Category: Daily Life

Categories
Holidays & Bdays National Parks Utah

Cara’s Dinosaur Birthday Party IN Dinosaur National Monument

Dear Cara,

You bring adventure and light to our lives! You have a creative, silly personality and always find a way to make us laugh. At the same time it can also be completely frustrating, but that’s just part of growing up!

We are finally past potty-training (hallelujah), and are now working on your reading skills. Unfortunately for my patience, you just take things at your own speed. Before you are ready, there’s just no arguing with you. I hope you can take that same stubbornness and determination and apply it appropriate throughout your life!

You love to play with your brother and sister, whether its your “stuffed animal game”, Lego’s, MineCraft, or just outside exploring and making up your own games. Although you are the youngest, you seem always ready to try new things and don’t have much trouble keeping up. You are a fantastic hiker – having completed 3, 10 mile + hikes in the last year. You are also amazing on your bike, can run fast, and throw a ball like I’ve never seen in a 5 year old. We are so proud of you and can’t wait to see all the new things you’ll learn this year as we travel.

I love your snuggles in the morning and hope you never grow to old for those! We love you Cara and are grateful you are in our family!

Love,

Mom & Dad

Dinosaur National Monument_10

I’m not sure why it took us so long to settle on a dinosaur theme for Cara’s birthday since we knew we’d be IN Dinosaur National Monument. It only seemed natural once we made the decision. We had a lot of fun! Because my parents were meeting us there, I had my mom shop at the party store near her house to stock up party supplies and she did a great job.

Cara wanted pletta (Swedish pancakes) for breakfast, and while daddy cooked she opened up here presents. Rachel & Andrew got her a new PlayDoh set, we got her a book, Grandma & Grandpa Madsen brought her a fun dinosaur activity set, and Grandma & Grandpa Curren provided the funds for 4 months of Netflix! Wahoo!

After breakfast we drove to nearby Vernal, UT and visited the Dinosaur Museum. While it was on the small side, the kids seemed to enjoy the hour we spent there. Plus, we went out for lunch afterwards so there was that to look forward to as well!

Dinosaur National Monument_16

We spent the afternoon hanging out at our campsite, and Sam and I gave her our present: a new bike! I’ll have a full post up later this week about her new Woombike, but let’s just say that it is amazing. We couldn’t be happier with this bike, and she is already riding like champ!

IMG_4011

We finished off the day with “Mom’s Famous Nachos” for dinner, watching Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and eating cupcakes! It was a fantastic day, and just proves to me over and over again how easy it is to celebrate birthdays and holidays while on the road!

Dinosaur National Monument_18

Categories
Daily Life

Using Campendium to Find Awesome Campsites & $50 Weekly Giveaway

campendium_ad

We get a lot of questions about how to find our awesome campsites – whether they are boondocking, dry camping, National Forest or even just plain old RV Parks. Last year, our answer would have been varied as we had a lot of different tools we use. Since our official launch from the house last June, however, there’s really only one place we turn to to figure out where to stay: Campendium.

Campendium 1

Campendium is the brain child of Brian & Leigh of Aluminarium whom we met for the first time in 2014 near Tucson, and then again in the Indian Bread Rocks in 2015 near Fort Bowie. Super awesome, welcoming, and helpful with just about any questions you might have, Brian & Leah are an amazing couple.

IMG_2988-Edit

Why do we love Campendium so much? Let me give you a list:

1. Comprehensive collection of ALL types of campsites. From RV Parks, National Parks, National Forest, BLM land, Casinos, and WalMart parking lots, Campendium lists them ALL. No more going back and forth from freecampsites.net to reserveamerica to instagram to figure out what’s available in a certain area. We just type in a city, national park, or even a specific campground name and we get results.

Although we LOVE to boondock, we also don’t love it 100% of the time. We like to vary where we stay, so having all the options in one place is really great.
Campendium 2

2. User Campground Reviews. Find out what real people think of  a campground. The user base (so far) is awesome. Great, honest reviews for campgrounds all over the country. Most reviews I’ve found to be a mix of the actual campground itself (location, site quality, noise level, ease of access) and things to do in the area.

3. Cell Phone Signal Reviews. This is HUGE for full timers like us. We can’t stay in places that don’t get Verizon signal because Sam has to work. Going off grid on “vacation” is something we do sparingly so knowing beforehand if we will have signal is a big deal for us. Often we won’t go to a particular campground if we can’t get signal but will find another site nearby  instead. There’s a super easy graph that indicates how good the signal is and what type.

4. Blog Posts. There are many full time travel bloggers that post comprehensive campground reviews on their blogs (I am not one of those- obviously). This is great as there is also a tab where user can submit their own blog posts and they’ll show up in a nice little list. When I want to find out more info on a campground, I’ll often turn to these.

5. Photos. Leigh and Brian (in particular) spend HOURS in an area taking photos of campgrounds. I love it when they visit an area because suddenly Campedium is flooded with campground photos. Anyone can submit pictures, however, and its always great to see what a campsite will look like before showing up!

Campedium2

Campendium is definitely in its infant stages, but more users are joining by the day and I love seeing all the reviews and great places to camp! They have a list a mile long of improvements, ideas, and places to take this resource and I can’t wait to see how much better it gets over the next year or two!

