Tag: full time family

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Michigan State Parks Video

Announcing the CurrentlyWandering Youtube Channel

YouTube ChannelI am pleased to announce yet another place that you can follow along on your adventures: Our YouTube Channel! We blog about our adventures for detail and philosophical ramblings. We post pictures on our Instagram accounts to share places and short form experiences. We’ve been experimenting with video, and we like the way it allows us to remember places with greater detail and emotion. We love watching old videos and remembering the adventures we captured.

When I say ‘experiment’ with video, I really mean it. I have over 60 videos posted on that channel, but we’ve never said much about it on our other channels. Really, this was a way for me to hide a bit as I experimented with different video and editing styles. I’ve tried and swapped equipment, editing software, and both filming and editing styles. This doesn’t mean I have it dialed in: I will warn you that I’m still not particularly good, and I hope to be improving as I continue.

My most recent video is about a wonderful and unexpected day in the Porcupine Mountains on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We had a wonderful day, and I’m happy with how my shooting and editing went. Have a look, and tell me what you think!

My main motivation for capturing video has been mostly as the ‘new’ form of home video. Keeping individual video clips on my phone doesn’t help tell a story. Editing down a video forces me to filter what I captured and attempt to thread it together. I love what we’ve been able to capture, and the benefit it is to us. In the spirit of sharing, my videos are public and you can follow along too, if you like.

I’m slightly behind on editing at the moment, having just begun to edit the video we captured on our Lake Superior Circle Tour. If you subscribe to the channel, you will next see videos about Backpacking in the Apostle Islands and our other adventures as we circle the lake.

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
Arizona Featured Destination National Parks

My Obsession With Cactus Gets Even Stronger – Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

This National Monument is the only place in the United States where you can find Organ Pipe Cactus! Go and see our adventure to know why you should add this place to your bucketlist!

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has been on my “must-see” list since we visited Arizona last year and I developed a slight obsession with all sorts of prickly plants. We didn’t have the time to venture south of Tucson, but we’ve more than made up for it this time around!

When We Visited: February 16-18, 2015
Ages of Kids: 9, 7, 4
Where We Stayed: Twin Peaks Campground. The only thing we didn’t approve of were the strict generator hours! Totally interfered with our hiking & exploring.

Organ Pipe NM_11

The Organ Pipe Cactus is only found in the United States in this park. There is large concentration of them in Mexico (the park is smack dab next to the border), but if you don’t have a passport, this is the only spot to see them! These plants look like giant, upside-down octopus. The largest one we saw was along the Ajo Mountain Drive. It also was a MUTANT cactus, or a CRESTED cactus (it doesn’t get much better than that!). This anomoly occurs when a new arm of the cactus starts, but pushes out with the new growth forming a line instead of a circle. The resulting fan shape also occurs in saguro cactus, though it doesn’t usually grow linearly as this one did.

We are also getting into the flowering/fruit season of the cactus. This Prickly Pear was starting to have fruit although they won’t be ripe until last summer when the monsoons arrive in the desert.

Here’s Sam and Rachel standing next to it for a size comparison:

At the back of the 21-mile loop is the Arch Canyon Trail. Although you can see the arch from the parking lot, the BEST part of the hike is back up in the canyon. Its a little steep and scrambly, but the views are SO worth it. We couldn’t believe how GREEN everything was. The Sonoran Desert really is beautiful. The green creosote is everywhere and gives the area an almost forest- like appearance. Add to that the cool canyon breezes and I was having a serious case of home-sickness for the Utah mountains.

The Agave is also one of my favorite plants even if it isn’t a cactus. I found this one near the top of our hike.
One morning I actually managed to drag myself out of bed to photograph the sunrise. The one thing I wanted (photographically speaking) was a silhouetted Organ Pipe Cactus with a beautiful sky. Sam gets up early to work and sees beautiful sunrises all the time, and when I cracked an eyelid he told me this one would be worth it. It totally was.

This is an Ocotillo – also not a cactus but very cool looking. Native Americans used to use the branches to make roofs, fences and all sorts of useful things. When there’s not enough rain, they’ll shed their leaves and look quite dead and ugly. Luckily, there’s been quite a bit of rain recently and we got to see them fully dressed!

Organ Pipe NM_09We thoroughly enjoyed our stay in this park! Even though it is quite a ways out into the desert, its definitely worth the trek!

Categories
Finances & Money Selling Our Stuff

To Sell, or Not to Sell? What to Do With the House?

To Sell or Not to Sell. What to do with the House
Traveling so far we have run into so many families that have sold everything for their life on the road. Whether out of necessity, or to just downsize and live simply, selling the house and everything in it is one way to fund and maintain a life on the road.

Others we have run into rent out their house or simply leave it empty if they know they will be back. Many families are out for a year or so, quitting their jobs, pulling the kids out of school and living on savings. This makes sense to keep the house since their return is inevitable.

Leaving Utah last July we never imagined we’d end up with an Airstream and want a life on the road. As such, we still have a house in Utah we need to go home and deal with. Our home exchange partners have left, so we have friends keeping an eye on it for now, but we can’t ignore the giant hole that our money is draining down.

The problem is, we love the house. Well, maybe we love the idea of our house. It’s our first one. We brought Cara home from the hospital to that house. We put a lot of love, sweat, and tears into turning it into our home. The idea of selling frankly scares me to death. Our kids are adamantly against it and I don’t really blame them. Prior to traveling, a large portion of their identity revolved around where we lived. We live around the corner from our best friends and it would be really hard to give that up. Plus, I just finished sprucing up my office and I love it. Being in there makes me happy.

Being on the road makes me happier. There’s the problem.

As a culture, why is it we become so attached to things? Even thinking of selling our dining room table that we hunted for, or the downstairs couch I agonized over and went to 5 different stores before picking out the perfect one makes me want to break down in puddle of tears. Why is that? We’ve gone over and over it. Its just stuff. Its replaceable. We never wanted to end up in Utah anyway. But why is it so hard?

So there’s our current dilemma. To sell? Or not to sell. We’ve been told the REAL estate market in Utah is great for sellers this year. If we are going to sell, now is the perfect time. And yet, we are all not sure if we can let go. We hope we’ll know when we get back there. Most of our journey so far as been by faith, and I think this will have to be as well.

Just to get nostalgic – I thought I’d share a few photos of our cute house with you. You know, because in another few months it could be on the market.

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Categories
Mommy Diaries

I Hope the Sunsets Never Get Old

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“Wow!”

I sit up quickly from my relaxed position on the couch. “What is it? Is everything okay?” I say.

“Check out that sunset!” Sam exclaims from across the table. “Its beautiful!”

I watch in amazement as he snatches up his phone, grabs his shoes and is out the door in 5 seconds flat. He’s gone for a few minutes and then comes breathless back in the door. I can tell he had been running pretty hard.

“Did you get it?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” he says as he shows me the sunset over the lake captured brilliantly with his camera phone. “Oh yes.”

How often do you notice the sunset? Everyday? We have spent lots of our life never seeing the sunset. Living in the Airstream gives us a window in our kitchen that faces West and we can watch as the sky lights up orange, red, yellow and then fades to black.

We have been full-time on the road for nearly 2 months now. 2 months of ever-changing scenery, glorious vistas, and stunning sunsets. I hope they never get old. I hope that we can continue to cherish each day. Each new place, each lake, forest trail, and museum will continue to force us out of the mundane routine. That nothing ever becomes “normal”.

This lifestyle is forcing us to live in the moment, and we love it.