Well, the inspections came back on the house and the septic. The septic failed and it must be replaced. I found that out Thursday morning from the septic guy; this happened just as I was gonna walk in the door and splurge for a ham & beef combo and fry at Rosedale’s BBQ. Needless to say I lost my appetite. I had no idea yet about the other inspection of the house itself.

My realtor contacted me this morning and sent me all the reports but told me what the buyers said. As we had agreed to, since the septic failed they hung in there and are still taking it since I agreed to replace the septic. We are getting everything organized for installation of a new tank and that could be this week; this means we can still close on time!

What a relief. I know I have done a lot of work around here. It has finally paid off and I can see this chapter soon drawing to a close. I still have some work ahead of me but there is not really much and I will have plenty of time to get it taken care of.

After working hard around here for over a week preparing for the inspections, I decided that I was taking a couple of days off for myself and will resume tomorrow or Monday. I will still be able to get everything done in plenty of time and have extra time in case there is an issue. Not much left in the basement so that will go fairly quickly. Trip to haul the metal and a trip to the dump will take care of a lot. At the last minute I will rent a storage unit to put these last few things in and it’s all over but filling up the truck, signing papers and at some point heading NW. Replacing a septic tank is not cheap and I am not happy about that, but that’s life and I accept it; I cannot change the fact that it needs a new one. I can focus on what I CAN do, and there are a few things.

This was a huge step in making it real – it has a definite “finality” about it. I can start to work more seriously on an actual plan to leave. I already had a couple of ideas but I had to come up with another plan in case of advice that the cardiologist gives. It is still not the best time to travel west so I do not know yet what I will do about that. All part of the fun!

It has been cold the last few days but will warm up next week again. I will need to open the trailer water system back up (hopefully) before I leave but it may be a bit early yet. I still need to be careful with it freezing here plus be conscious of the weather when I am traveling. I will be staying in it soon so I am trying to make sure everything that needs to go in there makes it. Some things will be last minute – like me moving in there.

I will probably try to do the water here since I cannot do it easily while traveling. It takes time that is hard to spare when traveling; I have to disinfect the system for a day then drain & rinse it out once or twice before refilling. Then again, I will have plenty of time, but it is really inconvenient not being able to use water. I do have tank warmers so I think it would be okay for a while until I got further north and it was freezing. They are 12V so the solar panels would keep them on if not hooked up to shore power or truck.

There is admittedly a little anxiousness for me. I have been kinda stationary for a couple of years so I am out of practice being a road dog. It won’t take long to get back into it though and the biggest thing is simply to just not get in a hurry. That will be important for me to do since I have a lot of time to find things to fill it with. I may have weather to be concerned with. Of course, there is “the unknown” but I like that part of it.

I think that many times we find ourselves in a hurry for no real reason, other than it is how our lives have become and it never shuts off. I know leaving on my trip to Sequim at the start of this blog I was not out for as long as I thought I would be. I also was starting my caretaker gig and had to be there at a certain time. I got there early instead of taking more time on the road. As of now I have no real deadlines for this trip so I can go wherever whenever.

I said before that I am really excited to get this trailer out for a long trip, and I think halfway across the country qualifies. I can add another battery and another solar panel to give me more solar storage if I wanted to, but I still need to see if I keep it. My guess is that once I do a trip like this I may have a hard time parting with it. It will be a great trailer for this trip and, as always, I will be posting about it. Also, as I usually do, posts will be delayed for my personal safety; if the dates in the posts have already passed that is why.

That is it for this post. I need to go look at the road atlas some more.

Shawn