Category: Daily Life

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Holidays & Bdays

Andrew’s 8th Backpacking Birthday on the Apostle Islands, Wisconsin

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Dear Andrew,

I can’t believe you are 8! Time is flying so fast and I love that I get to spend so much time with you. I would hate to miss any of your amazing moments as before we know it you’ll be grown and gone.

Eight years old is a special time in our family. You’ve been studying your Book of Mormon with dad and have made the decision to baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Although it won’t happen quite as soon as you’d like, we are excited to share this even with our family and friends who love and support you when we fly back to Utah.

You have a great attitude about life, and although your sisters frustrate you I love the way you play and try to get along with them. You’ve never been a high – energy child and I love that you are content to just sit and read for hours. You love to learn, try new things and are endlessly curious about how things work.

I can’t wait to start doing Cub Scouts with you as I know you’ll learn so many new things and we’ll have fun as a family supporting you!

We love you very much and are incredibly grateful you are in our family!

love,
Mom (and Dad)

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We had talked a long time ago about how birthday presents this year were plane tickets to fly back to Utah to visit family, but Andrew has been told he could have a pocket knife “when you turn 8” for at least the last year. Sam and I decided it would be great to have him open it while we were out backpacking on the Apostle Islands.

We were super sneaky to both buy the knife and get it into a pack and on to the trip without him even realizing what was going on. While shopping earlier in the week, Rachel also decided she wanted to get him something and found some Disney Villain playing cards and some Hot Tamales that we also packed in. Grandma and Grandpa Madsen sent him a sticker book, and cards from his aunts & uncles. Andrew was completely surprised by all of this which made it even more fun!!

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Since we were backpacking, and it was cold, the kids were actually dressed for breakfast for once. Andrew had requested packet oatmeal for breakfast since I never buy it anymore and was thrilled with his special breakfast.

Much of his birthday was pretty low key – we hiked to our next camp spot on the beach, the kids played cards and mom & dad took a nap.

His “cake” though ended up being pretty epic. I had pre-made some chocolate chip cookie bars and we toasted marshmallows (on sticks he had whittled with his new knife), stuffed them with Hershey’s chocolate bars and then ate them on the cookies. We also snuck in a number 8 candle and manage to stick it into the marshmallow. He was one happy kid, and I’m not sure we’ll ever eat another regular S’more again.

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My favorite part of the day was when Andrew said, “Mom, I really like DOING special things on our birthdays.” Me too, kid. Me too. Although I’m not sure how we are going to top this one next year!

Categories
Daily Life Mommy Diaries

Sometimes We Just Need a Break

SAM_4270-EditFull time travel burnout is real. Our life may look carefree and happy all the time, but behind the scenes there’s hours of planning, stress over work, getting school done, and wondering where on earth we are going to stay that night. I also stress about “seeing all the things” so when there is a lot to do in area, I often get overwhelmed and just want to throw up my hands and give up completely.

We just finished touring Michigan’s Upper peninsula and it was a little stressful. We only know a few other full timers that have come through here recently (compared to Arizona where everyone hangs out in the winter), so knowing which campgrounds were the best and where we could reliably get Verizon signal was a huge guess. There were a few reviews from a local traveler on Campendium, but those didn’t include cell signal as I imagine they were on vacation and it wasn’t as important to them. There was also a lot of people in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore which adds to the stress.

All these factors contribute hugely to the fact that we are in love with Ashland, Wisconsin. We got here early to get a walk up spot at a small, city park campground right on the water.

The weather has been a bit windy, chilly, and rainy which contributes to staying home and getting things done rather than out exploring everyday. It also is a huge relief from the heat and humidity we had last weekend up in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Verizon signal isn’t amazingly fast, but its reliable so Sam is getting ahead on work. There’s enough to do here that the kids and I can get out once a day and not be bored, and we even had time to visit the local library which is one of our favorite things to do. Its the perfect arrangement of awesome.

We’ve also been watching these guys work on building a break wall out in the bay. The kids love looking out our rear windows and seeing these guys work throughout the day. I by “the kids” I mean Sam.

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I think I’ll go make some cookies and maybe we’ll have a movie night, just because we can.

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Daily Life

Downside to Full Time Travel is We Are ALWAYS Planning

Route for Fall

Typical vacation planning goes something like this: you decide where you want to go, plan where you’ll stay, and search the area to see what other activities they are. Once you are planned, you carry out your itinerary, relax, enjoy yourself, and then go home to regular life.

