2023-4 Travel Recap

As Scott said, we are trying to get back in the habit of regular updates. To start (and since it’s the beginning of 2025), I thought it would be nice to do a travel recap. We’re thinking of doing these at the end/beginning of every calendar year, but this one will be since we began living on the road in 2023.05, so this is like a 18 month recap rather than 12. To keep it short, I’ll share one highlight per month. This is also a way for me to share a project I started working on in October of 2023, inspired by Social Justice Sewing Academy, Bisa Butler, and Karolina Bakowska, creating postcard sized quilt blocks each month. I know we’ve already done some recap type things, so I’ll try to keep this short!

May 2023 – the Oregon Coast.

We started our journey traveling around Oregon, going down near Salem for an event for Scott’s work, then going out to the Oregon Coast for a while. This month was a huge learning curve for us in terms of our utilities (electricity, water, and sewage systems), driving and parking the fifth wheel, and living in a tiny space. Okay, living in a tiny space wasn’t really a challenge for us, but we did have to convert (and I had to give up my yarn wall). We had bought a membership for Thousand Trails and we really enjoyed their park outside of Pacific City. When we look back at this month, the Oregon Coast stood out the most.

June 2023 – Bend

In June, we headed over the Cascades to Bend Oregon and had our first experience boondocking or dry camping. This is what most people mean when they say camping, as opposed to the glamping that is usually staying in a KOA campsite with full hookups (water, electricity, sewage). Boondocking is finding a spot on public land (like that managed by the Bureau of Land Management, aka BLM land) and staying there. We use minimal impact camping rules (Leave No Trace) and get to enjoy being in nature, one of the main reasons we started this journey. So, again, this month we learned more about our electricity, water, and sewage systems, this time from a resource management perspective (fresh water tank holds 80 gallons, two grey water (kitchen, shower) waste tanks and one black (toilet) waste tank each hold 50 g. Before we started we also had a huge solar system installed, taking care of most of our electrical needs (you may remember, our fridge at this point took a lot of power and wasn’t that efficient, but also ran off propane).

July 2023 – Utah

We spent July traveling from Oregon to Colorado, and our most memorable time this month was spent in Utah when we were adopted by a tiny kitten we named Boon. He was at this boondocking spot, in the middle of nowhere and looked a bit beat up. We gave him food and water but Scott tracked down the owner so we returned him.

August 2023 – Colorado

We spent August in Colorado and visited Rocky Mountain National Park. This is the highest Scott had ever been, 12,005 ft above sea level.

September 2023 – Flaming Gorge, Utah

We left Colorado and headed towards Evanston Wyoming for Scott’s work conference. Scott found this state park in the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area and it was gorgeous. This is the place that started me on this quilted postcard idea, based on the artists I’ve followed for years on instagram, I thought this was the perfect opportunity and inspiration for capturing our travels through this artistic medium.

October 2023 – Saguaro

This was a very eventful month, including hiking in Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde, Four Corners, Petrified Forest National Park, Saguaro National Park, the Sonoran Desert Museum, Tucson, Kartchner Caverns, staying at a boondocking site in the Valley of the Gods (near Monument Valley) where we watched the full solar eclipse, got a flat front truck tire, replaced a hot water valve that was leaking (though not necessarily in that order). Our highlight (and most iconic image) was between the Valley of the Gods and Saguaro, so I added the eclipse to our Saguaro photo.

November 2023 – White Sands, Alamogordo, NM

We boondocked at a water reclamation site outside of Alamogordo New Mexico for a week as we visited White Sands National Park, then went down to Carlsbad and visited Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns. We took a sunset hike in White Sands and the shadows allowed us to capture the endless waves better than when we were there during the blinding afternoon. The “sand” is actually gypsum, a mineral that dissolves in water (and is in many food products), and these dunes have an estimated 4.5 billion tons of it across 245 square miles.

December 2023 – Christmas on the Pecos

We got stuck for a while in Carlsbad while getting our fifth wheel leaf springs upgraded, tire replaced, and one hydraulic leg replaced. We visited Roswell, including a museum detailing the events of several close encounters (not recommended, but there wasn’t much else in the town, to be honest). Right before Christmas, our neighbors in the RV park gifted us tickets to the Christmas on the Pecos boat tour. The houses along the river put on fantastical light displays and at the end of the trip there was a dance group doing some ballet to Tchaikovsky’s Sugar Plum Fairies.

January 2024 – Big Bend

We made it down to Texas by New Years day. We then began our search for some property to be able to winter down in the warmer temperatures of Texas. Big Bend National Park has mountains, desert, and the Rio Grande, and there are tons of hikes in all those areas. The one in the Santa Elena Canyon was quite popular and beautiful.

February-April 2024 – Property

We found a 5 acre slice of land about 45 minutes north of Big Bend that fit our criteria of being beautiful and isolated. We stayed here through April to close the purchase, level a spot, and get a septic system installed.

February 2024

March 2024

April 2024

May 2024 – Biosphere 2, Arizona

We headed to Tucson to get more work done. We decided to replace our fridge, upgrading to the model Grand Design is now installing in their fifth wheels, an all electric much more efficient compressor fridge (versus the absorption model ours came with). We also went to see the Biosphere 2 project. This one has a lot of details I’m still trying to capture, so it’s not quite done. I’m actually not sure I’m done with the prior two images either, one of the reasons these images are taking me so long…

June 2024 – Kolob Canyon, Utah

Back in Utah, we went for a hike in Kolob Canyon, part of Zion National Park. We also saw some gorgeous views in Cedar Breaks Utah, but that was too complicated for me! This block is obviously just the colors cut out in the rough initial shapes, which eventually will turn into something like the image here.

July 2024 – Missoula, Montana

June and July we were looking for a “summer home” property spot, something more similar feeling to the mountains both Scott and I had grown up around. We found some okay places but nothing we really loved until we got to just outside Missoula Montana. While there, there were some big forest fires which turned the sky red.

August 2024 – Devils Tower, Wyoming

I can’t decide if I want to add some swirling clouds and hail to this or just call it done.

September 2024 – Colorado

Getting hail damage fixed meant lots of time to do urban adventures, as Scott just relayed. This is going to be a montage of all the sport/ball related things we did.

October 2024 – Colorado

November-December 2024 – Property

Haven’t decided November or December, but they’ll probably be sunset and fire photos. The sunrises and sunsets here are spectacular and we had our first ever on the road campfire, so those seem like good things to document.

These take me a while to complete, thus the many in-progress in this post. I was hoping to catch up to where I’m only working on one each month but I’m not sure that’ll ever happen. I tend to work on these on travel days but we haven’t had many travel days in a while. This is going to be a wall quilt, hanging in front of our washer/drier. In the format I have them, we can fit one year per column, three columns across, capturing three years total. It seems a little crazy that we’ve already been on the road a year and a half!