The Big Move- Part 1. Maryland to Missouri

Most of this is text, sorry I'll try to find some pictures that fit. Wasn't really excited about taking pictures on this day because I was tired as hell and knew I was going to be on the road for nearly a full 24 hours.

The travel route

In April of 2013 Matt and I took a big leap and accepted positions at ICBF in Ireland. The next few months were a rush of finishing up at our old jobs, packing, selling most of our worldly possessions, hunting/riding as much as possible, planning our brief move back to Missouri with our small herd of animals, and deciding what was going to be moved with us. This is a big thing on which Matt and I differ. I have this need to be prepared for everything so I fall under the category of a “Kitchen Sink Packer.” I pack everything but the kitchen sink when I travel which does not make for light moving or traveling. Matt on the other hand is more of a minimalist who benefits from my neurosis. If it were up to him he would have packed some clothes, electronics and the dogs. Only the necessities for Matt, to me that translated into 4 large boxes, 13 medium boxes and 6 small boxes (23 total if you’re counting) of STUFF that we were going to put on a ship and have delivered to us in Ireland. After those 23 boxes I still filled up a 16 foot moving truck and a horse trailer before making the 18 hour drive home to Missouri. 

WHAT?!?! People put dogs in their purse all the time! And as I'm sure you can tell my my trimmer figure this was QUITE a while ago, AND Clifford was only in there for the pictures.

            Nearly all the stuff in the truck went into a storage locker near my in-law’s house… Nearly all except another 9 boxes of stuff which I retrospectively decided we NEEDED to take with us. Poor Matt, here he was ready to go over with a few suitcases and I had a tally of 32 boxes, and 4 suitcases between the 2 of us, 2 dogs, 2 carry-ons, a purse/satchel, and a partridge in a pear tree! Bless the man agreed to take it all! During this time we were preparing for Matt to go over and pick out a house for us, live with some friends on their farmette for a couple of weeks and then off we go on our adventure. Sounds like a good plan, huh? Not a chance with the McClures! More about this later.

MY truck!!! I call him Fox

Our trailer. 20 foot total, 6 foot in the gooseneck and 14 on the floor

An older picture of the kids all loaded up in the trailer. Aren't they cute?!?!

            The actual move from Missouri to Maryland was pretty smooth for McClure standards. Yes, it was 18 hours of driving, and Clifford, my elderly Weimeraner, had explosive diarrhea in the front seat of the truck as we loaded the horses, and Marble vomited into Matt’s change cup after being on the road for an hour (that’s 10 bucks in change we’re never getting back), but since Matt was in one vehicle and I was in the other, it was pretty uneventful. That is except for when Izzy, Matt’s 1800 lb. Percheron horse, decided she didn’t like cruising down the highway and would shift her weight in the trailer causing the truck to rock as we flew down highway 70. Pretty sure that was her way of telling me she was hungry, bored, dissatisfied with life, or any other reason that struck her tiny brain. Feeling a half-ton truck rock back and forth is a very strange feeling. 

Meet Izzy! She's a VERY big girl. I am 5'8, in horse language she is 17.2 hands high and weighs ~1800 lbs

The difference in size between Bailey and Izzy, both of whom were in the trailer for the move home.

Worse is when she’d rock when we were stationary! You’d think a 7.0 earthquake had just hit, but no, it was just Izzy making her displeasure known. We could usually placate her with food, but there are only so many apples you can feed a horse in one day! Oh, and the other hiccup was that Clifford decided to help Izzy clean her bowl after we’d mixed Acepromazine (horsey tranquilizer) into her feed that morning. Remember the explosive diarrhea issue? Yep, he was out of the truck licking her feed dish as I was frantically trying to clean up the front seat of what I had now dubbed “The poo mobile,” and later on “The Bodily Fluid Ford” after Marble drooled for 3 hours prior to puking up the Sausage Muffin from McDonalds she stole. The fact that Clifford helped himself to Acepromazine laced Izzy slobber didn’t surface until he got very lethargic in the truck and wasn’t responding to me like normal. I immediately thought he was dying because in 3 more months he would turn 14 which is ANCIENT for a Weimeraner, so Matt got to deal not only with moving that day but a very upset wife crying over the fact that her favorite dog was dying on the 18 hour drive home and that he might not make it! Six hours and some emergency calls/facebook messages/texts to friends with DVMs later he was back to normal, just very groggy. Izzy on the other hand wasn’t fazed a bit by the tranquilizer, go figure.  We also got a call from our neighbors while somewhere in the Virginia Mountains asking about the massive mound of garbage outside the house we had just left. Seems Howard Co. Maryland wouldn’t accept that much garbage in one go so we had to emergency arrange a collector to come and get it. Welcome to my life everyone! This is typical and has really taught me to roll with the punches, smiling all the while. And now that I share it with you, I hope you’re laughing at the absurdity of it as much as I am. 

The two hounds in the back of the truck. They got a very nice bed to sleep on during the ride

 

2 sleepy hounds snuggling after a long journey

3am central time we made our way into Matt’s parent’s drive way and unloaded the horses in their temporary digs until we could bring them to Columbia for Horsey summer camp with our friends Curtis and Sarah. 

The next couple of months were filled with goat milking, cooking, volunteering in my old lab in hopes that a paper could be finished up, and then… House hunting in Ireland.