As full time travelers, we are constantly in the planning mode. The first steps look the same – we plan a route, decide where we are going to stay, and search around for activities (science museums, can’t miss restaurants, national parks, etc.). But once we are there, and often even before we get to destination #1, we are looking ahead to the NEXT spot. I feel we are always in “plan” mode right alongside “execution” and “enjoy the plan” mode.

Sometimes its exhausting.

I think this is why we mostly just fly by the seat of our pants and don’t plan very far out. Rarely do we have our schedule detailed more than just a week or a week and a half out. This last week we put together a rough itinerary for the next couple of months,  which was the easy part. The hard part is actually dialing in and figuring out specifics of where we’ll stay and what exactly we want to do. For example, I know that we want to hit Sault St. Marie, but I won’t figure out WHERE and WHAT until possibly the week before we actually get there. This type of planing definitely keeps us on our toes, but it also helps me not plan out an entire itinerary that changes because we decide to move on or stay longer than the original plan.

Rough plan for this leg of our trip is to head over into Wisconsin, then up to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan, and across the top and backpack in the Apostle Islands August 23-25 back in Wisconsin. After that we’ll hit Duluth and the north shore of Lake Superior sometime around the end of August. September will be Canada, Sault St. Marie and then down into Michigan before meeting up with the Urban Airstream Rally in Eaton Rapids on Oct 1-4. After that we just have to catch flights to Salt Lake City out of Chicago on Oct 16th. Sounds easy, right?

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Biking Daily Life Minnesota Mommy Diaries

Strawberry Picking & I Run Our Bikes Into an Overhang

SAM_4070-Edit I honestly knew it would happen sooner or later. I’ve heard horror stories of friends forgetting they had bikes mounted to the top of the car when they pulled into their garage. Since we are frequently carrying all 5 bikes around on the back of our truck, I kind of forget they are there sometimes (check out this post for our configuration). Parking in downtown metro areas can be difficult as often the clearance levels are quite tall enough for us. Those don’t seem to be a problem though as I usually remember because there are signs saying “low clearance”. But what happens when there aren’t any signs?

It was a beautiful day in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We made plans with my sister-in-law to visit a local farm and pick strawberries. The kind where they hand you a box and set you up on a row to pick until you are done. Sounded super fun and the kids were pretty excited. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication on timing and location and we ended up with a spare forty-five minutes.

While we were waiting we checked out the local off-road cycling track at Elm Creek Park Reserve. Since we always have our bikes with us, it was super easy to pull them off ride, load back up and head to meet my sister-in-law. We even had a spare bike for my mom to ride!

Soon enough we were at the farm picking plump, red strawberries off the vines. Not wanting TOO many strawberries (small fridge, remember?) we picked for about forty-five minutes and the kids had a lot of fun.

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As we were driving out, the check out stand was located underneath a pagoda-looking structure. You drive in one end, stop in the middle, they weigh your strawberries, you pay and then drive out.

Turns out its on a hill.

We made it through the entrance, and then promptly crashed the bikes into the overhang on the way out.

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I can still hear the crunch of metal bending awkwardly, and see the bikes hanging off the truck in my rear view mirror. I will probably have nightmares for weeks to come.

Had I been in a less frantic state of mind, getting a photo of the two adult sized bikes barely hanging onto the racks by their wheel straps would have been epic. Turns out, however, I was too busy trying to minimize even more damage and get them down off the racks instead.

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The owner felt terrible, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do. Since one of our cross bars was bent and two of the towers had ripped out of their counterparts, I worked on taking all the bikes and the rack off the truck. At this point I was grateful my sister-in-law was there in her mini-van as we loaded most of the bikes into the back of her vehicle, and the rack pieces into mine. Did I mention Sam wasn’t with us? I called him on the phone and we both kept pretty calm. Mostly I was just mad I couldn’t go ride those trails some more.

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A quick assessment of the damage had dollar signs in my eyeballs, but once I calmed down and we made it to a local bike shop (which the farm owner had called and told them we were coming) it looked like one ruined High Roller Yakima rack, one bent cross bar, and a tacoed rear wheel on the mountain bike.

A quick replacement of the rim and a thorough inspection by the mechanic and the mountain bike was back in business. Somehow the mechanic even managed to straighten out our Yakima cross bar. Super human strength? I think so. Once the bar was straight I was able to put the towers back together and mount the bars completely. How they ripped apart and nothing cracked or broke is a complete mystery to me. We’ll definitely put that in the “tender mercies from the Lord” category and file it away. While they were working on my bike, the kids, grandma, and I camped out in the store and finally ate our lunch. The employees even offered us water bottles. Best bike store ever. If you need a bike shop in Minneapolis, definitely check out Trailhead Cycling and Fitness in Champlin.

