Here We Go...

Dan slyly waited until after we decided where we'd like to move to disclose one of the most magical nuggets of useless information: a nickname for Seattle, Washington is the Emerald City. For this avid Wicked fan (avid being an understatement, my cats are named after the characters...), this is the most perfect cherry on top to one of the most stressful, uncomfortable, exhilarating decisions we have ever made. 

We are moving to the Emerald City! 

But why? Because... why not. 

Just kidding... we're not that cool.

Dan and I got notice in November that our landlord was intending to sell our beloved East Hills townhouse. Of course we knew this was inevitable - this is a risk we continue to accept when choosing renting over owning. When we sat down to discuss options we had the realization that we have an opportunity that not many people are afforded. We have flexible jobs / careers that can move with us, we do not have kids, our parents are healthy, and we both earn (and have saved) enough money that we aren't terribly restricted to specific areas of the country. Why stay in our home-state when there's a world out there to explore?! We both agreed that we'd significantly regret not taking this opportunity, even in the worst case scenario where we discover it's not for us. 

But Seattle? We began a massive excel spreadsheet of all of our options spanning across the world. It's funny, when we tell our friends this, the consistent response was "of course you did" (wait... are we....nerds?!). We've always said we wanted to live in Seattle since we visited in 2022, but we wanted to give everywhere an equal consideration. Our ambitions had to be somewhat restrained quickly once we started researching international visas - most countries don't want you unless you're going to be contributing to their economy - understandable. There are also significant requirements when bringing pets into different countries, some requiring months of quarantine! Based on this, we decided our first move should be slightly less intense so we'd stay within the Continental U.S. for now. From there, we used many factors to reduce our prospective home list - from local politics to abortion rights, cost of living, air quality, distance to the ocean or mountains, to crime rate. Eventually we landed on Seattle - but Denver, Portland (Maine), Burlington (Vermont) and Boston were among the finalists as well. So Seattle it is, but not just yet....

Road trip time! Since Dan's work is completely remote and I'm taking a sabbatical from my stressful career field (which i'll share a post about this in a few weeks), we decided that we'd make a "slow move" out to Seattle with our kitties. Even calling it a "move" is a bit of a stretch because we're going to be backtracking quite a bit. For 4-5 months we're going to be travelling from the East Coast to the West Coast, stopping in Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, a month in Maine, then Vermont, New York, Ohio and back home to Michigan for July. For our second half, we will drive to Denver and likely a few other stops on the way up to Seattle! Our plans during this road trip is to experience short-term living in each of these locations (maybe discover a future home for us?). Dan will likely play an obscene amount of disc golf in all different terrains and climates, and as for me.... i will likely read an obscene amount of books in all different chairs in said terrains and climates. Oh and the kitties will have many new bookshelves and tall furniture to climb and knock over (goodbye security deposits).

Dan and/or I plan to post every few stops and share pictures, so follow along with us on this crazy journey we are about to embark on! 😄