$50 Weekly Giveaway-

For the next 9 weeks, Campendium is doing a weekly $50 giveaway! All you have to do to enter is submit one campsite review. Easy peasy! One review = one entry so get going! Check out their blog post on it here, and then head to Campendium.com to sign up for a FREE account and get going!

 

Categories
Daily Life

We Bought Airplane Tickets for This Fall!!

KLM Bluey 02

In a huge leap of faith, we bought airplane tickets from Chicago to Salt Lake City for this fall. While we didn’t originally plan to exactly go to Chicago, Southwest Airlines was having a sale so Chicago it is!

We knew that we needed to be in Sandy for Andrew’s baptism on Sept. 5th and rather than drive from the Great Lakes region back to Utah and then spend MORE time out west, we decided to just fly. Plus, we’re calling the tickets birthday presents for all the kids (we fly out the day after Andrew’s birthday and fly back the day after Rachel’s) so that’s a double-win. The kids are ridiculously excited!

In almost serendipitous timing, I received an email from the marketing team for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines regarding their super cute animated series about a small plane named Bluey and his adventures. The series launched last November and has been super popular with young travelers.

Cara and I laid in bed one morning and watched the short film and her response was, “Let’s watch it again!” Obviously a hit. Check it out:

We also watched their YouTube video “Auto Pilot in Action” which shows a pilot flying from Amsterdam to London and the various controls and autopilot settings he uses. We found it rather fascinating and a perfect segway into talking about pilots and flying. I’m sure we’ll do more research and call it a “unit study” as we get closer to flying ourselves!

KLM also has a great list of tips for traveling with children on their airlines (I’m sure we’ll be looking up MANY tips for our non-stop flight before we leave) which you can check out here.

In the meantime, we can’t wait for our flight and the next Bluey adventure!

Categories
Daily Life

The Good and Bad of Spring Break

Jr. Ranger Class at the Grand Canyon

Spring break is a wonderful time for family adventure. I’ve watched the past few weeks as friends have taken trips to a variety of destinations. I love seeing their adventures, knowing how much our own adventures have blessed our life.

For full-time travelers, spring break represents the beginning of a complicated process. During the winter months we enjoy the luxury of empty campgrounds, no need for reservations, and an infinitely flexible schedule. Spring break brings forth a flood of ‘normal’ people, making the most of their week off work and school. Campgrounds fill up, venues are busy, and traffic abounds.

This year, we saw both ends of this phenomenon just a few days apart. We visited the Grand Canyon during Spring Break season, and though the visitor count was surely on the light end of the scale it felt busy and crowded. There were at least 15 kids all getting sworn in as Jr. Rangers at the same time! We also visited three other National Monuments in the Flagstaff area. While not as crowded as the Grand Canyon, there were definitely more families out and about.

In a funny twist of events, while walking one trail at Sunset Crater National Monument, we chatted with an elderly Swiss couple that has been in the United States for a few months. They looked at our group of 7 kids (between two families), smiled, and asked “Spring break?” with a slightly confused look on their faces. I nodded and said “Yes” while they responded with, “But spring break was last week in New Mexico!” We then had an entertaining conversation about how “Spring Break” occurs anywhere from March- April and chances are it’ll be Spring Break somewhere during that time and even follow us full time travelers around!

In contrast, just a few days later we visited Navajo National Monument on our way out of Arizona. The park is so far out of the way that there is no admission fee needed. Though we were not the only visitors, most of our time in the visitor’s center, on the trail, or at a viewpoint was spent with just our family.

I’m grateful that we can visit so many beautiful places without navigating the crowds common during peak season. Our visit is more relaxed. I’m able to let the kids roam further and worry less about losing them in a crowd of having them bother other visitors. These quiet times exploring new places is what really seems to bind us together as a family.

Categories
Daily Life

What Does Spring Break Look Like for Full Time Travelers?

SAMSUNG CSCWhen you travel full time, “spring break” or “vacation” can be a bit of an anomaly. Many people might think we are constantly on vacation since we see many National Parks, museums, and state parks – destinations that most people vacation to. For us, though, its just life. We still do school, work, shopping, errands, and small home improvement projects.

Last year we spent a week at Camp Noyo in California, which prompted this post on defining a vacation for full time travelers. Similarly, we are taking a vacation for Spring Break this year in Flagstaff, Arizona with some of our very best friends from Lehi, Utah. They drove down from Utah on Monday and we’ve been hanging out doing the tourist thing all week.

IMG_20150407_114545

“Vacation” means a couple of things to me:
1. Sam isn’t working. He still works early in the mornings when the rest of us are all sleeping, but during the day he comes out exploring with us. Many times I take the kids out by myself, so its been great to have him along!

2. No school. We are taking an official break! Yes, we are still doing Jr. Ranger Badges this week, but everything else is on hold. Its been SO nice to not stress about it. I think I needed this just as much as the kids did!

3. Doing something fun! We’ve visited Walnut Canyon, Wupatki, and Sunset Crater National Monuments, and today we are headed to the Grand Canyon. We’ve played lots of games, relaxed, eaten really great food and generally just enjoyed ourselves! Its a much faster pace than we normally keep (we’ve never done 4 Jr. Ranger Badges in the same week before!), but its also nice to mix things up a bit!

I think we will be ready for “regular life” after this week, but until then we are going to enjoy relaxing and hanging out with our friends!