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This Week on Instagram Video

This Week on Instagram: July 9-15 2014 & Wandering Update: Patrick’s Point

This Week on Instagram August 9-15, 2014 “Mom. Do you want me to take photos? Lots of them?” Cara asked.

“Yes, Cara. As many as you want!” I answered.

“Okay. And then after I can show them all to you. Except they are invisible.”

This week we haven’t moved much and moved a lot all at the same time! We’ve stayed near Trinidad, CA for most of the week (Eureka, CA last Saturday)  and split our time between the beautiful coast at Patrick’s Point State Park and Trinidad Head, and the Redwood National and State Parks. Two completely different landscapes and both stunningly beautiful. We have a few more days near the coast and redwoods before heading inland again for a bit! Our highlight this morning was agate and tide pool hunting on the beach. Check out our most recent Wandering Update:

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Hiking National Parks Nevada Outdoor Adventures Video

Skiing a Glacier in Great Basin National Park – Nevada

We had plans to stay at a lake between Bryce Canyon & Cedar Breaks that fell through due to lack of Verizon signal, so with a couple of extra days before we needed to be back to Salt Lake for a photography workshop we decided to detour to Great Basin National Park. This had been on our list, but we had thought there wouldn’t be time. Good thing we are nothing but flexible.

When We Visited: July 2014
Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 4
Tips: Fill up on gas & groceries before heading out. This park is in the middle of nowhere on the border of Utah/Nevada and gas is expensive and groceries are hard to find. Local residents of the surrounding little towns drive an hour to two hours to go grocery shopping (crazy!).

When deciding what to do while we were in the park, I really wanted to go hiking. REAL hiking. The kind where you actually sweat and the next day you are sore and tired but you feel awesome because you showed that trail who was boss. Finding a glacier at the top of the mountain we calculated out the distance for a round trip and came up with just close to 5 miles. Next we just had to pitch it to the kids.

“Seriously mom? There’s SNOW up there?” Andrew asked skeptically.
“Yup. All the time. It never really melts,” I answered. “A glacier is a slow moving pile of snow & ice that carves its way down the mountain. You want to go see it? It’ll be the longest hike we’ve ever done.”
“Yes!!” All three kids answered at the same time.

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It was magical. The hike was great, but watching my kids scramble all over this snow in July was exhilerating. Andrew took off by himself, while Cara and Rachel stuck a little closer to Sam & I. Sam managed to step his way up the hill in a way that Cara and I could follow pretty easily in his footsteps. We threw snowballs, the kids slid down on their backsides, and we generally had a good time goofing off. THEN Sam started skiing down the glacier on his feet. Immediately all the kids wanted in on the action and one by one, we helped them know where to put their feet and we slip-slid down the snow together.

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There are a lot of great things about Great Basin National Park. The campground was clean and nice, Lehman Caves were very interesting (we learned about shield formations), the Bristlecone Pines were majestic, the kids earned a Jr. Ranger Badge, we went on an evening hike, and we even had ice cream in their on site cafe. We had a great weekend, but I think all of us will remember Great Basin National Park as the place where we went skiing in July.

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Musings of Sam

Perfect can be the Enemy of Good

Our planning during our stay in Eureka and our travel north was pretty bad. We had trouble getting reservations at the spot we wanted in Trinidad, and ended up spending two nights at Johnny’s Marina in Eureka. It was a good spot for errands, and the folks were nice.

I wasn’t very bothered by it until we drove up to Clam Beach on Saturday Afternoon for a bike ride and some beach time. As we pulled in, we discovered that there were plenty of RV spots in the small campground right at the beach. We hadn’t tried to stay at the beach for fear of getting a spot, and just drove up for an afternoon and evening.

Realizing suddenly that we could have done things very differently. I got a little grumpy. We could have been staying right there at the beach! No half-hour drives back afterward, and much more of our time could have been spent at the beach. It ended up being warmer than we had expected, and we could have easily changed our clothes, if we had brought the Airstream!

I had a genuine Pink Kink in my Think.

During our bike ride, I got over it. (Jess had been expecting I would, and was glad when I quit complaining.) I came around to realize that our situation was far from dismal. Rather than spending time bemoaning a slightly less than perfect situation, I should just relax and enjoy the bike ride. And the blackberries that grew alongside the bike trail. And frisbee on the beach. And I did. I got over it, and we had a great evening.

The pursuit of perfect was ruining a perfectly good day. We try and avoid locking our schedule down too tight, which allows us to change it for the better when opportunity allows and something strikes our fancy. On the flip side, some days are not ideal. I need to accept the bad with the good, knowing that we are living an amazing adventure.

On the way out of the beach, I caught a glimpse of the campground. It had filled a bit, with some colorful characters that I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with my kids around. I really didn’t mind our drive home, and I’ve resolved to handle my next ‘Good’ situation with more grace and less complaining.

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Louisiana

You Must Eat Beignets in New Orleans – Louisiana

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Its cliche. I know. Everyone says the one thing you have to do in New Orleans, LA is eat beignets. So we did and it was soooo worth it!

When We Visited: November 2013

Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 3

Where We Stayed: New Orleans KOA

New Orleans is not the most kid friendly city – or so everyone told us. Having been there before on a photography retreat with other adults I knew there were places we definitely did not want to take our kids (Bourbon Street), but there’s also plenty of beauty and culture for kids to enjoy as well.

Our stay was a quick one. We had plans to be in Texas by Christmas and time was running short. The KOA was pleasant, the staff was nice, and we were close enough to downtown. Sam worked while I took the kids into the Children’s Museum (which was excellent). That evening we spent downtown all together and our first stop was Cafe Du Monde in the French Market for their famous beignets.

Cara fell asleep on the drive there and it was a bit difficult to wake her up. Unfortunately, once she was awake the beignets didn’t really appeal to her so she mostly ate powdered sugar by the spoonful.

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As a coffee shop, all Cafe Du Monde serves is coffee, hot chocolate, and beignets. Pretty simple menu. You just have to decide how many you want. We ended up with 6 orders and a couple of hot chocolates to share.

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While there are plenty of other things to also do in the French Quarter, this was probably our favorite! These beignets are definitely worth the hype and the price tag so make sure to stop in!

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Finances & Money

How Much Does It Cost to Live in an Airstream – July Summary

How Much Does It Cost to Live in an Airstream July SummaryWe are back to monthly summaries!! These are probably entirely for my benefit as I feel it provides some accounting for us month to month, but I figured we could share in the interest of anyone else that might be crazy enough to feel the information is useful.

We have officially had our first “full time” (no mortgage) on the road financial month. I feel like it was a good representation of what we expect this life to be like, and fairly similar to our last round of summaries that you can find here. We did eat at a few favorite restaurants and I was surprised at our dining out bill – but since I know we stayed within our overall budget we spent less on other things to balance it out.

I’ll detail a post later on about how I budget in general (because that’s not really Airstream life specific) but just know that these are not ALL of our expenses. Not even close. These are just the ones that are fairly Airstream specific. We still have health insurance, life insurance, entertainment expenses, loans on the Airstream and truck, HSA contributions, children’s savings… You get the idea.

But aside from all that, most people want to know what it’ll cost in the Airstream. The biggest differences for us are the camping fees, higher gas spending, higher groceries, laundry, and occasionally the higher eating out (only because we never really ate out before).

Here are the numbers. I thought the spreadsheet worked well so I’ll keep that but start over on our monthly average totals:

Spreadsheet for July 2014 copy