July 2018 – "Purposefully Unrushed"

White Flag Breakfast

In case you don’t recognize the look, this is a breakfast of defeat. This is the look after a night of no sleep because the tent was covered in mosquitoes, at least a hundred of which found their way inside to buzz and bite all night. This is the look of ‘…coffee…’ after a frantic pack up trying to avoid as many of the thousands as possible, unsuccessfully. This is the look of ‘get in the damn car and drive as fast as you can!’ while peeling out of the campsite. And while all that is pretty bad, this is also the look of ‘suck it, Jarod, we still haven’t gotten a hotel room.’ 😎

Today is going to be a day full of angry responses to the simplest questions immediately followed by ‘sorry, I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at the mosquitoes.’ Twice before noon, so far! 😭

Ultimate Campsite Scout: Google Earth

We prefer to camp in the middle of nowhere, so we try to avoid official campgrounds. Almost all our camping has been in places we don’t know and haven’t previously visited. It can be surprisingly tricky to find the middle of nowhere in a place you’ve never been! Here’s how we go about it: we find an area of publicly-owned land near where we want to be on google maps and zoom in. Continue reading “Ultimate Campsite Scout: Google Earth”

Uhh, you must not be from here? – Snowball

Guest post!!!! Snowball (T & J’s trusty Land Cruiser) has a valley girl accent, so you gotta bear with her while she relates our second campsite:

Oh. My. God. We drove for like 4 hours. On a highway. I was pretty much SO bored. I was all like ‘can we go over there already???’ And then, LOL, we did. The trail was, like WAY too easy, but still curvy. Like that one episode of the OC, when Tim was all over Angel, but she was only into Steve, it was pretty mellow, but still a little hard to follow, you know? Anyway, here’s a selfie.

Continue reading “Uhh, you must not be from here? – Snowball”

Packing Methods, Trial & Error + Smell Mitigation – Jess

I am a neat freak. I want everything clean and in its place. Furthermore, I have the nose of a bloodhound, so I can’t deal with a patina consisting of food, toothpaste, and dirty clothes. Step one to resolving this: the best boxes in the world! A few different companies make “Weather Tight” boxes. They have serious locks and the covers are lined with foam so smells don’t come out and pests don’t come in. For those of you who saw our house reno, you may recall these were used in our “kitchen” on the back porch. Continue reading “Packing Methods, Trial & Error + Smell Mitigation – Jess”

Planning & Building Out the Back – Tony & Jess

While our general concept was relatively the same, we had very different approaches when it came to designing the back of the truck. Jess wanted to do a “trial pack”: pack up what we intended to bring, put it all in the truck, and then determine a buildout that could accommodate everything. Tony was more of the opinion of optimizing storage methods and figuring out the what-goes-where later. Unsurprisingly, we ended up in the middle. Continue reading “Planning & Building Out the Back – Tony & Jess”