Back from our week off grid, we got right to work exploring! We were taken on a tour of Ridgewood Ranch, home to the famous racing horse Seabiscuit. After that, we headed north to Humboldt Redwoods State Park and enjoyed our time under this massive trees!! We ended the week in Eureka, CA with a stroll along the coast. Love being back to the ocean!
Two years ago when we did a 5 week trip to California I had a lightbulb moment. We had packed all our clothes loosely into duffle bags, and about 6 days in I seriously couldn’t find anything as the clothes were jumbled, rumpled, and scattered pretty much everywhere. It was a disaster. In desperation I started looking around on Amazon for a solution to my problem and I found it: eBags Packing Cubes. These things are a lifesaver for packing clothes!
I bought two different variety packs, as I wasn’t sure which sizes we would need. After organizing a bit and seeing how many clothes really fit into the small, medium, and large bags, I made another couple orders of the small bags in different colors as those were the most conveniently sized for kid clothes.
Amazon links to: small bags, medium bags, & a 3 pc variety pack
Our new system is great. Each kid has their own set of 3 color-coordinated E-bags: Rachel is purple, Andrew is orange, and Cara is blue – turns out those are their favorite colors so everyone is happy! We typically put underwear, socks, and pajamas in one, shorts and pants in the second, and shirts in the third. Depending on how long the trip is, you can combine shirts & pants and even just take 2 bags instead of all three. The kids each know their color and its easy for them to pull out the right set of clothes rather than rifling through the whole duffle bag looking for their shirt.
For adult clothes, we tried both the medium and large and I’ve settled on medium. Large is too, well, large. Unless all you wear are jeans and then those work great in the large ones. I’m less concerned about Sam and I having our own color, so we typically mix the green with some other black ones we already owned.
How does this work in the Airstream, you ask? Easy. We still use them. Since our closet is so small, all our “other” season clothes are packed away under the beds. Each kid has their off season clothes in their own color coordinated bag and then they are all tossed into one of our large, white bins. When we have a cold spell (or hot spell in the winter), the kids can go back there and pull out their long sleeved shirts or an extra pair of long pants. I also put Cara’s Sunday skirts in a medium bag under the bed as well. They don’t wrinkle, are super difficult to hang, and kind of bulky for drawers, but they fit great under the bed and we only need them once a week anyway.
They are also useful when we do leave the Airstream for a few nights. Recently, we spent a week at Camp Noyo with family and we used our packing cubes and our duffle bag to take our clothes with us. Worked great!
If you are frustrated with a pile of clothes while traveling, definitely check these out!
Rachel really struggles sometimes, so in turn, I struggle too. As an almost 9 year old, she struggles with a lot of things, but tonight it was her position in the family line-up. I wasn’t the oldest. I have an older brother whom I annoyed and emulated to no end. So maybe he could relate to oldest child woes better than I can.
Tonight Rachel got upset over something Sam said to her. What happened wasn’t important, but typically when she gets upset the whole world falls apart. Suddenly she’s not meant to be in the family, or our church is no longer true, or she wishes she were the youngest instead of the oldest.
Most times we just have to tell her to breathe in and out until she can calm down. Sometimes she gets herself back together quickly, sometimes it takes longer.
Its times like these that I just want to hold her and make all the bad go away. I want her to be careless and free and not worried about things like that. She really is growing up and I worry, many times, about my ability to parent her.
Perhaps that’s why I feel like we need this lifestyle right now. I’m forced to get to know her. All of her. Not just the leftovers after she’s home from school and has been independently with her friends all day. I see all the good, all the bad, and everything in between. For that I truly am grateful even when she’s grumpy and won’t look at the camera and all I get is a photo of her pigtails.
Earlier this year during our planning phases, we had a conversation with my parents in which we discussed the possibility of attending the Astronomy Festival at Bryce Canyon the last week of June. My dad has been a member of the Salt Lake Astronomy Society (SLAS) for as long as I can remember and many of our camping trips included my dad pulling out his telescope and showing us the stars and telling stories. SLAS partners with Bryce Canyon to bring in volunteers and their telescopes for this free event for the public, and my dad goes to help out every couple of years. Every night during the weekend, the parking lot fills up with volunteer astronomers and their telescopes and anyone can come look at the stars. We attended the festival back in 2008 when Rachel wasn’t quite yet a year old so we were pretty excited hat my parents invited us to go back with them. This trip also became the milestone for us leaving the house in Utah permanently.
When We Visited: Late June 2014
Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 4
Favorite Part: Night Sky Viewing & Hiking Into the Valley
Although the festival ran Thur-Sat we picked only one night for the kids to stay up late (it wasn’t even really dark until about 10pm) to look through the telescopes. The kids had fun helping grandpa set up his telescope, and I enjoyed watching my dad do his thing. It was so fun to watch his whole countenance light up and get excited when he talked to visitors. Cara only lasted about 30 minutes, but the older two kids really enjoyed it and stayed up almost until 11:30pm. We saw Saturn, star clusters, nebulae, listened to the Dark Ranger’s constellation stories, and viewed what is now my favorite constellation: The Stargate.
