Storage unit filled. Suitcases packed. Loft empty. Cars loaded. Heading for our first stop – Hays, Kansas.

Wait. What?! WHY?

Because moving is exhausting.  Even moving into a storage unit is exhausting.  We decided to cut ourselves a break and head just a few hours down the road the first day.  Hays is a bit less than about halfway from KCMO to our first stop, Breckenridge, Colorado.

When we made the decision to travel, we chose to sell and give away about half of our things. We packed the rest ourselves in many, many easy to carry free liquor boxes.  These we moved to the storage unit ourselves, saving the heavy lifting for the movers.

We used You Move Me to move us into our storage unit. They arrived at 9:30 and were polite, friendly guys.  We could make them laugh. The could make us laugh. We bonded.

All of Our Movers were Iraq and Afghanistan military vets.

I think it may sometimes be easier to spill your gut to someone you don’t know and will probably ever see again. My dad did something similar. He knew that he would be dead from cancer in about a month, so one day he talked about his fears, his regrets, the unknown, with the cleaning lady. Full of concern, she called my sister as soon as she left. And my sister, wisely, simply said, “thank you”.

One of Our Movers had been through two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He had been shot in the shoulder and the knee.  Rebuilt and sent back the first time, rebuilt and sent home the second. While overseas, his baby momma decided “if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with”.  And so Our Mover came home with a busted body to a broken family.

And this was all before he turned 21.

I told him that I hoped the absolute worst part of his life was over.  The rest would be smooth sailing. He smiled a beautiful big smile, lifted a solid oak dresser onto his back and replied, “yeah, me too”.

After hours of playing an advanced game of Jenga with our stuff in the storage unit, we carefully rolled down the door and closed the lock.  It was early afternoon.

By then I was totally, completely and utterly exhausted and would have preferred a nice hotel room in Kansas City. But Ron would have none of that and was off in his car with me, exhausted-ly, right behind in mine.  Heading for the Kansas Flint Hills and Hays.

To those of you who may not already know, the Flint Hills are one of the most beautiful places on the planet.  Pull a Californian or a Mainer aside and ask about the Flint Hills, blank stares.  Ask someone from Kansas, or Missouri and they’ll just sigh. Deeply. And then smile.

There is a stark, colorful, quiet beauty to these rolling grass covered hills. When I drove to visit my daughter, Anna, in Oklahoma City, I would stop every time at a place along the road simply labelled “Cattle Pens”.  Then I’d walk around the pens to the far side, sit and just listen.

To nothing. To the wind. To the prairie grasses, the bugs.

On that exhausted afternoon, we drove through a different, stunning part of the Flint Hills.  It was late May and the rains had turned the Hills a young, spring green. Now, the late afternoon light contrasted the dark blue sky against the bright green grasses. Gorgeous.  Energizing. Just what I needed.

But not for long.

A few minutes later my cell phone rang. It was Ron up ahead. “I don’t like the sky. It looks funnel-ly here.”

“Funnily?”

“No, funnel-ly.”

I checked Weather.com. The forecast was for severe storms. But no funnels mentioned. I was relieved in a not-very-relieved-at-all way.  A few more miles and the sky darkened.  And then darkened again.  Apocalyptic.

Boiling clouds so heavy with water they hovered just above the road, sending down curly cloud wisps that looked like witch’s locks.  It was the scariest, blackest, craziest storm sky I had ever seen.

I loved it.

Soon the rain began, pelting the car, threatening to become hail.  The windshield wipers could barely keep up and as I began to look for a place to pull over and wait it out. And then there it was.  A sign for Hays. And soon, our hotel.

We checked in, headed for the bar, threw down a few beverages, turned to each other and said, “we’re doing this.”

We’re on the road for 300 days.