Our original plan changed (the first of many future changes from the original plan, I’m sure) and we skipped Wyalusing State Park in Iowa in order to shorten our travel day. From Sioux Falls we drove to Albert Lea, MN and had a diverting one-night stay at a Harvest Host location on a small tree…
Category: Nick
Flies and the un-zen of RV Maintenance
Nick Woodland 6/29/23 Badlands National Park has undoubtedly some very interesting landscapes – volcanic ash eroding into otherworldly and fantastical shapes. They make for a bizarre skyline at any time of day. The open and mixed grasslands (the most extensive in the National Park system) are beautiful as they sway in the wind, looking as…
Our First Week
Where to begin? How about with the highs and lows. First the high. On Friday, the 16th of June, at Glendo state park we paddleboarded, mountain biked, swam and then did it all over again. We watched an incredible sunset and then headed back to camp. We opened up the awning, finally turned on our…
It Begins!
Nick Woodland – 6/15/23 The two things I’d been dreading since this whole idea surfaced came to pass on the first day: getting lost and driving on unplanned roads and having to maneuver my 52′ rig through a ‘normal’ gas station. Yes, my rig is 52′ feet long. Somehow I missed the turn-off to I-25…
The End (Beginning) is Nigh
Nick Woodland – 6/11/23 These last two weeks have been…helter-skelter, that’s the word (or words). It seems there are sixteen things to do at any given moment. I have discovered newfound peace in painting rocks, seriously. Who knew? It’s rained every day since the end of school on May 26th. Every day. It is storming…
First 6-month plan
People have been asking about our route and so I have updated the map with our plan for the first 6 months or so. But you know what they say about plans… I am leery to post too much specific info about our route online or our current location at any given time, but I…
What have we done?
The decision was never made in the classic sense. We didn’t look each other square in the eye and say, definitively and confidently, ‘yes, let’s do this, let’s make it happen no matter what’. Instead, we seemed to dance around it and entertain it in our mind’s eye. We were too scared by the implications…
Coming Around to the Idea – Part 2
Dog Bite Our dog bit our 7-year old neighbor. It was shocking, nauseating (think blood on the snow), and saddening for all involved. Knowing you have caused that type of injury to anyone, let alone a young girl, is very hard to swallow. She ended up recovering fully, after five stitches to her lower eyelid…
Coming Around to the Idea – Part 1
My first thought after I had been bomb-shelled by the idea of selling most of our worldly possessions and moving into an RV was, well…what about me and the things I want to do with my life? They were shameful thoughts, and selfish. I wish I had been more open minded when confronted with this…
How It All Began
We sat on our new, expansive deck in the warm, unfiltered sunshine so characteristic of early summers in Bailey and had lunch. It was June 2022. The girls had just returned from Texas and I had just returned from one of my best bikepacking trips of all time: the Stone House Lands loop in the…