Day One! Off to a Rocky Start...

So the day finally arrives!  We're in high spirits...although a little stressed with last minute details and packing the van.  We had started packing the night before and had even done a "dry run" about a week before.  Well, between our dress rehearsal and doing the final pack, Le Tigre had either gained weight or we weren't as thorough as we thought.  Once we had everything in, except ourselves, I stood back and took a look and could tell we were overloaded.  So, after a tearful goodbye with Amy, we scraped our way out of the driveway.

I honestly didn't know what to do. We had put a lot of thought into what we were taking but the van was obviously struggling. After a quick discussion with Angie we decided we were going to have to do a purge on the van much like we had been doing in our recent moves. So we headed across town to our storage place at Thad's. If something wasn't absolutely necessary it was getting left behind. All the recent moves were the real "dry run" because in less than an hour we completely unpacked, reevaluated everything, and repacked the van.
No "just in case" or "we might need this" items were allowed, no matter how small.
We even managed to eliminate the need for the cargo box on the back which was
basically just an enabler to take too much stuff.

 Once her load was lightened,
Le Tigre was back to her old self and ready to roll so we hit the road!

Our first destination was Lake Colorado City State Park. We chose this location because it was a good day of driving (about 5 hours) but not too long and we wanted a location where we could look forward to a swim after a hot day of driving. Well, the lake was in pretty sad shape from the drought. So sad, even Kipper didn't want to swim in it. Bummer. We camped, showered, had dinner, and that was the end of day one. Not a thrilling first day but we were on our way!

First meal, a salad with hard-boiled eggs, not bad.

Thanks Mike and Ayse for wine. Y'all are life savers!

Where is everybody?

Oh yeah, it's Tuesday and the lake dried up.

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