We’ve been quiet around here for awhile — almost a year! It’s hard to believe how fast the earth moves around the sun sometimes. In some ways our lives changed a lot in that time, and in other ways they’re remarkably the same.  2018 Recap: Emphasis on the Busy One reason for our blog hibernation is that in addition to traveling full-time, we also run our graphic design and marketing business from the road. We got very busy with that last year, which is a good thing, but when we had downtime we wanted to get off our screens and out into the world.  Last year went by in a flash. Here ..read more

Everyone’s favorite time of year is just a few days away — that’s right, Tax Day is April 17 (break out the party hats and confetti). We just wrapped ours up and thought it would be helpful to share a few surprising things we learned after buying our Airstream for those of you out there considering making the jump to the fulltime RV lifestyle. Note: We are not accountants or tax experts. This post is about our personal experience, and you should always consult your own accountant before making any decisions that might have a big impact on your taxes. 1. RV Dealerships will say you can wr ..read more

Shoam says my dream life would be to live at a spa (he's not wrong). He's a good sport about it, so after a nice long break from the road in Taos he agreed we could treat ourselves to a couple nights at Ojo Caliente, an amazing hot springs resort in Northern New Mexico about an hour from Taos and Santa Fe. Ojo had been on our list since before we even got to New Mexico, but when we found out they have a little RV park on the property we decided to wait until we could stay there to really make the most of it. I am not an easy girl to drag out of the water, so being able to soak as long as ..read more

I'd happily hike every day of the week, but we do need to make a living in order to travel full time, so most days find us typing away on our laptops at the Airstream's dinette. We can usually squeeze in some shorter lunch or post-work trails during the week and we save the longer, more remote trails for the weekends. In my opinion one of the best benefits of RV living is being able to park our home in places that offer miles and miles of trails right outside our front door.  The Taos area offered plenty of opportunities to get out, and even when the temperatures started droppin ..read more

We rolled the Airstream into Taos in early October totally worn out after a crazy summer of travel. We had planned to stay for a week or two to rest up, regroup and visit Shoam's mom, who just moved there, but we quickly fell in love with the landscape, the friendly folks at our RV park and the food and we wound up staying for a little over two months for a much needed break from route planning and driving.  After all those days steeping ourselves in the trails, history and, of course, green chile of this Northern New Mexico town, we think it’s one that should be on every traveler’s ..read more

Airstreams have a special allure — we usually find that if you want one, you don’t consider a whole lot of other options. The biggest decision you’ll make is whether to buy new or renovate, so we thought it would be helpful to share a little bit about our thought process when we were making that decision. We knew after our very first week of RV’ing that we wanted an Airstream, but we were on the fence for months about renovating. We’re designers, we love to nest and we did a lot of mini renovation projects back when we owned a home in Portland, Oregon, from a custom wood-clad nook in our bedr ..read more

Before 2018 gets into full swing, we wanted to take some time to update our maps, calculate our costs and really think about what we want out of this next year of travel.  Our Google map helps us keep track of all of our stops. Which state are we in again? Where did we stay? We parked the Airstream in 98 places in 2017! That kind of blew us away when we tallied it up, and it explains why we were feeling totally burnt out by October, plus why our focus in 2018 will be on fewer states and slower travel.  Here’s the break down of our rv parking: 2 National Forest campgrounds 2 Rest St ..read more

The other night a man sat down next to us at a local bar. He asked the inevitable “Where are you from?” question, and we explained that we travel full time in our RV. His response was “F*ck you,” said only somewhat jokingly.  We finished up our drinks and said our polite goodbyes, but the conversation stuck with me because it’s not the first time we’ve gotten this kind of reaction. Other times we get, “Are you rich?” or “Did you win the lottery?” (An equal number of times we get, “So… you’re hobos?,” so don’t worry about our egos too much).  The answer to all of these is no. But I ge ..read more

One of our favorite pastimes in Taos was picking a random road to drive down and checking out the homes. The architecture here is like nowhere else.   You'll find Adobes old and new nestled next to domes, circular buildings, and off-grid earthships constructed out of tires and mud tucked into hillsides all over town. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you turn a corner into a new neighborhood and your jaw drops.  Add to all that the mountain views and the high desert landscape overflowing with silvery sagebrush and fluffy, golden chamiso with pops of turquoise, lavender and ..read more

This past weekend we bumped and rolled the 6 miles down Tune Rd. in Taos to hike in to Manby Hot Springs. The route takes you past a smattering of earthships, geodesic domes and adobe homes set into an incredible mountain backdrop before a final turn dead ends at a parking lot. From there an unmarked, but easy to spot trail winds down a half mile of rugged, old stagecoach road leading you to three pools and the ruins of a bathhouse (or, more bluntly, a brothel, according to another hiker we met on our way).  The springs have been used by locals for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Fi ..read more