You know how I said we’d be in Wyoming? Well…

A note to start: It’s Wednesday, not Tuesday 🤷🏼‍♀️

It’s been a bit of a rough start to the week, the details of which I’ll get into next letter, but it all came to a head Tuesday afternoon and wasn’t resolved until today… which is why this week’s letter is being posted a day late. Life + reality gets in the way sometimes 🙃

So you know how I said we were heading to Wyoming last letter? Well, we met some new friends (!) and the plans changed.

We’re (currently) in IDAHO!

It’s a fun story on how we went from 0 to 20 vanlife friends in the span of 5 days, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves (I’ll tell the story later on, don’t ya worry)

Our first week was spent in Eastern Oregon near Baker City along a reservoir. This area reminded me of Bend, Oregon but green! It was absolutely gorgeous and the weather was perfect our entire time here. My work efficiency was also at an all time high this week — creating came so easily and I just wanted to be in the studio for hours on end (10-12 hour days, long). It came to a point where light was my limiting factor ☀️ It’s been awhile since I’ve been hyper focused in the studio, and it was a welcomed feeling!

So many new designs came of this week as well, with two new sculpture designs and new backplate designs as well —

After our time at this spot we were on our way to Boise! I have some family there, so we spent the weekend visiting. They have a few acres so the dogs got to run around on grass (that doesn’t happen very often anymore!) and they absolutely loved it. Sacha also loved the horses and really wanted to play.

Our time in Boise was so fun and it started a conversation while heading to our next campsite surround the question:

How long do we want to do this for?

Do we slowly start looking for property? Do we create a home base and do a hybrid approach? Visiting with family in a home, with projects, with a space for the dogs to run, these questions started to pop up. We’ve missed visiting with people while traveling, and my partner has missed maintaining property.

We began discussing the possibility of ending full-time on the earlier end of our timeline (1 year) on our way to the next campsite, but we soon-after got snapped out of this mindset — really quick.

We made FRIENDS!

Making friends on the road has been really hard. We move so frequently that we don’t really make friends with locals, and it’s hard to find people who have a similar lifestyle. A lack of community has been the biggest downside, and it was the largest driving factor to consider ending our full-time travels early.

When we pulled up to the very crowded campground I’d picked out for the night, we were forced to camp in a cul-de-sac *quite* close to other vehicles. After taking the dogs on quick walk, our camp neighbor came up to us asking about Bruce and invited us to the shared campfire by her van.

And guess what? She lives in her van full time (for the last 3 years) and had three more friends joining her that night. We decided to extend our stay at the campground to get to know everyone a bit more + do some paddle boarding — the spot was gorgeous and right along a river!

📍 Blue Heart Springs, ID (image from Google cause I didn’t bring my phone 🙃)

On the third day of getting to know everyone, they invited us to kayak / paddle board with them to Blue Heart, a natural spring that makes the water running into the Snake River incredibly clear (so gorgeous, highly recommend)!

Here’s where our friends turn from 4 to 20: they invited us to the reunion they were heading to! It backtracked us to the Boise area, but we jumped on the opportunity to make more friends and solidify the friendships we had started. We really clicked with these people — two solo travel full-time on the road with their dogs, the other two live in Utah but camp ~80% of the time. All of them dog lovers, young or young in spirit, easy to talk to, and all in the same life mindset as us (we hit the jackpot).

The Reunion

The gathering they invited us to was for a solo travel / singles group reunion (yes we were the only couple) — and it was a production. I’m talking DIY slip and slide, community kitchen, + Costco run kind of production.

Everyone was so nice, we all meshed really well (my loud personality fit right in), and it was such a blast. The dog lover personality continued into the remainder of the group as well, with 10 dogs attending (including a puppy) — all of which were well behaved — meaning the dogs got to have a blast as well 🌟

The full-timers of the group connected all of their Star link’s to give a wide internet range through the camp so everyone could work during the day. But by the afternoon and evening, our time was spent paddle boarding, talking around the campfire, tubing the slip and slide, getting puppy love, and swimming.

The dogs had a blast, my partner and I had a blast, and we solidified some incredible friendships and a community base that will last a lifetime. Plans for New Mexico in November and Baja in January with this group are already in the works 💛