Equipo Williams

Monday, June 26 was Departure Day.  After a year of planning and readying and thinking, we had hoped to have a relaxing breakfast, do a final tidying of the house for guests, pack last items and then head out.  That was not quite what we achieved. 

The day dawned and I had not finished packing.  That was not entirely unexpected as I had also not started packing.  There was a lot to do in the weeks leading up to departure both to prepare the 4Runner as well as stepping away from work and saying goodbye to friends, all of which meant that the work of actually packing was way behind.

Packing the camping equipment was straightforward and we had done that before during our April shakedown.  We had made some improvements to the drawers in the back of the car that hold our food and cooking equipment and that made loading very clean and easy.

Personal belongings were another matter.  Basically, there was too much stuff.  Months ago, Jessie and I talked about doing a trial packing the weekend before we left.  That was a really good idea that we didn’t follow through on, leaving us to figure out things on Monday when we had no time to replan.  For example, we have some things that we only plan to use for the summer and some things that we only plan to use when we get to South America but we ended up needing to pack both.  We’ll fix that by shipping some of the South America and home-schooling supplies ahead for pickup in September so we don’t carry them all summer.  We have some other ideas for optimizing our things that we’re implementing as we go along (we discovered this morning that some of the sleeping bags can stay in the tent when it’s folded, for example).    

By 1130 we were, if not ready, then at least at the point where anything undone wasn’t worth doing.  We were packed enough (we did forget a few minor things, but nothing serious) and we were all feeling bittersweet at the prospect of leaving our friends and home for a year that it was time to go through with it and cast off.  Final checks complete, we were on the road by 11:45.  Tears were shed, parents were cursed for dragging their children away, and grownups questioned their judgement and sanity at coming up with this plan in the first place.  It was a heady and emotional first half hour. 

But we were on our way.