The Road That Found Me

The life I needed found me before I knew I was looking for it.

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A Wyoming Winter

I didn't plan any of this. This journey found me.

Winters in Wyoming have a way of convincing me I'm capable of anything. Once, that looked like staying up until 2am to secure Coldplay tickets. In Athens. Greece. A bucket-list concert. Completely worth every bleary-eyed minute.

The winter of 2025 was no different. That same restless, why-not energy showed up right on schedule. This time, though, I wasn't dreaming of Paradise and gyros. I was dreaming of summers in the mountains, watching my dogs live their best lives, splashing through a mountain creek.

The year opened with the fires in LA. I watched families flee with minutes to spare: pets, papers, whatever they could grab. And something in me shifted.

I know firsthand the anxiety and fear that takes over when you see smoke and flames jumping above the treeline close enough to your home to make you start contemplating evacuation. That kind of fear lives in your body long after the smoke clears.

But this time I was sitting safely in my living room, watching it play out on TV — and the anxiety was just as real. That's when I felt the seed take root.

What if I needed to leave?

What if next time wasn't almost?

By the end of January, I had added something newer and stronger to the fleet. My faithful Subaru wasn't going anywhere. Ten years, 200,000 miles, and more road trips with the dogs than I can count. She earned her retirement. But this next chapter needed something with more muscle. No grand camper dreams yet. Just a solid vehicle. Something that could get me and my dogs to safety if we needed it.

Meet the new tow vehicle! She had no idea what was coming....

But Wyoming winters don't whisper. They howl. They sandblast your thinking and make you reconsider everything.

Exhibit A. Wyoming is not bluffing!

The Dream Takes Shape

The dream started small: an awning, a sleeping platform in the back. Car camping. I could make that work, right?

Except once you park and set up, you're committed. Every water refill, every grocery run, every change of plan means tearing it all down. I didn't care how effortless those YouTubers made it look. I know myself well enough to know it would get old fast.

For a brief, optimistic moment, I considered a teardrop trailer. Then I looked at my three 80-pound dogs and laughed. Where exactly were they supposed to sleep? The roof?

And then I found it.

The inTech Sol Dawn.

Sixteen feet of aluminum and possibility. And my future living room..."

Sixteen feet long. Within my towing capacity. The possibility of a real bed, big enough for me and the pups. Because let's be honest, their comfort was non-negotiable.

My ADHD brain locked in and there was no turning back. I watched every YouTube video I could find, read every post, joined every group. I asked all the questions, did all the research, and learned everything I could. I wasn't dabbling. I was all in.

When a screaming deal appeared on a 2024 model, I felt that now-or-never surge.

There was only one small detail: I had never seen one in person.

Oh, and it was located all the way across the country in Buffalo, New York.

Yes, I had a countdown. No, I am not ashamed.

This is where the internet, and a Dawn owner who will forever be known as Camping Laura, stepped in. I tossed a hopeful message into one of the inTech groups, essentially asking if a total stranger would let me wander into their backyard. Laura said yes. Without hesitation. Like it was the most normal thing in the world.

That afternoon sealed it.

Bruno approved. That was the only review that really mattered!

This Wasn't Just About Camping

And once the decision was made, I went into full preparation mode. Lists. Research. Gear comparisons. An Amazon cart that grew by the hour. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.

The crew was skeptical. The gear pile was not.

Somewhere between comparing surge protectors and debating composting toilet options, something uncomfortable surfaced:

This wasn't just about camping.

Three years earlier, I had left teaching after eighteen years in the classroom to become an education consultant. It took nearly all three of those years to deprogram myself from bell schedules, hallway duty, and the constant hum of adolescent energy. Life without that structure was disorienting.

Working remotely sounded like freedom. And in many ways, it was. But for an introverted extrovert, it also came with a strange kind of loneliness. And man, did I miss the structure of daily routines. The scaffolding that once held my days together quietly disappeared. The identity I'd built over two decades dissolved right along with it.

That's when it hit me.

I no longer knew who I was.

And instead of spiraling, I bought a trailer.

Not because I had clarity, or answers, or any clue whatsoever, but because I needed something to propel me forward.

“The scaffolding that once held my days together quietly disappeared. The identity I’d built over two decades dissolved right along with it.”