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Since the rest of the bikes were with my sister-in-law I had to wait until we got back to her house to check them out. The kids’ bikes were short enough they didn’t really hit anything and looked fine, but the cyclocross had a ripped seat (it hit facing backwards, seat first) and a pretty out of true rear wheel. There was another bike shop about 10 minutes from her house and with a sob story they were able to true it in about 15 minutes only having to replace one spoke.

In the meantime I had a little ice cream therapy.

We ended up having to replace two of our High Roller racks, but were able to find one at about half the new cost on Craiglist and ended up with a Yakima Raptor Aero for the other one. Cara’s Woombike is too small to fit on the High Roller anyway, so it will come in handy in the near future.

All said and done, the experience wasn’t as tragic as I had expected. We ended up only spending about $60 over our insurance deductible and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of filing the paperwork. Should it ever happen again (which it’d better not), it looked like our personal property insurance would have helped covered the replacement costs.

On the bright side, we managed to get everything taken care of to ride the Watermelon Ride in nearby Shoreview which we found out about from a flier in the bike shop. Always need to look for the silver linings, right?

Categories
Daily Life The Airstream

Why Did We Decide on an Airstream Trailer For Full Time Travel?

Thinking about full time RV family travel? Check out our 6 Reasons We Chose to Live Full Time in an Airstream camper with three kids!

We get asked quite frequently why we chose an Airstream to travel in full time. Many people love how they look, their functionality, their definitive “American-ness” but don’t see them as practical for full time families. Originally, our plan was to buy a Class C RV (the ones that look like a truck cab with a bed over the cab) and travel 4-6 months at a time. Once we were introduced to Airstream trailers and started playing around with the idea of full time travel, we decided we really wanted one and just needed to figure out how to make it work. So far, so good.

There are quite a few reasons we chose an Airstream over an SOB (Some Other Brand) and I’ll give you our top 6:

1. Airstream Trailers Hold their Value. We bought our used 2008 27FB International for a fraction of the cost of a new one ($95,000). With all the upgrades we’ve done included solar, battery box, inverter, antennas,  bed conversion, etc. we think we’ll be able to get most, if not all, of our money back out of it. Not bad for living quarters for a few years.

2. Airstream Trailers Are Built Well. On our first mini-van road trip, we visited the Airstream factory in Jackson Center, OH and saw how these trailers are built. While many RV’s use copious amounts of particle board, Airstreams have none. The shell is assembled first, sent through a water spray to test for leaks, and then all the insides are assembled. These also means everything inside the Airstream can fit through the door, which makes remodeling much, much easier.

3. Airstream Trailers Are Modern Without Feeling Like a Badly Decorated Hotel Room. I don’t know how else to describe this one. Most of the RV’s we toured (and we did look at quite a few) felt like badly decorated hotel rooms, or even too close to a house (island in the kitchen, large pantry, huge leather sofa, etc). We wanted different. We wanted a space ship for Earth, not an almost-house. Many people are surprised with how modern and sleek the interior of our Airstream is. We love it.

4. The Airstream Community is Phenomenal. This is a huge one for us. We started playing with the idea of going full time and watched families like @Malimish_Airstream, @Worksology, and @TinFoilHouse on Instagram. We loved how they interacted and supported one another and just wanted to be part of that community. Since we’ve been on the road, we haven’t been disappointed. It seems that having an Airstream is a perfectly acceptable reason to knock on another’s door and just say “hi”.

5. Airstream Trailers Are Small. One of my favorite comments has been, “But there’s not as much storage in an Airstream!” Our answer is, “Yes! Isn’t it great?” Because of the curves, there’s not as much storage up in those corners and I’m totally happy with that. Less stuff = less clutter = less to worry about. We don’t want more room for “stuff”, our goal was to have less.

We are also under 10 feet tall, and about 8.5 feet wide, which is great for parking under trees or in small campgrounds. There’s many places we’ve been able to fit and stay that many of our larger RV friends can’t. I love being IN the national or state parks, not at an RV park nearby because that’s the only place we could fit.

6. Airstream Trailers Tow Really Easily & Get Decent Gas Mileage. Airstream purposely designed their trailers to tow easily, and they really do. I have no problem driving, and most of the time I feel like I’m driving just the truck – not also hauling an 8,000 lb trailer. They are aerodynamic which helps with wind and also improves gas mileage.

While an Airstream is definitely not for everyone, we have really enjoyed traveling full time in ours and don’t regret our decision!

Why Did We Choose an Airstream For Full Time Family Travel