Greetings from the land of cowgirls, spurs, beautiful horses, gorgeous sunsets, and “go pokes.”

36 days on the road after leaving Knoxville, with absolutely no idea where the Chinook would land for Lisa’s 3 month Travel OT job, on July 11th we pulled into our new hometown for 3 months and a God-send of a space to throw out the Welcome Mat in the Nook !  Laramie, WY on the side rock yard of Susan and Tommy (and their 2 sweet labs, 1 loving Rottweiler, and SEVEN (7) way too  precious four week old lab puppies!), a kind and welcoming couple in their 20’s who happen to love camping and have a camper, themselves!  (will give you details of that answered prayer in a sec)

All along the way Lisa was communicating with her OT travel company and, per our request, they kept trying to match her up with an OT travelers position in Montana or Wyoming.  I’m sure she’ll be posting more about the whole Travel Therapy world before long – ’cause it’s been an interesting experience for her getting set up with her first assignment.  Probably more than one post waiting to be published about all of this!

Since for some time we’ve had a pre-planned trip to Kenya in October of this year (a post for another time), our goal was to get her into a job match that would end around the first of October.  Since we’re the praying kind, and love chatting with God about the “bigger picture” kind of stuff, we had simply been praying that God would plop us down right where we needed to be. Well, folks, neither of us knew anything about Laramie, WY (sadly, other than Matthew Shepard’s story). So on July 11th we arrived with open arms to embrace our divinely appointed spot in the world for the next 90 days.

LaRamie:  Laramie was named for Jacques LaRamie, a French or French-Canadian trapper who disappeared in the Laramie Mountains in the late 1810s and was never heard from again. He was one of the first Europeans to visit the area.

Wyo: The former abbreviation for the great state of Wyoming. Replaced by “WY” as the state abbreviation for postage, but still recognized.

What a fabulous 36 days on the road from TN to Wyoming … so fabulous that we were rarely posting about all of our adventures and making blog posts from the road like we were wanting to!  Although we did manage to get more FB posts made, so hopefully some of you saw some of those!   We got to spend a lot of time in New Mexico and Colorado after our initial stop in Kansas and we were happy that we didn’t have to rush at all through these two incredible states.  Of our 36 days on the road, we managed to boondock for 33 of them! (oh, yeah, there were a few nights in Taos that we plugged in at our good friend’s cool little adobe casita and one night that our sweet friend, Chan, hooked us up with some electricity in Cuba, NM!) But I think we could’ve made it all 36 days and nights with no problem had it been a goal to do so.  (We would like to take a moment to thank a multitude of Lowe’s for all the great nights there and providing pretty good Wifi out in the parking lot for the continuation of my work on the road as we travelled ! )

Shhhh.  Don’t spread the word about this Lowe’s tip or they may make some parking lot policy changes !  I discovered Lowe’s as my PLOC (parking lot of choice) years ago when trolling all the big box stores looking for the best wifi reception in the parking lot while living, traveling, and working full time from my RV.   It’s pretty common knowledge that Wal-Mart welcomes overnight RV’ers in most places around the country, so most RV’s head there … but for someone like me who is dependent on Wifi to make my living while traveling,  Lowe’s is my own little secret!

So back to Susan and Tommy, our Laramie “yardlords” for the next 90 days …

When passing through Denver, Lisa made a point to see Allyson, an old childhood friend of hers whom she had not seen for about 26 years!  Right about that time, we heard about Laramie as a potential job site.  Allyson mentions to Lisa that her nephew, Tommy, and his wife, Susan, live in Laramie.  Well, before you could say, “shut the front door!” Lisa is on the phone with Tommy’s wife, Susan, and we’re all hatching a lodging plan in the event that we decide to work from Laramie for 3 months.

The rest is history … and we already feel like we’ve known these two welcoming townies for a long time.  They even modified their tall wooden fence so we could back into the side yard to park Nookie … they said it put a fire under their booty to do something they’ve been needing to do anyway …  to create a large gate to the side yard so they, too, can later park their camper on the rock yard area behind the fence!  (btw, rock yards are pretty common out here due to the price of rock vs. the price of grass ! )  Makes for an awesome RV pad, too!  And we only have to drive a little over a mile to the famous Laramie Territorial Prison for our prn Chinook “evacs” !  (Lisa says I can’t call it “dumping” any more!) Dumping at a historic territorial prison. Definitely a first !  Oh, and what about the tiny little benefit that we get all the Lab puppy love we can stand !  They have a Labrador business called Mountain Ridge Labradors … find them on FB at @MountainRidgeLabs.

Ok. So much more to keep writing about, but it’s getting long, so think I’ll stop for now.  I’ll pick back up on the next post with how much fun our first week here in Laramie proved to be and how much we already like this hip little University of Wyoming town!  It’s gonna be a fun 3 months here …  It’s the middle of July and we hardly ever even need to use our A/C !  We could get REAL used to this FINE summer weather in SoWyo !  These scruffy southerners don’t miss that crazy deep south humidity one iota!

(more posts and pics to come from our journey from TN to WY!  Not posting in real time or chrono order, but it will be fun looking back and sharing from our fab travel adventures !  The tide may be rolling in Alabama in September, but we’ll be cheering on the ‘pokes for some good ‘ole western style football here in Laramie ! ) 

Cheers, Y’all –

The Scruffies

Karole Sessums