The southwest desert is hot, ya’ll! Especially when you’re silly like us and visit in the hottest time of the year. After visiting Joshua Tree in California, the lovely Saguaro National Park is just a hop skip over the border into Arizona! On the way there, we stopped and visited some friends from the Midwest who happened to be down in Phoenix that weekend! Morgan and Jim, a million thanks for swooping in with the most delightful company (and AC…
We finally made it to California! After Alaska, I think I was most excited to visit California since it has such a large number of National Parks and they’re vastly different across the state. The first park on our list was Redwood National Park. This park is absolutely huge and encompasses a lot of State Park area as well. We started from the North and stopped at Crescent City Park Headquarters first to get started. From there, we drove down…
After our time at Olympic, Mike and I headed into Seattle to see a few of my friends! When I taught English in South Korea a million years ago, a large group of my friends that I made were all from Seattle. One of my best friends from college is also from there, so I had a plethora of friends to catch up with before Mike and I headed down to Mount Rainier National Park! We entered Mount Rainier from…
After Alaska, we zoomed 45 or so hours back to Bellingham, Washington, where my friends Beth and Lauren live. They are amazing and took care of our fur baby, Luca, while we were adventuring and hanging out with bears. Luca had a great time while he was there; he still hasn’t stopped talking about it. After some good catching up and tacos, we headed down to Olympic National Park. We were joined by my mom for this park, as she…
After an extremely long drive from Washington, through Canada, with many $100+ gas fill ups, new tires, and more…. we made it to Alaska! We tried to visit Glacier Bay first, but we found out that the ferry to the park was booked for more than a week. So, we headed up another 15 or so hours up to the largest National Park in the United States… Wrangell-St. Elias! This park is 13 million acres; larger than the 6 smallest…
After a long drive that felt surprisingly short, we made it to Port Orford, Oregon to watch Ry finish the American Trail Race. We were watching his tracker and made it along the trail to cheer him on. We didn’t have service where we were at, so we just hung out awhile and enjoyed the nature… and wine. I found an amazing bottle of wine at a local store that has it divided into four glasses already! It was amazingggg. …
After Yellowstone, we headed towards Glacier National Park! I was super excited for this park; I had heard so many wonderful things from everyone and I had never been here. First though, we stopped in the town of Bozeman and got our life together again i.e. we showered. We continued along the way and slept outside of the park. Okay, it was in a Montana saloon, Trixi’s, parking lot, don’t judge us. When we asked the bartender if it would…
Dear Diary, I had a great couple weeks with Mom and Dad! We went to so many parks that I’ve taken poos in. I haven’t been able to always get out of the car because the bears are scared of me, but I’ve gotten lots of air-sniffing-out-the-window time! Mom also bought a chuck-it, and it’s my job to go get the ball. I’m really good at it and I take my job super seriously. We visited a friend named Luke…
Dear Diary, After a long winter break, we’re finally back in the road again. It was a little hard to leave Xena… mostly because she wanted to try the long distance thing. But I was like “girl, I gots things to do, and I need to get my scent everywhere, if ya know what I mean.” Mom and Dad sold the van/my big kennel on wheels! They got a nice red truck (why are they obsessed with red??) though where…
“How can you afford this?” is one of the questions we’ve gotten most, after “ew, how do you take showers?” and “how do you not kill each other?” (see this blog for answers on that one!). When we started thinking about this adventure, I turned to the never ending wisdom of the internet and social media van life accounts. I quickly became frustrated (and quite frankly, continue to be) on how many people, van lifers and others, claim to fund…