Planning has begun! Ryan and I recently took a special bookstore trip and and sat on the floor between book shelves and flipped through about 20 different travel books and decided on a great book on the National Parks. We also got the biggest map we could find and put that baby up on our bedroom wall. We’ve started thinking about which parks we will fit into our two month July/August exploration of the West. It’s exhilarating planning which hikes we want to take and how many days to plan for camping in each park, but it’s also a kind of strange torture as we’re in the midst of a Chicago winter. Yosemite, Glacier, and Zion seem so close, and also so far from where we are now. I think for both of us, the hours that we’ve already spent buried in Craigslist searches of job and places to live in different locales – Boise, Sante Fe, Flagstaff, Missoula, and beyond – as well as evenings with maps and travel guides spread across our bed or dining room table have become a coping mechanism for our frustrations with our current realities. It’s hard to be “present” when it feels like we’re on the verge of something so much more dynamic.

Starting to plan together has also been a great exercise in being patient and communicative about our expectations and hopes for the trip. We both have so much we want to do and see, and suddenly two months doesn’t seem long enough. We both have to keep reminding each other that our exploration of the country won’t end once we decide on a new place to live. The whole point of moving “west” is so that we have access to the amazing features and parks of the American West and so, if we get this right, this two month trip will only be the beginning of our time traveling together.

Since I’m no longer on Facebook (the great ice bucket challenge of 2014 was more than I could handle), Ryan has done an amazing job of activating his/our networks of friends and family that have settled in various places “out west” and we’ve started to collect some great information on the drawbacks and benefits of different locations. It’s fun to see how many people we know that have made their own ventures to new places. We’re clearly not alone in our interest of life west of the Mighty Mississippi!