri.  The warm Oklahoma accent.  Black cattle, green fields, enormous windmills instead of the old oil derricks of a hundred years ago.  Chill blowing fog in west Texas canyons.  Wind, and more wind from Oklahoma through Texas, on into New Mexico.  The solidity of the hill above Tucumcari.  The opening of the southwestern sunlight.  Then snow as we approached Albuquerque.  Almost white-out conditions, and I was forced to the side of the road for a few minutes as my windshield wipers could not cope.  Then the next morning a bloom of snow on all the trees across those warm hillsides.  Snow fading as we drove south.  Bare canyons high in the high desert.  At last a look into our storage unit in Las Cruces to be sure everything was right, then waiting for the guys to come load and drive our stuff back to Missouri.

Chihuahuan Desert south of Las Lunas, NM

And here we are.  There are still boxes to unpack, the furniture needs to be arranged, we have no appliances, and we are trying to deal with the pain of a few precious things having somehow been left behind (unless major discoveries are made soon).  But we are in our little, new, old mobile home and sleeping on mattresses and eating food cooked on a burner that works (more on that in another post!).

If you want to follow along with our adventures, hacks, weal and woe, please come right on in!  Just be aware you may have to dodge a few boxes of books still...