After having listed and sold the house in under a week, we turned our shared attention partly to finishing the last of the projects and partly to finding a place to live in Tennessee. When we'd originally started our research of the areas, the housing market hadn't reached its peak there yet, so we were contemplating the purchase of a small house near one of the big cities that we could rent/sell later. Now, as we started to really get serious the prices were starting to increase aggressively and the houses were being snapped up in 1-2 days. Still we pursued this approach for a a bit while also starting to look for houses to rent.
With the sale of the Lake House we'd stipulated an extra month of "rent back" so that Tammy had time to finish out the school year and we'd have a little breathing room on finishing all of our tasks to relocate across the country. This turned out to be really beneficial, since it allowed us to pivot a bit in our search for our new temporary home. We were looking for a house that had a good sized, fenced-in yard for the dogs, wasn't too far from the city for Allyson and Emma to work and wasn't too small (although we wanted to shrink the house size a bit)...and needed air conditioning of course.
We luckily happened across a rental on Zillow that was near Nashville in an area we really hadn't considered. The town is named Pleasant View (sounds nice) and it is in farmland equally distant from Nashville and Clarksville. We contacted the landlord (who was the home's owner) and explained our situation and our interest. After some back and forth with information and a draft lease agreement, we seemed to have a place to rent. We were anxious since we only could see the pictures on Zillow and we'd never rented a home for our whole family to live in (let alone on the other side of the country). The owner was renting out a house for the first time too, so understood our worry and kindly gave us a spur-of-the-moment video tour of the property. It looked like the right place for us and was more affordable than most that we'd seen in that area. Here are some pics:
The back yard backs up to a creek and greenbelt, so there is lots of nature and is fairly private - the owner sent a vide of the backyard:
The one snag was that the house became available in June and we wouldn't get there until July. Eager to put this worry to rest and not miss a nice place, we signed the agreement and paid first/last/pet deposit and suddenly had an address in Tennessee!
We fairly quickly wrapped up the last of the house projects, patching holes from shelves and pictures and touching up the last of the paint. It went relatively quick since we'd already emptied most of the house into the bus and garage. We finished disassembling beds and furniture, leaving the bare essentials in place for the final week (the girls weren't big fans of this). Now we could do the final cleaning on most of the rooms, leaving only a few for the last day.
Another set of tasks to complete revolved around the vehicles we'd be using to move. We'd had the bus inspected, but the RV, Suburban and Jeep all needed maintenance before the long trip. The RV and Jeep were pretty simple, as they only required a mechanical once-over and and oil change. The RV also required packing for the family and pets to live in for the next 6-8 days. This was complicated by trying to also use some of the available space to for moving house items. Within a few days we had it loaded and ready - at least enough to get on the road, knowing we would adjust as we went along.
The Suburban was another matter. There were several "deferred maintenance" items that we'd avoided addressing that now seemed to take on a higher importance as we neared moving our entire life across the country. Several Amazon orders and trips to the parts store later, Bruce helped Don get this one road-worthy as well. Bruce also helped make this initial move WAY simpler by offering to keep Don's old car in his garage until we got out final place. With a quick U-Haul car trailer rental and a close call while unloading, we nestled the 1950 Chevrolet into a corner of Bruce's garage - safe and sound. Thank you again Bruce for all of your help!
To celebrate this new path in our lives, we also wanted to reconnect with friends and family one last time before we left. We set out to block out days in our remaining weeks to do just that, which made everything left to do feel a bit tighter but was important to make fit in.
First, we were able to meet with Tom and Kim Gennarelli for some RV camping on the Columbia Gorge. It was a long haul to get there (thanks Seattle traffic) but we spent two great nights with them, having delicious meals, going on a nice hike and drinking wine and Screwball whiskey (thanks for sharing that Tom!).
Next we invited Don's brother Bruce and his wife Debbie to the house to have a late lunch on Tammy's last day of work. Having fished on the lake together their whole lives, it seemed fitting to have a last meal by the water and share some Lake House memories plus our plans for the coming move.
Then we had Anna & Darcy Clarke over later that day and had a great meal by the lake. Anna brought "Cicada Wraps" and Darcy brought more bourbon than we could drink (not that we didn't try). We had perfect weather and told many, many stories sitting by the campfire until it was very late in the evening, reveling in "how bad it didn't suck".
Finally, we invited Tammy's family to the house for one last day of fun in/by the water. We also used this rare moment to recreate a family picture take on the dock years ago. The moment was rare as Grace was coming home from Florida and Danielle was coming back from Wenatchee to make the photo complete. We had picture-perfect weather again that day and enjoyed the time with each other, even when Blake took turn soaking each of us by surprise :-).
There were lots of hugs and a few tears as we had these last celebrations, but we reminded everyone that we won't be that far away and that calls/chats/FaceTime sessions can keep us close too.
The next morning we left early to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to Moses Lake to pick up the two U-Haul trailers. As we mentioned earlier, this five hour effort ended up saving us nearly $2,000. Except for forgetting one hitch pin (which we bought at a Moses Lake farm store), the pickup of the trailers went without a hitch (pun intended).
We pulled into the house to find that Jereme, Wesley, Christine, Brian and their boys were there enjoying the lake again - fun! We started to fill the first trailer and quickly Christine and Brian (Tammy's sister and her husband) jumped in to help. We spent a few hours of hard work and by ~10:00p we had one trailer basically full. Christine and Brian were so helpful through the packing process, helping to box things up, taking several plants to hold for us and agreeing to keep many of the "overflow" items until we could make a trip later for them - thanks you two!
The next day focused on loading the second trailer and cleaning most of the rooms in the house, so it was all hands on deck. Grace had poured through all of her boxes to find any other items that weren't essential, then helped load the bus, trailer and Suburban with the remaining boxes. Allyson and Emma made sure that the animals were set up to travel and did the final cleaning of their rooms, plus got the Jeep ready for a road trip. Christine and Brian showed up again in the afternoon to help load the last of the big items and figure out how to fit all the other odds and ends into the spaces that were left.
Now for the final items to load. The kayaks got hefted onto the roof of the Suburban, the bikes put on racks on the Jeep and RV and our California King mattress (along with various yard art) loaded onto the roof of one trailer. With everything that could be packed in place, we all slept in the RV for the night so we could do a final clean of the house and shove off in the morning...we hoped.
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