Happy anniversary!

Today is our official, one-year “full-time living on the road adventure” anniversary.  One year ago, on April 29, 2023, we walked out the front door of our house in Portland for the last time and spent a night in our 5^th wheel for the first time.

That first night feels like it was so long ago, a different lifetime ago, and at the same time, with everything we have done over these 12 months, it feels like the time has flown by very quickly.

Here is the map of everywhere we’ve been during year one…

Over the first year we traveled a total of 5,626 miles, spent time in 9 different states, and visited 11 national parks (bringing our total visited together up to 22). We spent the most time in Texas (128 nights) followed by Oregon (70), Colorado (63), New Mexico (48), Utah (21), Arizona (15), Nevada (9), Wyoming (6), and California (5).

We have a lot more data we tracked along the way, like what types of places we stayed at and how much we spent on gas and repairs and campground fees, but I’ll save all that for anther post.

Oh, and speaking of posts, we know we haven’t been updating the blog very much recently.  We’re sorry.  Part of that is because we haven’t been traveling; we’ve been in the same general area of Texas since January 1^st.  And the other reason is that things have been incredibly busy; there just hasn’t been much time to step back, take a breath, and write everything down. But, we’ll be leaving Texas next weekend and getting back on the road, so I’m sure the updates will be coming more frequently again soon.

As for a quick overview of the last 4 months…

Let’s see, we spent most of January exploring this area of Texas and researching/visiting tracts of land for sale to find a few acres we could call our own and use as a winter stopping ground every year.  After we found an ideal spot, we spent most of February working through the purchasing process and signing all the documents.  And in March we worked with a local contractor to get a road cut in, a landing spot for the 5^th wheel leveled and excavated, and a septic tank put in.

April feels like it has been our most hectic month of 2024, so far.  At the beginning of the month we drove east out near Austin to see the solar eclipse (and lucked out with clear skies just as totality hit). 

Then Lauren had to fly to Philadelphia for a work conference and to Denver for some medical stuff.  While Lauren was away my friend Michael came to visit from Portland and we did hikes in Big Bend National Park during the days and watched sunsets from the property at night.

In the middle of all that we finally moved the 5^th wheel from the RV park in Terlingua out to our property and we have been staying out here ever since.

It’s an absolutely beautiful and tranquil spot and we couldn’t be happier with it, but this area of Texas starts to get really hot by April.  Days in the 80s are lovely, but we’ve already had days over 100 and more than a few in the upper 90s.  While we’d love to spend more time out on the property, especially since we’ve only had a few weeks out here to enjoy it, it’s definitely time to hit the road, head north, and find some cooler climates.  Although we know as soon as we leave we’ll already be looking forward to coming back “home” in November.

The plan for next weekend is to head back to Tucson for a few weeks so we can get the 5^th wheel and truck serviced and take care of some much needed repairs and upgrades.  From there we’ll be heading north into Utah and, possibly, southern Idaho and western Colorado to start looking for the 2^nd plot of land we want to purcahse.  2024 is shaping up to be our “land grab” year and the goal is to end up with a spot in Texas for the winters and a spot in the mountains of Utah/Idaho/Colorado for the summers.  If all that goes to plan, we can spend 2025 and beyond getting back to traveling to places we haven’t explored yet and checking more national parks off our list.

As much as we have enjoyed our time in this area of Texas, and love the piece of land we found, we are really feeling the itch to get moving again.

Onward to year two!