[THIS POST IS A WORK IN PROGRESS]
Though some of you who follow our adventures have met us in person, at least as many of the people we most enjoy and feel connected with have never met us. Many of you know us from one segment of our lives, but you don’t know what all we’ve been up to or done. And those of you who are finding us for the first time, may enjoy seeing an overview of the kind of things that have occurred since Winslow and I first met, a little over nine years ago.
I’m going to tell the story with photographs. Imagine me with a laser pointer. A little bit like a retirement party slideshow meets TED Talk.
Winslow and I met in Portland, Oregon, thanks to a particular affiliation of gyms that shall remain nameless. Like many who trained in that manner, we are ever grateful for the human connections that came out of it.
Fittingly, our first date was a many mile, 8-hour bike ride all around Portland. (Pictured above.)
At that time, I did not drink coffee (the horror!). Winslow was, of course, already roasting his own and taught me how to appreciate good coffee. In truth, truly good coffee doesn’t take much training to like – the trick is knowing where to find the good coffee.
[PICTURE]
We moved from our first apartment to a house in Gresham, Oregon. We inadvertently moved into a former marijuana grow-house (which was quite illegal at the time). So that made for some interesting visitors. But once we learned this, it finally explained why the guest bedroom had thousands of tiny nail holes in the walls.
[PICTURE]
We moved out the grow-house after a year and into a fancy apartment that overlooked a small lake. It remains my favorite apartment or house that we’ve lived in (that we did not build). Somewhere around this time we also feel deeply in love with wine, and Oregon wines in particular.
[PICTURE]
After a year overlooking the lake, we headed for McMinnville, Oregon, and we launched a wine marketing business. We did journalism on wine events (and also whiskey events…and cider events…you see where this is going), wrote reviews, and participated in the local wine community.
We joined over a dozen wine clubs and basically spent every afternoon walking around downtown McMinnville drinking wine. It was amazing. But not something you can (or should) do forever. But, please, feel free to ask us our thoughts on pinot noir any time. We could talk about it and our other favorite varietals all day.
[PICTURE]
We left McMinnville after a few months and headed for the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. We had fallen in love with (yet another) tourist town in the form of Port Townsend. There, we lived in a house with a small fenced yard. We set up an urban homestead where we raised rabbits (for meat), quail (for meat and eggs), and chickens (for eggs and entertainment). We purchased livestock from the local farmers and processed our own meat. We duck hunted and trapped for meat and pelts.
We also foraged regularly for berries, plants (nettles!), and mushrooms and bought fresh tuna from the fisherman on the west coast of the peninsula that we brought home and canned ourselves. We ate that tuna for years and it was like no tuna you’ve ever tasted. For much of the time we were in Washington, I barely purchased meat at the store and we were able to provide a great deal for ourselves.
Unfortunately, while one of our neighbors thought we were the coolest people she’d ever met, our other neighbor hated us. To make a long story short, when we attempted to get a restraining order and the city attorney refused to file it, the cops told us the safest thing we could was just leave town, so – we did.
[PICTURE]
We had begun building the HPMDU (high-performance mobile dwelling unit), but it wasn’t yet ready to live in. So, we decided, “Hey, let’s just put a bunch of things in storage and hop around from one Airbnb to the next for a while.”
We jumped over the Puget Sound to the Skagit Valley area and lived in Sedro-Woolley for a couple months. Then we ended up renting an amazing basement walk-out apartment in Shelter Bay on Fidalgo Island
[PICTURE]
But, the HPMDU was back on the Olympic Peninsula calling to us, so after a few months we decided to move back and just live in it. A friend of ours was gracious enough to host the whole project in his backyard, so we spent about six months living off of solar energy system, catching rain water with our bathtub roof, and chasing his chickens around (many of whom he had inherited from us).
[PICTURE]
As our day-job situation evolved, we decided that we needed a new level of freedom. We decided to take advantage of my job that allowed me to work remotely and Winslow’s amazing construction skills, and we bought ten acres in North Idaho.
We sold the HPMDU to a woman on the Peninsula who loved it and thought it was a major upgrade from her existing trailer. We moved to Idaho and started building our off-grid mountain cabin there.
[PICTURE]
We spent a full year in Idaho and a lot came and went – goats, hunting dogs, chickens, and rabbits among them. The rain and the snow mostly just came and never went. When the rain did stop, the stinkbugs were a plague for months on end.
We started out sleeping in our car as we built our cabin. Then in a tent on the cabin floor since it had no roof. I boiled water in a copper tub to wash dishes and ourselves. Over the course of a year we got a little more developed, but not a lot.
We met some of the most generous and helpful people we’ve ever met. We saw firsthand that rural America is incredibly diverse – it’s just full of people who don’t want to be found.
[PICTURE]
After a year, our wanderlust took hold again and we decided to try the full-time RV life. We bought our little travel trailer (28 feet from nose to tail) and hit the road. We drove around in big circles for well over three and a half years.
We spent a good chunk of time in South Dakota (I still kinda miss Hy-Vee), but also very much enjoyed our stays in Wyoming, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado…and Arizona.
[PICTURE]
The last year our feelings about full-time RV life have vacillated wildly. We are a bit tired of an 8×20 shaped life. But when we briefly rented a house, it became quickly obvious that we’re just not domesticated enough for that lifestyle anymore either.
We expanded our solar energy and water systems with the plan to boondock extensively for all of 2020 and beyond, but then the pandemic happened and it changed a lot for us, too. Suddenly the RV parks were closed, the state parks were closed, the national lands were either closed or packed with too many people looking for a place to hold out.
We decided to buy land…and then bought a few pieces of land…and then realized how much we love Arizona, and maybe we weren’t able to get out of here because here is where we’re supposed to be.
We bought 1 acre in Williams. We sold it (for a profit thanks to pandemic insanity) and bought 40 acres in Yucca. We also already owned 10 acres in Golden Valley that we had purchased while we lived in Idaho and became overwhelmed one winter evening imagining that we might ever see sunshine again.
[PICTURE]
So then, it was 2020 and 2021. And we had a forty-acre ranch of our own and endless space to do all the projects we want to do…and do them slowly since we’re not running from the weather or to the next park reservation or from a crazy neighbor.
We’re going to set up our glamping tent. We’re going to design and install solar electric systems for other RVers. We’re going to build a cordwood house and probably a tiny earthship. And it will probably take us thirty years, but we’re going to enjoy every single day.
We’re just going to be a couple crazy cowboy hippies in the middle of the Mohave doing our thing – and we hope you’ll come visit us at some point.
And even if you can’t visit, maybe you can just picture this off-grid life as you sip a cup of our coffee.
Leave a Reply