In addition to the night sky viewing, the Astronomy Festival also included some solar viewing (looking at the sun through a special telescope), rocket launching, a planet walk, and other ranger talks in the evenings. We didn’t participate much in this due to either the length (the planet walk was an hour) or the time (after the kids should have been in bed). We were honestly also still recovering from selling everything and moving out and were just plain tired.
In addition to the Astronomy Festival, there is plenty to do in Bryce Canyon! We found a few shorter hikes that we all really enjoyed doing together. Definitely hike down in as the views are incredible and its really not that difficult. We hiked the Queen’s Loop up through Wall Street with the kids and back along the rim for a total of about 3.5 miles. Just bring plenty of water as it really does get HOT down there. Hiking down the Navajo Loop to see the arch is also a quick and easy trek and we spontaneously decided to do that one without even any water (we were location scouting for star photos later that night). Bristlecone Pine Loop near the end of the park is also a beautiful hike especially in the evening.
The Astronomy Festival is a great time to visit Bryce Canyon National Park. With some of the darkest skies in the nation, you can really SEE the stars. Even without a telescope. Sam and I managed to sneak out a few nights as hike down in for some night sky photography as well. I never knew the Milky Way was so bright or had so many colors. Its definitely worth seeing!
Just for fun I thought I’d post the time lapse of the event that one of the volunteers set up and put together. I love watching the Milky Way rise up over the horizon!
Last week I was snuggling with Andrew in our hammock at Camp Noyo looking up at the swaying Redwood trees over head. We started musing about how much we loved it there and I started thinking about how nice it was that it felt like we were on vacation.
“Andrew, when was the last time we went on an actual vacation? Do you remember?” I asked him.
“Hmmmm,” he replied. “Well, the house swap doesn’t count!”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t. When was it before that?”
We started discussing the places we’d been and finally settled on our trip to Denver just after Christmas of 2012. I had a wedding to shoot and we decided to all go and see if we could make a “work-cation” actually work for our family. We booked a hotel room with a kitchen and a bedroom that was actually pretty discounted through the holidays and Sam planned to work at least a couple of the days while I played with the kids. So, maybe it wasn’t really a “vacation” as Sam was still working? I guess it depends on your definition. Maybe that was just a pre-curser to our current lifestyle.
As Sam and I were discussing later that evening our idea of “vacation” and what that actually meant, we realized we also had a trip in May of 2013 to Arches and Monticello, Utah for my brother’s wedding. Since we didn’t work that trip, and were mostly off-grid, that was probably closer to our idea of vacation than the trip to Denver.
[pullquote] When we live our lives traveling from location to location, its obviously not WHERE we are that defines vacation. [/pullquote] So that leads me to the question, “What exactly is a vacation for a family that travels full time?” When we live our lives traveling from location to location, its obviously not WHERE we are that defines vacation. As glamorous as our life probably sounds to most people, we do not, in fact, perpetually vacation. We work, and do school, and grocery shop, and cook, and fight, and argue and all of the good and normal things everyone else does everyday. We just move the house occasionally while we are at it. So what is the definition of a family who travels full time?
My definition of a vacation includes a couple of requirements:
1. Not working. Usually this means we need to be off grid as we are both much too tempted otherwise. No instagram, no internet, no online surfing, no work. That way, when my kids ask me to play Monopoly Deal for the upteenth time, I really don’t have anything better to do. Surprising to most people, Sam doesn’t come with us on all our adventures. He really does have to work, so the kids and I are the ones that visit most of the museums, spend more time exploring National Parks and things like that. Having HIM take the kids down to the swimming hole while I relax in a hammock or pound out 6 blog posts that have been bouncing around in my head for weeks guilt free is just awesome. He doens’t have anything better to do either.
2. Less cooking and meal prep. This can happen in a couple of ways. Either we are at an all-inclusive resort (cruise or something similar) or we are with people and split the meal assignments. I don’t mind cooking a little. Just not the whole time. Or we budget to eat out. A lot. Typically this also includes gaining at least 10 lbs over the course a week!
3. Fun things to do. It wouldn’t be a vaction if there wasn’t FUN! Swimming everday, playing games, campfires, canoeing, but mostly just spending time all together as a family.
4. Away from the “house”. Yes. Currently this means leaving the Airstream. I realize most people vacation IN their travel trailers, but for us it would be NOT in the trailer. Our most recent vacation to Camp Noyo we were in a tent for a week. We are also scheming possibly a cruise, and we’ve even talked about renting a house on Air BnB or something simliar just to change things up.
5. Four to seven days long. Vacations don’t last forever. We do get itchy to get back to our normal schedule, but at the same time it also takes time to RELAX. The first evening we were at Camp Noyo we put the kids to bed and just stared at each other. “What on Earth are we going to do for 7 days?” We wondered. Two days later I was thinking that I could probably stay here forever. 3 days after that I was ready to get back to our normal routines. Four to seven days is time enough to relax, but not too long that we go crazy.
I don’t foresee us “vacationing” very often. Like most people, we do have to work to pay the bills, but unlike most people we don’t get paid vacation. Sam has a pretty good system for planning in vacation or free time into his work schedule, but it does take some sacrifice on my part and extra work days on others for him. Despite the extra effort to earn our vacation, we still need it. It feels so good to just let go and relax for a short period of time.