An Unexpected Journey Of Epiphanies 😮☀️💞

Winter continues on, and this time of year is mostly filled with just dreaming of our next steps. Steps we could take when the weather finally allows enough warmth to begin work on Our Ohana again.

Recently during this time, Laura’s mother had been in and out of the hospital 😥. After much discussion Laura and I decided it was time for her to visit.

Laura asked if I would go with her for support. Normally I wouldn’t have because of Covid-19 and travel being so expensive, as we are trying to save up for our big escape.

But this time we weren’t sure how many more visits Laura would get with her mother; so I agreed.

The plan was we would go and do all we could to help out. In the case things might turn for any worse, at least Laura could spend some quality time with her mother while Patricia still had her senses about her. 😟

Unfortunately, by the time we arrived in Phoenix; Patricia Cahill had already moved on into the next life. 😭

Patricia had lived with her sister; Laura’s Aunt Sue. Sue and Pat had been two peas in a pod, not only being sisters but best friends that spent their lives together. So when Patricia passed, our new plan was to go and help Sue take care of her affairs, as well as do as much cleaning and repairs on their home. Our goal was to set Sue up the best we could for success in the week and a half we were able to afford from our lives.

The day before we left, I fired up the Ohana one more time and took her for a cruise out The Spit. It was a perfect day for it:

Before we left I snapped a pic or our baby, so if by chance we came across some fellow YotaHome lovers, we could show them our pride and joy.

Less than 2 days later we arrived in Phoenix. It was an impressive sight as we came in to land:

Very late that night we arrived to a house that though it had been filled with much love, also needed much love. So we would spend the next weeks cleaning, sorting, and donating. We also spent a lot of time replacing appliances, fixing and replacing light fixtures, and doing other general repairs around the home. During all of this endless errands had to be called in, coordinated, and ran while Laura and Sue grieved the loss of their loved one. I just did the best I could to be there and support them as much as possible through their unfathomably hard times.

Through all of the sad moments, we did find some good ones. Actually, that is why I am writing today- to tell you about a few things we learned on our travels.

We had set aside one day so Laura could show me a little bit of the state she had grown up in. After deciding where to stay an evening- we opted to drive to Quartzsite. Quartzsite was a Toyota Motorhome meetup Mecca around this time of year, and we wanted to see what it was all about. Unfortunately, our schedule would force us to arrive a week earlier than the planned Toyhome convention. Nonetheless, we really wanted to see if anyone was already there, as well as scout out the location where they congregated.

So we drove hours out to Quartzsite, and I got to see what desert was really all about.

We stayed in a cute little trailer right in the middle of town, and spent the evening driving around checking out some of what Quartzsite had to offer.

I had put out a question to the Toyota Motorhome Facebook page in hope that they would tell us exactly where the Toyota Motorhomes roamed these parts. So the next day we drove around and checked out the vast amount of flea markets that Quartzsite had while we awaited the word.

Towards the end of our perusing, we came across a building that said “Board Games” on the side. Laura excitedly asked if we should check it out. I laughed and said it probably would be just a store full of things like Quartzsite-Opoly or something.

Well, I officially get to put my foot in my mouth. When I entered it was a massive and encompassing collection of an extensive library of board games covering over half of the store! 🥴

Yep, we spent a bit of time in there after that. We found out the store was a board game treasure hub that people came from all around, even other states to shop! Who would have expected it in this little outlying flea market town…

After we left and with luck, the Toyota community spoke, and though we only saw one Toyhome out where they directed us to- we at least got to drive out and check out the awesome camping area that would be available when we joined up with the community in 2022. 🤩

There was BLM land everywhere to stay on, and it seemed like it would be a perfect place to spend a week or two on our future travels. 💖

That afternoon we were headed back home to continue on our quest to help Aunt Sue begin her newest chapter in her life.

Our trip allowed some questions I had always had to melt away about our eventual big escape from Alaska:

1) One of things Alaskans like to remind people of is how people are rude and less kind outside of our Northern State. From what we found that couldn’t be further from the truth. The most rude and arrogant people we dealt with on all of our travels were on our way leaving and re-entering Alaska. Every single person, from huge city to outlying areas, were kind and thoughtful. This helped alleviate our concern that the rest of the country might be a cold and callous place to travel and maybe one day live.

2) Availability and Cost. Everything is sooooo much cheaper outside of Alaska. We understand it takes more to ship things North, but the price absorbancy of what Alaskans have to pay is totally ridiculous. Sure, our wages are higher, but when everything costs 3 – 4 times more in Alaska- that benefit does not balance out as a positive. We realized that we could live and thrive for a fraction of the cost that we struggle with in Alaska.

The picture below is me being a huge dork, but I was tripping over the amazement of ordering a part I needed for a dishwasher installation. I had placed the order the night before on Amazon, and it arrived that very next morning! No week to two weeks wait down here!

3) Not only were things cheaper, but food options were plentiful and with a variety of choices. We were able to easily stick to our “Seagan” diet and enjoy a surrounding community that understood and encouraged healthy living! This is something we were really looking for in our future.

4) So much to do! With board game communities, fitness options, and a myriad of other opportunities that didn’t cost a fortune to enjoy- we realized we would finally could get to explore so many things that interest us in our travels. Here are some shots from an evening where we went mini-golfing at a local amusement park.

And of course some pics of a few board game cafes we dipped into to check out the scene. 😉

Honestly, by the end of it even despite the circumstances we had a really good trip. We were able to help Laura’s Aunt Sue a ton, as well as grow a relationship with her that we hadn’t had before.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but at the end of our stay it was really hard to put back on pants. 😂

That’s because we had been in shorts the whole time we were there- Geez!

It was hard to get back on that plane period; to return to our life of winter isolation, ice, snow, and having to bundle up to stare at the stars at night.

To top it all off we were greeted home with a nice session of digging and plowing ourselves out- of course. 🙄😄

But our lives aren’t quite buttoned up enough to leave Alaska just yet. Another summer, another freeze, and a few more thaws were between us and our travel dreams.

So with a deep appreciation we carried what we had learned from our trip to Arizona and planted those seeds deep in our hearts; to remind us of possibilities could lie ahead on the road, and our future.

Geoff Murphy 2/19/2021