Wagons East!

There was a movie in the 90's called "Wagons East", it also was John Candy's last movie he made. Unfortunately the legend that will always be, passed away while filming it. It was a funny movie about a group of folks that decided the wild West wasn't for them, and while everyone else was rushing West they traveled East.
This was us now. Gone were the glorious mountains of Tennessee, or the vast plain of paradise we call the ocean. There was a realization, or at least a hope that we could find something a lot closer that still fit our needs/wants. I tried, many of times to seduce my wife with pictures of beautiful rock formations and loud creeks whistling by. Nope... she wasn't having it, it had to be close and fit our requirements. "NO SETTLING" she demanded. Although it pains me to write it out yet one more time, but she was right. We had come too far, and we knew what our ultimate goal was. A place that was ours, just ours, nobody else was going to put restrictions on our future.

I will be honest. I was deflated and didn't think I had the momentum anymore to possibly look at one more freaking lot full of trees. Trying to decipher pictures of the land like we were solving an age old crime. "Is that a creek, I think I see a creek!" "Oh its's dead trees"... The struggle was real, and I was all but over it. Yet something even in me wouldn't let me quit. It was funny when I was over the process, Callie was all in. When I was obsessing over every twist and turn of road and square footage, she was done with it. It was a mess, and something we struggled with silently. It was crazy, the entire thought process from staring at the sunset on the beach until now. It was all crazy, and nobody would understand. We barely understood, yet our mission was crystal clear.

 Adding to the crazy is knowing that executing this plan had to be done without possibly hurting our home budget, or the things available to the kids. If we were going to do this, we would have to do it right and carefully. Probably settle a little for a piece of land that meant opportunity later, and would just be sitting there waiting for us when we needed it. So there was excitement, anxiety, and spurts of raw emotion. There were seriously times I was in tears, just over the thought of owning something that was mine. Something I had to give to my kids one day. An escape for my wife and I that would be our solitude away from everything else. As well as days of just pure self doubt and personal misery.

Then she found it...

**writers note** That was a cliffhanger... ;)