Boulder Departure

We returned to Red Beard after a few weeks visiting family. Red Beard has been sitting in Boulder, in front of our friends’ house. Obviously, there were a few bus projects that needed doing, so Jason spent a day replacing windshield wipers,  re-installing our front license plate which Hurricane Odile had removed back in Baja, read more

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Moving along…

Well, we did it again. We killed another perfectly good winter skiing and snowboarding in Colorado. The bus is packed. We’re finally back on the road. Alaska or bust.

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04/01/2015 – 636 days/53888 miles

Well, I’ve made it back to Denver, which means this trip is over! (They could’ve made the sign a little more colorful…) From Joshua Tree, I made a couple stops, in Las Vegas (unfortunately I didn’t win enough money to … Continue reading →

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Fully Resigned

I quit. On paper, it was a good job. In reality, it wasn’t. It had to be done.   It wasn’t a spontaneous decision, of course. There was plenty of hand-wringing and worrying about our future. But, we’ll be fine. As you may have noticed, we haven’t been nearly as prolific with the blogging (or traveling) over […]

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WipeOut 2015

The season is coming to a close up here in WP. That means… WipeOut! WipeOut was really fun. My favorite challenge was probably either the zorb or the pancake eating challenge. In the Zorb, contestants wore giant hamster balls. Two teams competed to try to kick as many small balls to their side as they […]

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C Lot

If you want to park right next to the ski lift and hang like a real ski bum, the The C Lot at Mary Jane* is the place. We camped because… you know. People started showing up at about 6 AM. The lifts don’t start turning until 8:30. The early birds are mostly from the […]

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A Quick Recap… en Français!

I don’t care who you are… it’s always cool to get a random invitation to France.  Sébastien wrote a bit about our little trip for his website and was kind enough to invite us over when we finally make it to Europe. Bien sûr! Brush up on your French here.

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Do the Hustle

We had the bright idea of getting out of town to avoid the crowds during the Spring Break rush. And, we figured we could rent out our condo for a little extra travel cash while we were away. It worked a little too well. With only a few days’ notice, we got a request for an […]

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The Circus

After about the third time that Bode came home and bragged about skiing The Cirque, I decided it was finally time that his old man gave it a whirl. My buddy Scott was up for the weekend and we figured it was as good a time as any. The hike starts at over 12,000 ft (~3700 m) and winds […]

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The Numbers Are In…

With pie charts and everything. And it’s not even close to zero. That Frugal Challenge. Originally, the plan was to exclude all regular bills – basically just a challenge to our ‘optional’ expenses. The idea was to find our “minimum number” – what it really costs us to live a minimalist lifestyle in the U.S.  It also […]

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Sledding Boulder

One day we’re barefoot in the grass and basking in the sunshine. The next day there’s a foot of snow.

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Denver

We were a bit out of practice on the camping. We literally forgot to bring water. Fortunately, the state park had amenities. Later, we made up for our lack of preparation with a $0.99 breakfast and free coffee at the nearby IKEA. IKEA camping hack? Maybe. They have $0.99 hot dogs for lunch too. Just […]

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Failing into Golden

The frugality experiment has been really eye-opening. We’ve been really good about not buying anything non-essential while we are sitting around Winter Park during a snowstorm. But as they do, the bills starting coming in. We hardly drive the bus at all here, but both the bus insurance and registration were due this month, as […]

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Visiteurs

Several weeks ago we had an awesome visit from some familiar BodesWell characters. We first met Simon and M.C. on the road back in Argentina, then proceeded to travel as a VW bus and motorcycle gang to Ushuia and most of the way back up to Buenos Aires. Ah, good times. Seems like a long […]

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Fail: Booze ‘n Candy

I think we’ve found our weakness. Two of them anyway. Our month of no spending was going pretty well until Friday. We had spent a total of zero dollars on anything up to that point. Voluntary hardship that has quickly produced some interesting and unintended results (more on this later.) We had plenty of opportunities […]

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The Frugal Frebruary Challenge

It’s a thing. That’s because we just invented it*. Here’s how it works: in February, you can’t buy any stuff. That’s it. That doesn’t mean you can’t spend money – you’ll have to eat – so buying groceries is acceptable. Paying your electric bill, phone bill or current debts is okay. You just can’t buy […]

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Still Here

We’ve taken a little break from the blog, but we’re still here. Winter Park for the ski season – exactly the same place we were at this time last year. The only recent bus adventures have been to the store and back. I don’t think we’ve bought a tank of gas since November. The free […]

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Colorado is closed. Part 2

Closed campgrounds, closed roads, closed parks, closed mountains, closed shops. Seriously Colorado! What is open? Great Sand Dunes National Park. That’s what. And it was spectacular. Not even closed a little bit. The dunes were huge, the tallest in North America apparently. Colorado does appear to like having ‘the tallest’ and ‘the highest’ of everything. It […]

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Colorado is closed. Part 1.

Having spent far too long faffing about in Utah and Nevada our time in Colorado was short. (That was about the only thing that was short in Colorado—everything else appeared to be of record-breaking height.) After visiting Dinosaur National Monument on the Utah side, we had been considering driving to Echo Park on the Colorado side […]

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Going For 14

Heather In Colorado there are 53 official ’14ers’ (summits over 14,000 ft) below is the story of our first two […]

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