The next morning, after our close call with Mr. Moose, we headed up to see the two ghost towns and spent a couple of nights just outside the park. Then the day we had waited so long for was finally here, Yellowstone!

Filled with excitement, we packed up the RV and headed to the entrance. The line was long, as expected, but the slow drive was worth it to see all of the amazing beauty the park had to offer. Once we got to our campground, we checked in and were assigned a site in one of the loops. As we pulled up to the site I noticed it was on the left side of the loop, opposite of our RV door. “Well, that kind of stinks!”

I determined that I could probably swing around from the other direction so our door would face the camp site. Wrong! I pulled forward and made a couple of maneuvers which I thought would position me to pull through the site. Wrong again! My wife was standing on the campsite side of the RV to help me not hit some wood posts. In hindsight, it probably would have been better to have her on the other side to help me avoid hitting the giant pine tree! That’s right, I hit a giant pine tree!! I heard a loud crash as I eased into the site. Uh oh! I got out to find the center of the RV perched on the tree at the bottom and the top of the rig also giving a friendly hug to said tree. After more than a few minutes of expletive-filled rage, I figured out how to get off the tree without causing even more damage. The rig was smashed up pretty good and to quote one of my favorite movies of all time, “a lot of sap in here”. My wife, forever the optimist, looked over the damage with me while our son stayed back knowing daddy was not a happy camper at the moment. As I fumed she lovingly said, “look at the bright side, this is going to be a great story to tell for years to come”.

At the time I didn’t feel that way, but she was right. We enjoyed our stay in Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore, never skipping a beat. We visited eight states, 5 old west towns, looked for aliens in Roswell and had the time of our lives. It just cost a few extra bucks in repairs. Looking back, it was worth every penny. The memories and time spent with my family on the road are priceless.

We would eventually go on to purchase our own rig and enjoy many more road trips. The more we hit the road, the happier we became.

This leads us to where we are present day. We didn’t know it back then, but we had found our passion and what makes us happy. Our ongoing challenge is to become Financially Independent and Retire Early so we can live our dream!

Now the journey really begins!!