Pre-departure

This is it. We are on the road…!

Rewind to before our departure…

We moved out of our hip urban apartment downtown OTR Cincinnati, and put all our belongs in boxes. We stayed with my parents for a few days to pack the car and finalize everything pre-departure.

We were treated to some beautiful goodbye dinners and sent off with positive vibes and love from family and friends. (Shout out to Paul and Carmen Gant for taking care of us and treating us like a king and queen)

The week before we left was a blur of boxes, packing tape, goodwill drop offs, puerto rico donations, labeling boxes, packing into a truck then unloading into my parents basement, then packing a few belongings into our 4runner.

It’s sometimes the little things that are easy to forget before embarking on a year journey… get a dentist check-up, check the expiration date on your drivers license, upload some books on the kindle, buy a fanny pack. Our to-do lists grew legs which sprouted into multiple to-do lists and we parked our minds in autopilot as we checked things off.

(^Lindsey’s clothes ^) Packing wasn’t easy. In the next 9 months, we will go from hot deserts to freezing glaciers, so layers are essential. When seeking advice from other Overlanders, some women said they wished that they would have packed a couple nice dresses for dinner in Cartagena. Other women said they packed too many dresses because they lived in their hiking pants. In the end, we pulled back and simplified. I took out that extra dress and extra pair of shoes. These packing cubes are a life saver.

For a long time, our belongings were all laid out on the garage floor. We kept staring at our items trying to simplify and be very strategic about what to pack for months on the road. My dad would come home from work, “Guys… the garage looks the same from when I left this morning” We were doing things…! Mentally, we visualizing different scenarios and what we would need to face them: fire extinguisher, rope, first aid, bug spray, hand warmers. In the end, we simplified even more, put everything in the car, and were pleasantly surprised with how little we brought and how much visibility we had in the back.