Ode To Van Life

Big news folks … We closed the “van life” chapter of our life, as we sold our 2010 Roadtrek!!!! It was a bittersweet decision, but since we actually spent most of the last 2 years in one domicile in Alaska, it felt like we were moving further away from the “part-time van life nomad” and…

Oh Canada!

Well, for all the stressing, researching, calling Canadian government/public health and asking others’ advice, I can now say our drive north through Canada to transport our camper van, trailer & us back to Alaska was easy peasy! We drove through Canada in FOUR days, a record for us. Justin’s first trip driving north in 2003…

Spring Road Trip Wrap Up

This blog post is overdue and happened what seems like months ago! We are currently back on the road for Leave No Trace/Subaru for the Zero Landfill Tour, so this recap is focused on April-June. Ready, rewind. (***Warning, picture heavy & long!***) Much of the last 8 years as nomads, it’s been for work—starting with…

Currently: April

Currently living/working in: Most of April has been on the road in our van. Our Leave No Trace contract ended April 8, meaning we returned our work-provided Subaru Ascent and moved into our van until the next Leave No Trace contract. We are still juggling lots of content projects, but it’s been fun to be…

Currently: October

Currently living/working in: Our Subaru/Leave No Trace contract ended Oct. 15 and we are in the midst of several Backpacker deadlines. We’ve been hanging out in Denver this whole month & plan to be here most of winter actually, you know, “visiting family,” which translates to squatting. Actually, we have a good mix of petsitting responsibilities,…

Van Life: The Wanderer II

This should be no surprise to anyone, but we bought another van (our “big purchase” referenced in my April Currently post)!! Meet the Wanderer II, a 2010 Roadtrek Adventurous RS Sprinter. As we do best, we usually spend 22 minutes making big life decisions. To be clear, Justin is always looking at vans for sale.…

Meet the SuperVan!!

It is time to unveil the innards of our summer home on wheels. Reminder: this van is BORROWED and we have to return it to Superfeet in late July after our NZ speaking tour (sniff sniff). But I digress. We have traveled more than 2,000 miles in Superfeet’s converted Sprinter van for since picking it…

Cars Vans Cars Vans.

It’s been a whirlwind of vehicles for us this month. In case you didn’t hear about some of the excitement—and also because my head spins sometimes—I’m here to do a recap. We sold our beloved “Wanderer” 1995 Chevy Roadtrek. We only owned it for 8 months and put 10,000 miles on it, but we knew…

Currently: March

Currently living/working in: They’re back … Our quiet winter retreat at Fenton Ranch has been interrupted by high-decibel shouting, courtesy of 20 kids a day! The truth is, we don’t mind, in fact, we absolutely love it!!!  We are happy to add a dose of environmental education in today’s nature-deficient children, no matter how deafening and…

Currently: September

Currently living/working in: Teaching kids environmental education at Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. We’ve finished up the fifth and fourth graders and have moved onto our last unit with second graders! This season goes lightening-fast! I’ve taken the kids wading in our backyard creek about 15 times this season! This is a…

Currently: August

Currently living/working in: We roadtripped most of August, and are now settled back at Fenton Ranch in New Mexico, where we will again teach kids environmental education through October!  Current mood: Content to be back to work at Fenton. We both really love our roles at Fenton, working with our boss, Jamie, and living in the Jemez…

Currently: July

Currently living/working in: We roadtripped most of July, with a few days on either end in Denver. Somehow, I squeezed in a bunch of writing projects and J found some gems in our storage units to sell off. But in August, we will be returning to our contract job at Fenton Ranch in New Mexico, where…

Eastbound-Westbound

We took our new-to-us Roadtrek on its first 4,000-mile test trip from Colorado to the East Coast (specifically Virginia and New Jersey) and back to Colorado.  You know, just a little spin around America. We had a few purposes, mainly to visit our family, friends and Virginia storage unit.  But we also wanted to see…

Recovery

Have no fear, I am on the mend. At first, it was slowly. Too slow for my liking. It is not easy, nor fun, to go from 90 MPH to 5 MPH. But, this week has been a new week and every day I feel a little better. J said he is almost ready to…