Hitching Up to Fifty

Somehow, sixteen feet of aluminum and possibility felt like oxygen. The Dawn lit a fire in me that had been out for years. I stopped rereading the same self-help passages. I stopped trying to think my way into reinvention. I started preparing for something instead.

As I planned and packed and researched, my life felt lighter. Not perfect. Not solved. But lighter. The edges of my anxiety softened. My thoughts stretched toward summer.

I was nervous. Deeply so. I hadn't towed anything since I was 18 years old. I imagined clipping gas pumps, jackknifing in grocery store parking lots, white-knuckling every mile.

But underneath the fear was something stronger.

Hope.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn't drifting. I was building. Learning. Challenging myself to do something more.

And somewhere in that building, something shifted. I didn't just want to figure out who I had become. I wanted to intentionally write what came next. Not drift into it. Not stumble through it. Choose it, on purpose, one mile at a time.

Fifty was approaching. September felt closer than ever. And instead of shrinking from it, I was hitching up to it.

What I didn't know then, and what none of us ever know, was what was already gathering on the horizon. Change and loss have a way of arriving whether you're ready or not.

But that spring, standing in my driveway knowing I was about to drive 1,521 miles to pick up a trailer I had never laid eyes on, my heart was open. I was stepping into a great adventure, and a summer of learning and laughter and sunburns and mistakes and joy.

I didn't know it yet, but the Dawn would carry me through more than campgrounds.

It would carry me through some very hard goodbyes.

The farm. One of the hardest goodbyes I made.

That part of the story is coming. But that spring, I only knew about the magical summer ahead. The goodbyes were still on their way. And maybe that's the grace of not knowing — you get to be fully present for the joy before the hard parts arrive.

I had no clarity. No roadmap. No idea what any of this would bring.

But I hitched up anyway.

"You don't have to know where the journey is taking you. You just have to be willing to go."

Why The Sol Wanderer

Before I ever dreamed up The Sol Wanderer, I bought the Dawn for one reason: to find my independence again. To remember who I was outside of the roles and the routines and the identity I had quietly lost.

And then came the losses. My people. My dogs. One after another, in a season that nearly broke me. The Dawn stopped being a camper and became a lifeline. A safe space. The one thing that kept moving when I wasn't sure I could.

It was on a trip back to Vermont, windows down, Penny in the back, grief riding shotgun, that I started dreaming of writing again. I started thinking about how I was going to survive what I was drowning in. And that's when The Sol Wanderer was born.

I needed a way to pull myself through. And I wanted to help others through it too. Through the grief, the reinvention, the beautiful and terrifying middle of midlife. Through all of it.

But there was something else. Something I hadn't expected.

Creating again, writing again, has felt like oiling up a rusty, squeaky machine. Slow at first. Resistant. A little uncertain whether it still works. But it does work. And every word has been a small act of reclaiming something that had been quietly disappearing for years.

It wasn't just grief that took it. Long before the losses, I had felt it slipping. The feeling of being trapped in a life that no longer fit. The uncertainty and upheaval of midlife. The slow erosion of knowing who I was and what I was here to do. Grief just finished what those years had already started. It took what was left.

Every word I write now is a small act of taking it back. My creativity. My voice. The part of me that needs to make something in order to feel alive.

The grief isn't over. It won't ever be fully over. But this, The Sol Wanderer, the writing, the road, has felt like the eye of a hurricane. A moment of calm and quiet inside something that is still very much moving around me. Not the end of the storm. Just a place to breathe inside it.

And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's everything.

I wanted to intentionally write my future. My "what next." Not let loss define the rest of my story, but pick up the pen and keep going. This space is where I do that, out loud, honestly, in case it helps someone else find their own eye of the storm.

That's what this is. That's why I'm here.

If you're standing in your own Wyoming winter, restless, uncertain, feeling the sandblast of change, maybe you don't need a five-year plan. Maybe you just need one brave yes.

This was mine.

Welcome to The Sol Wanderer.

This space is for anyone who finds themselves in the middle of a hopeless winter, longing for something else, something different, something more. I hope it feels like home. It won't always be pretty. It will be messy and honest and sometimes fumbling. But we'll find our way together.

I see you. Come along.

Keep Moving.

Rachel

If this resonated with you, if you’re somewhere in your own restless winter, or you’ve already hitched up to something new, I’d love to hear about it. Drop your story in the comments below. And if you want to follow along as this adventure unfolds, subscribe so you don’t miss a mile.

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