Seeing as how it’s been half a year since we’ve taken our requisite trip to Crested Butte (and two years since we’ve gone in the snow), Brandy is ready to go.
We’re planning for a quite extensive trip this time, a whopping two weeks. This will be the longest trip I’ve ever taken at one time. We came close when we came to visit Ottumwa for Christmas a couple years ago, then turned right back around and drove back a week later, but this will be a consecutive two weeks away from home.
The plan is to spend the first half of the trip in Canon City, near the Royal Gorge, where Brandy wants to take a ride on the Royal Gorge Route Railroad, an experience that promises to be similar to our trip on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in November of 2021. There are plenty of trails in the area too so I plan on taking my daypack, sticks and hiking boots and getting some miles in while there.
The second half of the trip will be in Crested Butte where we have a cabin reserved and waiting for us.
The western slope has seen a pretty significant amount of snowfall as of late so we’re not getting away from it by heading out there, but, the good thing is, I won’t have to shovel.
I’m exceptionally excited to take this trip, not necessarily because of the destination, but because it will be for two whole weeks, and it’s been a while since we’ve done a big trip, the last being our trip to Albuquerque and Walsenburg in September. I may sound like an entitled brat with a statement like that, but I got used to taking a trip a month in 2020-2021 when Brandy and I literally took a trip just about every month.
We do enjoy traveling and having the flexibility to be able to do so (i.e. having fully remote jobs where our employers don’t care where we’re working from, as long as we’re working) is a HUGE advantage. We both recognize that and are eternally grateful for it. It helps too that I have an ultra-flexible schedule and am able to work four tens most weeks (except when I’m on call, or on weeks when there’s a holiday, in which case I’d work four eights instead of four tens.) Me having most Fridays off will allow us to get jump starts on travel weekends, allowing us three days instead of two to get to our destination before we have to be set up to work again. Brandy is capable of working from a moving vehicle, as long as she has a cell reception to be able to tether her laptop to it for data.
Getting our RV setup going is going to be a huge step for us. I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am for that. I know I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch, but… well, they’re starting to hatch.
Stick around. We’ll see what this next chapter in our lives brings.
-Phil