Let The Adventure Begin. First Stop: Panama City Beach, FL

Whew! So, we're finally here in Panama City Beach, FL, our first stop along this adventure, and all I can say is, selling a home is probably the single most stressful thing I've ever gone through.

Just when it looked like our home had very little contents and it'd be easy to move - the more things that kept piling up. The anxiety was running so high ALL the way up to the actual day we closed, it was paralyzing at times.

The two nights leading up to our closing date, I was up at 2 a.m., on our mattress that we were sleeping on on our living room floor, riddled with anxiety that we wouldn't be able to get everything out in time. I wish I could sleep and not worry as easily as Doug does. I tend to carry the mental burden in the family and have issues trusting everything will work out fine when it always does, and even though, deep down, I know it always will.

Hayden and I had been listing and selling things for the entire month leading up to our departure while Doug was out on the road. He was in Florida, then Colorado, then back to Florida and finally back home for SIX days to get our entire home cleaned out and into a storage unit. It seemed like Hayden and I had made a really good dent into minimalizing until the moment came to really get moving. Thank God for the family and friends that came to help us! We love you!

If you know me in real life, you know the issues I've had with my Chevy Suburban for the past 3 years, but refuse to give her up, so we knew we had to button up a few loose ends on her before leaving.

​Since we didn't scrape up the funds to get all of those fixed before we left the Midwest, we decided the motor mount was the most important thing to fix before leaving and we'd do the rest once we arrived to our destination. I'm proud to say, thanks to Tuffy Tire and Auto {amazing customer service there, by the way} we have new tires, thanks to Dobbs  {who got us in quickly and were the most reasonably priced}, we have a new motor mount, and thanks to Doug's mechanical abilities, we have new brakes and all dash lights are OFF in the Suburban for the first time in 3 years {feels good!}! She's got 250,000 miles, and I fully intend on driving her until she refuses to drive anymore.

Since we're traveling with all of our belongings and my equipment to run my Etsy shops and website, we had to purchase a trailer prior to leaving. We got lucky and scored a navy blue {my current favorite color} Stealth trailer that had been upgraded and equipped with a bed, flatscreen TV, dresser, air conditioning + heat and additional lighting so we're able to sleep overnight in it if we need to pull over to rest in between destinations!

​What's even better? If family and friends want to host us, I can plug in our trailer, leave my equipment in there and work out of it, rather than having to burden anyone with taking up so much space! Everything just fell together perfectly...

​The Holiday Inn in Fairview Heights, IL was gracious enough to house us in a beautiful suite for 2 nights prior to our departure, to close on our home and say our "see you later's" to our close friends and family. If you're ever in that area, that hotel is a hidden gem, tucked away behind Lotawata Creek. It is a full service hotel with a restaurant/bar, fitness facility, pool, patio, and recreational vehicle parking.

We spent the night in the parking lot of a truck stop in Kentucky and slept in Doug's rig the night our journey began. Those are the moments I cherish, when we're all snuggled together and close. By the time we arrived here, I was exhausted and emotional.

​Pulling the trailer was no easy feat with less than stellar tires and a vehicle that was in fairly dire need of brakes. Throw in an extremely windy first day of driving and my nerves were just totally shot. If you're trying to imagine how it went, just watch the freeway scene in the movie Clueless, where Dion accidentally gets thrown on the freeway and that's a pretty accurate representation of our experience. I went live on Instagram that night HERE. 

The next day, our final day of driving, Doug had to split from us to deliver a load an hour north of where we're staying, so that added to the intense level of anxiety I was experiencing. To top it off, I hate driving at night and planned on being here before dark, until my GPS rerouted me off 331 and on to a completely different route than I'm used to taking. By the time I realized it, there was no turning back. I called Doug to check his map to make sure this new route was, in fact, going to get us to our destination, and thankfully, it did.

We spent our first night here as a trio, then picked Doug up the next day. We've been busy living our best lives and experiencing the actual culture of Panama City Beach ever since, so make sure you're following our Work and Play Across the USA blog and social media posts!

How can you follow along?

• Subscribe to our emails to make sure you never miss a post HERE
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• Search the hashtag #WorkAndPlayAcrossTheUSA on social media.

If you own a vacation rental property and would like to host one of our stays, please contact us -- we'd love to sponsor your home in our adventures. 

I've had a lot of people message to ask how they can support us, and I love y'all for it! All of my shop links, YouTube channel, Hello Fresh + Get Upside discount links, GoFundMe and blog posts can be found HERE.

Stay tuned for our next blog post that will document what we're doing while we're here in Panama City Beach, FL. Check out this blog post to read about how all of this got started.

​Full disclosure: I blog about an array of topics from recipes and my favorite products to small business advice and tutorials. I may receive a small commission from links in my posts to keep this blog running, however, I do not represent any companies or products that I do not absolutely love and stand by 110% because that's not how I roll. The  opinions expressed are my own. My blog is for informational purposes only and any information found on this site is not substitute for professional advice.