Roll'n Home Helpers

It all started back in the summer of 2011, we had had enough of our current situation and wanted a change, but we didn't really have any place in mind to move to, so we came up with the idea of getting a bumper pull trailer, and spend a few year traveling the Country looking for a new place to call home.  We wanted to be on the road by mid-2012.  In October we bought a truck to pull a camper, yay!!  We also started researching on pull behind campers, we had narrowed it down to a select few by Thanksgiving 2011.  Then life kicked us in the teeth.  Jen noticed a lump on her left breast, surely at her age of 34, it wouldn't be what we feared.  She got a biopsy of the lump, it was cancer.  Over the next few weeks, we started weighing our options and started searching for an oncologist.

 

We traveled across Texas to various doctors and finally found one that we liked.  Dr. V laid out the treatment plan and wanted to get started as soon as possible.  One big problem...Dr. V's office was in College Station Texas, about 500 miles from where we lived, and her treatment plan was 8 chemo treatments each one two weeks apart, then a lumpectomy followed by radiation 5 days a week for 7 weeks.  After a long discussion, we decided that it would be best if we rented a house for Jen to stay at over in College Station while I went back to Alpine to work.  I went there as often as I could, and we talked every night.  It was tough, but we prevailed.  With the help of family and friends, Jen was able to have someone with her for all of her chemo treatments.

 

After 8 months of living apart, Jen finally came home, but as you can imagine the situation caused us to put our plans on hold.  What it did do is cement the idea of continuing the plan with some additional ideas.  The next year was monthly Dr visits over in College Station, plus reconstruction surgery, then a couple years of quarterly visits, all the while still thinking about how to get our plans in motion.

 

During one of our quarterly checkups, we decided to start looking for a home on wheels.  After many months of researching, we decided on a Blue Bird Wanderlodge.  In late summer 2015, we bought one we liked and started remodeling it.

 

 

In early summer 2016, we started off on our maiden voyage.

 

 

The next few weeks we spent heading north to Alaska, with stops in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta Canada, British Columbia Canada, Yukon Territory Canada.  In mid-July, we made it to Jen's parent's house.  We went to our 20th high school reunion, did some fishing and camping, then it was time to get to work.  Jen's parents were going on vacation so we had about a month to get a bunch of stuff done.  We stabilized and reroofed Jen's parent's house, we cleaned and reorganized the house which took quite a bit of time, but we managed to get it all mostly completed by the time they got back. 

 

Our time in Alaska was winding down, and we needed to hit the road again.  Turns out that leaving Alaska on October 1st in an RV can be a challenge.  Most of the Alaska-Canada Highway RV parks start shutting down around mid-September, which normally wouldn't be a problem, but if you recall our generator wasn't working.  We had a couple sketchy cold nights, but we made it back to the States just in time to get 3 inches of snow in Montana.  We stayed there for a few days so we could get some internet based work done.  We then made it back to Alpine Texas after some stops in Oklahoma and at my parent's house in Brady Texas.

 

We spent about 8 months in Alpine working and getting the bus ready for the road, this time with a working generator.

 

Finally, in August 2017 Jen had been 5 years cancer free, and it was time to hit the road again.  We decided that starting in 2018 we really wanted to give back to people that need help.  We came up with the idea of Roll'n Home Helpers, our goal is to travel to small towns to do small projects for those that either can't do it themselves or can't afford to pay someone to do it for them.  Thank you for reading our story, and please help get the word out.  If you can, and want to help, please see our donation page to help share the love.