As much fun as we had exploring out west and in Nevada it was time to head back east towards our boat!

Now here’s where the story starts… We’ve been camping out of our 4Runner for months and while we really like our Runner, we’re very very tired of sleeping in a tent on the ground and having to dig all of our tubs of stuff out of the back every time we want to camp or make dinner.  We thought it would be fine, but it’s actually super cumbersome and keeps us from wanting to actually camp that much.  So… we’re selling it. (comes as a surprise to no one who actually knows us) but…for what?  Well.. remember that sweet little Colorado truck with the custom camper that we built? We’re going to do that again, only *bigger*.  We started looking for a full size truck to support more cargo and a larger camper and found the perfect one in Colorado just outside Denver.  So.. Denver is our first destination, however a few days before we were set to leave we saw that a huge snowstorm was going to hit Colorado and dump snow.. since I-70 is at over 11k feet we thought it would be safer to head south through Albuquerque and Santa Fe and then go north to Denver.

We were wrong.  By the time we left Nevada and got close to Albuquerque we realized the snow had moved south and was about to start dumping on us.  Fun fact: there’s not a lot of stuff out there before you get to Albuquerque.  Our 4Runner does great in the snow, but the highways were slowly turning into a shitshow of cars in ditches and semi trucks blocking the road. It was NOT a relaxing drive but eventually we made it to our hotel.

We woke up to 3-4″ of snow on top of the 4Runner and of course I didn’t think to bring an ice scraper because we live in florida now. We hit the road pretty early.  I was hoping to get out on the road to Santa Fe before everyone else woke up and started driving and crashing on it.  The roads were a little better, but we were still going 40 on a road that’s usually 75.

We finally made it to Denver and picked up our new truck! It’s a 2005 Dodge 3500 diesel.  Found it on Expedition Portal with all of the mods done to make it reliable, all weak spots addressed, custom suspension and bumpers, and it looks cool.  Does have 160k miles on it, but I’ve been told mileage doesn’t matter on diesels! 😉

After making the deal on the truck we drove another 3 hours to get further east into Kansas so we can do the drive to Missouri in only 2 days instead of 3.

We slept pretty good and then woke up to finish our drive!  The roads were icy in some spots but not nearly as bad as where we came from! I drove the 4Runner behind Jason driving the new truck! (I got the cats… lucky me!)

One thing I had forgotten about in the midwest was how much flat open space there is.  Living in washington for so long I’m used to tall trees blocking most of the sky. Out here I think I saw one town on the horizon for a few hours before we actually got there.  Since there’s so much land available you also see a line of totally freestanding buildings with like hundreds of feet in between them and nothing behind for miles.

The drive through Kansas City was a little nerve wracking because I’m driving the 4Runner behind the truck with no idea where I’m going. Luckily the traffic wasn’t too bad and we made it through it pretty quickly. About 3 hours later we rolled into Jason’s mom’s house to spend a week there!