I'd like to start with a quote:
"Unemployed workmen in eastern cities were not ordinarily able to go West and succeed as farmers. They seldom had the money needed to transport their families to the free public lands and to feed and shelter them until a crop could be made; and even if such a worker managed to establish himself on a western farm, he was not likely to succeed without skills that could be obtained only through long apprenticeship."
Wow... story of my life right now. The bad part is that was written in 1950... about westward expansion in the 1860s. Apparently I never got that history lesson.
The quote is from Virgin Land:The American West as Symbol and Myth by Henry Nash Smith. It is an excellent book which I have been reading throughout our travels, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the theme of westward expansion. I am just now getting to the part where all the myths of the "Wild West" and the "Garden of the World" and the happy and virtuous "yeoman" are being debunked. But not only am I reading about these things... I am having a hands-on learning experience.
So Oregon may be the land of milk and honey... but only if you have a job. Or land, but preferably both. We have neither of these things, and the savings are quickly running low. Apparently we had the genius idea that we could move to the state with the highest unemployment rate, at the end of the growing season, and instantly find great jobs and/ or be graciously welcomed into a hippie commune where we could start our humble career as homesteaders. We were wrong. And I swear this motel room gets smaller every day.
After seeing a promising job opening in Austin, we started to dig deeper into our options for plan B. After a few hours we still couldn't figure out why we didn't go to Austin in the first place. It had been our plan for a long time, though mysteriously fell to the wayside. Austin's job market is one of the fastest growing in the country, and we have family there. After spending a few weeks in a town where we didn't know a soul, the idea of being closer to family gave us a warm tingly feeling.
Austin also boasts plentiful organic and sustainable agriculture, so our dreams of homesteading will certainly not die at the end of the Oregon Trail. We are still going to try to have our cake and eat it too, it just might take a little longer than we had hoped.
So, with the OK from Rob's uncle that we could crash at his house until we find stable jobs, we decided to quit this rainy little town in Oregon and move to Austin Texas!!! And guess what.... winter, like, doesn't happen there. I am all about season evasion.
So here we go... again. On Tuesday we will be on the road... again. 2400 miles to go, through lovely California, Arizona, New Mexico, and west Texas. We still don't have air conditioning.
When we arrive in Texas we will have driven 7,743 miles since we left Greenville, SC.
View Larger Map
Above is a map of our trip.
Over the next few days we will be packing and getting ready for another exciting week of travel. We will of course keep you updated. Over and Out.
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