AND… We’re Back!
Year six, can you believe we were on the same vacation as the picture taken one year earlier! :)First and foremost:
I am absolutely sorry for the last blog post that you may or may not have seen if you subscribe to this blog (It’s gone now). I was not hacked but apparently James was. Also, apparently he was set as a contributor to this blog. So someone hacked into his account and published some sub-par English (like I have any room to complain!) post about something or another… I am sorry to be a cruddy email in your inbox though and thank you so much for those of you who let me know so I could handle it! It has been fixed and I’ll do my very best to not let it happen again!
Quick Recap!
So, 13 months, to the day, is how long we were on the road. And 39,998 miles (I’d like to just round that up bat I can’t do it). In that time we were able to hit 45 national parks (all of them in the lower 48 excluding 4 island parks accessible only by boat or plane). We can all, including Denver, say we’ve been to 48 of the 50 states.
I did technically take a computer but it was not easy to hook it up to the internet (I attached via phone). Then, every time I did my computer wanted to update. So any time I wanted to write a blog post I had to basically wait 2-4 hours and hope I remembered enough to scribble it down. As you can see, I think I wrote about 6 blog posts the whole time we were out and that was from my phone (its not easy to blog via touch pad!). I’m sorry for that but it was a lot more fun exploring the country!! Hopefully, if you wanted you were able to find us on Instagram where I still updated.
We left in the middle of some hot and heavy tiny house discussions and it’s pretty much been tabled the whole time we were away. We are very happy to be back thought to finish working through the nuances and hopefully make it easier to live tiny in Idaho at least!
Before That Happens Though:
We have to find a home base. The thought of mooching off any family while we figure it out is not appealing. We have great tenants in our ‘real’ house and have no ambition to kick them out just so we could live there a little while. We can’t occupy the tiny house. Short term (or long term) rentals are astronomical in Boise right now. (Click here for a special link to Yahoo about our hometown)
This left us with one logical answer. When James moved in to the tiny he never fully downsized. He just kind of put his things in boxes and then built a basic, detached garage for his ‘real house’, then stored all of his stuff in there. So we’re converting that garage into some temporary housing for our family of four!
Our Anniversary
We didn’t just end our trip 13 months to the day after take off, we also ended it on our anniversary. Every year we take a family photo in front of our home as a snapshot of the year. I am glad to get another picture with ‘Lil Beastie! (our camper). Here are our anniversary photos to date, I wonder what next year’s will look like! ha!
We lead a pretty cool life, I am so glad I, on a whim, started taking these pictures!
Now The Downsizing Begins Again!
James has been hardcore into the real downsizing efforts. A year on the road has been pretty eye opening for both of us on what we really need (spoiler: less than what we currently own!). Honestly, I have cleared the tiny house of several truck loads of stuff! Our kids have grown up in a year and they really don’t need all the baby stuff we had. James has gone through box upon box. We’ve taken two truck loads to the dump, were planning a yard sale for anything else. Whatever doesn’t sell will be donated to start a new life elsewhere. Hazel and Miles have been going through all their stuff, they are excited to earn money from their toys AND plan on hosting a lemonade stand for cool refreshments. I absolutely cannot believe the amount of STUFF we have accumulated in our tiny little places!
Building Anew!
After this weekend we really get going! We will be adding a kitchen, a custom playhouse/fort for the kids, and doing all those little projects that take a garage to a home for a family of four and their dog! I will try to do updates because its totally relevant to ‘tiny homes’ and living in small spaces. Sometimes Instagram is just easier for me because it’s quicker (and can be done from my phone). I will definitely update on the legalities once that conversation gets going too. I am happy to be back and ready to rock this world again! In the mean time here are some of my favorite pictures of our adventures!
Also, this is not the end of our travels, we absolutely plan to make it to those four parks we skipped and are already planning our trip to Alaska (my last state) for next summer followed by celebrating James’s 40th birthday next fall in Hawaii! We should be able to see all these amazing National Parks before too long!
Oh, P.S.
Our cat is mad we are back. Did you know we had a cat? It’s probably because I am a dog person ;-).
He misses his bachelors pad and all the fancy parties he used to throw! While we were away we had an RFID cat door programmed to his microchip so that he could enter and exit the house at will (but nothing else could). We set up a camera pointed at his food so we could make sure he was alive and eating. Any time the food got low we would order another bag from Amazon and have James’s sister or mom run over and fill his dish. Pretty sure he enjoyed that set up a whole lot more than he enjoys our company!
The Pictures
