Snowed in

Continued from Things got even crappier (our first poo pyramid)

We were lucky for a while, sitting tight through winter in MA without many problems. We had heat. We had easy solutions for the cold days when we would lose running water. Most importantly, we had 4 years of experience under our belts. We knew our rig, but we also knew our limits. Wintering in the north would not be easy, and once February came, so did the signs telling us it was time to get out.

We had our first domino effect of problems: Frozen temperatures led to ice wedges during our pumpout, which led to a poo pyramid. Somewhere in the middle, we had a heatless night when our propane tank didn't reach a high enough temperature to flow through the regulator and into our furnace. Whenever we had a solution to one problem, that very solution would cause another problem. The added stress stripped away our morale. We went from feeling content with our stationary time to feeling antsy for a change.

As we went into the second week of February, we examined our situation. Had we finally hit our breaking point? Would the stress of leaving finally be less overwhelming and less fatiguing than the stress of staying? We wish we could answer that question and that would be our decision. But it wasn't that simple.

We battled emotions. My body was screaming "Why are we still here?! Get going!" But examining it further, I realized that this was a seasonal memory. For the past 4 years, when winter hit, we hit the road. My body expected warmth, movement, and adventure, and I broke this predictable pattern. Our more primal levels don't like unpredictability; they see it as a threat. What happens during a threat? Fight-or-flight response, and in my case, flight. Leaving would give my body the pattern link it was desperately seeking, but on a more conscious level, was staying in that pattern actually the right choice?

Anthony and I returned to our first Season 5 blog post, where we outlined all the reasons for staying:

1. We were healing from travel fatigue in 2025.
2. We wanted to avoid overwhelm and focus on our next chapter of stability: the cabin life.
3. We had pets that couldn't travel as much or as far as previous years.
4. We were taking this time to prioritize routines and consistency for our health.
5. We also shifted our priorities to our careers, with Anthony's job hunt and my focus on scaling my business.
6. These career transitions meant we needed to be cautious with our spending, and staying stationary was more budget-friendly than traveling.
7. We determined that big travels would not fill our cups as much as investing in our future.

How many of those reasons remained true all these weeks later? Our priorities hadn't shifted, but our circumstances had. We now had an RV issue that would be much easier handled if we were on full hookups or at least had running water. Anthony was offered a job, which lifted our financial pressures but added a whole other pile of unknowns, like if we could navigate travel while he oriented himself in his new position.

With our reasons list now raising even more questions and confusion, we decided to sit down and prepare a new list, this time of "pre-launch ducks" that we would need to get in a row before hitting the road. Anthony would need to learn what his new job entails. I would need to frontload work that would be done more easily in my office space. Tanner would need a vet appointment. We would need to finish the paperwork to buy Clyde. We would need to organize and secure all our stuff for travel. We would need to literally un-freeze our trailer from its parking spot.

The problem with February is, launch windows are few and far between. Looking at the week's weather, we finally saw temperatures rising above freezing. This meant potential opportunities for melting snow, thawing our trailer, and organizing our outdoor compartments. But looking closer, the temperatures would continue dipping each night. This meant that whatever melted would freeze. During the day, our parking area would turn to slush and mud. And to top it all off, despite the warmer temperatures, another snowfall was on the radar, with predictions that it would bring an added 2-4 inches on top of the multiple feet we already had.

If we could somehow get our ducks in a row, President's Day Weekend would be a perfect opportunity to launch: 3 days of work-free and (hopefully) rush-hour-traffic-free travel to get us as far south as possible. The weather was looking decent, too. We set our sights set on that weekend, but we knew chances were slim. That would only give us 5 days to do what we needed, and that stress weighed down on us hard.

Then there were the emotions, still nudging us to go, but our conscious minds overriding the notion that the grass would in fact be greener on the other side. Was this a classic case of instant gratification? Leaving would give us reprieve from the winter and the stressors we have here, and it would help us breathe a sigh of relief that things are still "the same" as the past 4 years. But we know better. Things aren't the same.

This is exactly the decision fatigue that we hoped to avoid this year. We faced it a lot in 2022, as we prepared to launch out for the first time. At least this time we weren't riddled with fear of the unknown. Quite the opposite, considering we had trained ourselves to expect nomadism. That's actually pretty cool, when we think about it. A perfect example of our adaptability, which I've also written about. But all the "nomad pride" in the world didn't stop us from entering a mental whirlwind. Both staying and leaving had their upsides. They both had their stresses. They both had their risk of RV problems.

We tiptoed into our week with the mindset of, "Let's just tackle our list one step at a time, and each day we'll assess our progress."

But then, nature gave us our answer, as it so often does. Tuesday brought the snow, which resulted in "fluff on top of ice sheet" slickness that's every RVer's nightmare. We pushed our emotions aside and looked at our surroundings. Even if the snow did melt throughout the week, some of the banks were up to our waist. We need a lot of space to maneuver in and out of our parking spot. We use most of the width of the basketball court, as well as the entire space across the driveway. There was simply too much snow to maneuver around.

We had to face the fact that we were snowed in. This was a new one for us. Even after some intense snowstorms in 2022, we were still able to leave on February 22. Records show that Winter 2022 saw 10 inches less snow than 2026 – and that's not even including the remainder of the 2026 season which hasn't happened yet at the time of writing this post. February is typically the snowiest month, but this year, we already hit record snowfall before the month even started. It wasn't just a matter of getting out of the driveway, either. The local roads between our home-base and the highway had so many snow banks, they caused the roads to become narrower. We struggled driving just Clyde on these roads. If we needed to tow, we would for sure be forced over the middle line, which is dangerous on the twists and turns of New England streets. If we needed a sign, this was it. Our bodies might be telling us to move, but our environment was telling us to stay still.

On the bright side, the warmer temperatures did arrive as forecasted. We got running water back for the first time in weeks, and James our pumpout guy was able to successfully demolish the remainder of our poo pyramid.

With empty tanks and running water, we reset our focus to our continued stationary time. Back to investing in routines, health, careers, and our future. Back to seeing Buggy as stability, not a tool for nomadism. And back to convincing our primal levels that we're okay. We're safe and we have everything we need. More importantly, this is only temporary. We will leave our home-base. We will travel. We still have lots of full-time RV life ahead of us. We're just hanging tight a little bit longer.