Sunday, June 12, 2022 – Sky Mountain, our forever home move-in journey!

We used North American movers, the Alex Moving and Storage outfit from San Bernardino. They gave us a bid late April for the move from Running Springs to Hurricane. Raquel came up and walked through the house. We talked to Mayflower and Atlas Van lines for movers as well. Atlas came up and gave us a bid, Mayflower was done virtually. Atlas was about $20k for the move from RS to Hurricane. They were not available though the second week of June, due to manpower shortages.

Alex Moving was about $12k for the move. Mayflower mentioned that our house in Running Springs would take up half of a 53 foot moving trailer and that the delivery, around the 2nd week in June, would depend on another load and delivery of the other half of the trailer. They will not travel unless the trailer is full. We might have to wait a week or so for our half of the delivery truck. It still was the 2nd week in June or so, they mentioned. Mayflower could ship the Rzr as well in the move.

Sandy mentioned, as we thought all this through, why don’t we do both moves at once and buy the whole 53 foot trailer. We asked Raquel. She asked a few questions and thought, first cut, that the Bullhead house would fill in the other portion of the trailer. North American could not ship the Rzr in their bid.

Luckily, we were in Bullhead at the end of April (26-27) moving stuff to ready the Running Springs house for showing and sale. Raquel suggested a virtual walk-thru of that house. We did that and the final bid from North American came on May 3 for about $25,700 with insurance. We signed that paper work! The schedule was June 7 (Tuesday) to pack Running Springs, June 8, finish packing and load up and travel to Bullhead, June 9 pack and load Bullhead and delivery to Hurricane on June 10 (Friday) or 11.

Tuesday, May 31. the Sleep Number king bed was delivered and Brent and Janice were nice enough to oversee the installation. They also checked in on the carpet and hardwood flooring install as well. All was good.

Sandy contacted Junk Dawgs out of Redlands to pickup our master bedroom set and bed and the guest bedroom set and bed before the move.

Monday, June 6. Right on time, 9 am, we had Jalen and Nathan show up and begin taking the master bedroom, ham room table and Rosie bookcase top and the guest bedroom furniture away. We had a king mattress, a full mattress, the headboard, end table and 2 dresser drawers (I have had since moving out from Simmons) and the antique oak credenza we purchased long ago (to be refinished, never done) all gone! The 2 kids were done by 10:30 or so, fast!

With no bed, we slept on the Aerobed for 2 nights, it is truly awful for sleeping. We kept packing the house, each of us doing our own thing.

Tuesday, June 7. The Alex crew showed up about 8:30 am to begin packing. This was a packing crew, not a loading crew. We had Miguel (the lead), Melvin, David and Juana as packers. Around noon, we had Rico show up with a 26 foot box trailer. Because the 53 foot would not navigate the mountain roads, we had to pay for the shuttle process as well. The revised plan was to continue packing but also loading the 26 foot truck in the aftenoon. The plan was to pack and load the small truck and transfer the load to the 53 foot trailer that evening in San Bernardino. The more that could be done on Tuesday, the easier Wednesday would be. Tuesday night was again on the AeroBed. The crew was done around 5pm.

We went to dinner with Jamie and Patty one last time at Papagayo’s.

Wednesday, June 8. We started again at 8:00 am or so. We had breakfast at the coffee shop in town. We revised our plan as well. We decided to send Sandy on to Las Vegas to overnight and the onto Hurricane on Thursday. It made no sense to have 2 of us supervising the loading, but she could get stuff done in Hurricane before we arrived. So, she left RS about 10:30 and arrived at South Point early afternoon. On Thursday, she got an early start to beat the traffic on I-15.

Our packing and moving crew were Rico (lead), Ronnie, Julio and Carmelo. Miguel was off on an other assignment. It was a flury of stuff going on and they were packed and loaded up by 4pm or so. With the house now totally empty, I cleaned up the garage and took a few last minute photos. I was on the road to Bullhead, by about 5pm. I had to be there before the movers showed up on Thursday.

Thursday, June 9. We had Miguel(lead), Ronnie, Julio and Carmelo. Rico was re-assigned. These 4 would be our packing and loading crew for the delivery to Hurricane. Right on time, 8:00 am or so, the crew showed up. That morning, up about 4:30, I masked off those drawers throughout, not to be moved and sectioned off the portion of the garage that was not moving, the Rzr area. These guys were fast and thorough. I spent most of my time, packing the garage to keep ahead of them. Right at about 5pm, the crew was done loading and off they went. It was a warm day, about 110 degrees. After a quick shower, and leaving at 6pm from Bullead, I arrived at Sky Mountain about 11:00 pm or midnight MDT.

Sandy arrived from Las Vegas Thursday mid-morning, sorted the mailbox stuff and stocked the refrigerator and got everything ready (including the new bed!) for our final delvery.

Friday, June 10. Even with one hour time change, Miguel and his crew showed up to unload. Miguel, Ronnie, Julio and Carmelo worked all day Friday to unload both of our houses. We had wall-to-wall boxes everywhere. We learned that the labelling was not the best, labels should have divided the boxes from both houses, at least. It was confusing. But, working like the small army that they were, the 53 foot trailer was totally empty by 4pm and they were back on the road to overnight in Las Vegas and home to San Bernardino on Saturday, the 11th.

The week was stressful, but everything worked schedule-wise and so far, nothing is broken. A few bent items, nothing we didn’t fix.

The plan worked!