Falling In Love with Journey with Wander Free and Queer

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Experiencing new issues is without doubt one of the causes we had been initially drawn to RV life. We wished to see extra locations, style new meals, hear from completely different communities, odor new vegetation, and really feel completely different climates. Full-time journey promised us a method to get on the market and have some hands-on studying concerning the nature, historical past, and tradition of our nation.

Our Journey Story

Allie had achieved fairly a little bit of journey rising up, visiting locations like Paris, Switzerland, and Tokyo, whereas additionally taking many extra native household holidays in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. I grew up in New England additionally, and have recollections of shorter journey to locations like Cape Cod, Boston, and Sturbridge. Each of us realized early on in our relationship that, regardless that we’ve got achieved completely different sorts of journey, we had been each drawn to journey. We additionally realized we had seen little of the USA compared to what we knew was on the market.

We traveled early on in our relationship collectively and got here to name these smaller journeys our micro-adventures. We’d do day journeys driving up the coastal route in Maine, stopping for espresso, strolling alongside the rocky seashores, and visiting farmer’s markets or having lunch within the small cities scattered alongside Route 1. These had been a few of our greatest days collectively, and shortly we had been taking in a single day journeys to New Hampshire, Northern Maine, and Massachusetts. Any likelihood we might get, we’d get in our automobile and head out.

Earlier than we even celebrated our first anniversary of being collectively, we determined to plan and go on a cross-country street journey. I used to be graduating with my bachelor’s diploma and Allie was planning to depart her job and transition to a different sort of labor.

Going West

We determined to go west. We each wished to get to the Pacific Ocean and see as a lot as doable on the way in which. This journey is without doubt one of the most unimaginable issues we’ve got achieved, and we suggest to everybody we meet to attempt to take off on a floor journey no less than as soon as. We deemed this our macro journey. We had no thought it was solely our first huge journey and what we’d come to grasp and select to do.

We stopped alongside the way in which the primary few days of the journey, however we knew the objective was to achieve some floor and get west. Our first huge layover was in South Dakota. We had heard about The Badlands and knew it will be a great place to get our Nationwide Park cross, try the otherworldly panorama, and hopefully see some bison. We had deliberate a hike for our very first day within the park. About half of a mile into The Notch Path there was a rope ladder to climb. On the prime we each regarded round, amazed on the undulating panorama…after which Allie fell on the flat earth and broke each of her legs.

She will need to have fallen good in her mountain climbing boots, and her ankles buckled and snapped, fracturing the bones in each of them. She refused to go dwelling although. We spent the subsequent a number of weeks in an extended-stay lodge in Fast Metropolis, SD. She religiously adopted the RICE (relaxation, ice, compress, elevate) technique, bought within the pool to drift and transfer her physique, and sat within the passenger seat of our Jeep whereas I drove us by means of The Badlands, Custer State Park, and The Black Hills. Even being unable to maneuver about a lot, Allie wished to see what there was to see, after which she wished to maneuver on.

We made a number of changes on that journey, however we nonetheless noticed greater than we ever thought we’d. We drove our manner by means of Yellowstone Nationwide Park, The Grand Tetons, over The Sawtooth Mountains, and into jap Oregon. We slowed down in Oregon and visited many locations earlier than we even bought to the coast, however we had been compelled to bypass Crater Lake Nationwide Park. There had been a file quantity of snowfall that earlier winter and the roads had been nonetheless closed into July that summer time. I bear in mind crying with disappointment within the bathe of the Tremendous 8 when Allie yelled from the mattress, “Let’s go to the Redwoods as a substitute!” My coronary heart skipped a beat as a result of we had determined earlier within the journey to chop our southern route and bypass California altogether for extra time in Oregon and Washington.

The Redwoods didn’t disappoint. By this time, Allie might take brief walks and we had been nonetheless exploring lots by automobile. After the Redwoods, we drove up Freeway 101 all the way in which to Olympic Nationwide Park the place we fell in love with the entire of the Pacific Northwest. I suppose it might have been there that we determined we’d stay right here sometime, however I know it was there that we determined to pursue RV life.

Hire an RV close to Olympic Nationwide Park right here!

Pursuing RV life

We met one other couple on a hike at Hurricane Ridge who had been spending a 12 months touring in an RV for his or her honeymoon. We listened to their story, went again to our automobile, and performed their podcast episodes all through the subsequent week of our travels. We had been every quietly pondering what it will be love to do what they had been doing.

It was proper earlier than we bought to Glacier Nationwide Park that we turned to one another in a relaxation space on the facet of the freeway and stated, “May we do the RV factor?” We had each been serious about it, but it surely felt too unknown, too scary, too on the market.

We knew nothing about RV’s. We barely knew something about touring collectively (though placing two folks in a jeep every single day for 3 months forces you to get to know your self and one another fairly nicely shortly). We knew we wished extra of what we had been experiencing on this street journey. We knew that there was nonetheless a lot to see and do. We knew we wished much less stuff and extra journey, much less work and extra play, much less regular and extra bizarre in our lives.

By the point we arrived again at our Portland, Maine residence we had watched over 100 hours of YouTube movies on RVs. We had been studying a brand new language about what a Class A versus a Fifth Wheel was. We had been watching folks dump their tanks and hitch their rigs. We had been making lists and dealing additional time to save cash for buying our first dwelling (on wheels) collectively. We spent the subsequent 12 months deciding on what RV we wished and the place we wished to journey in it. We discovered a lot in that point, however may also look again now, over 5 years later, and see how little we truly understood about RV dwelling.

couple sitting in the a bench by the ocean

We’re grateful for our choice to promote our issues, transfer right into a tiny rolling dwelling, and journey the nation. We now have seen the dawn over The Grand Canyon, eaten beignets in downtown New Orleans, and hiked behind a waterfall in Oregon. We bought engaged proper beneath the Alpine customer heart in Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park at sundown, with a herd of Elk bugling ft away. We now have stared up at a Saguaro cactus in Tucson, walked the salt flats of Dying Valley, drank scrumptious espresso in Longview, WA, and visited Farmer’s Markets all throughout the nation.

We now have constructed a enterprise based mostly on being out, loud, and proud as Queer ladies, encouraging others to take to the street, pursue RV dwelling, or simply go exterior for a stroll in nature. Typically, we take into consideration settling down and shopping for land to construct on. We just like the predictability of routine, our small mountain group, and the thought of laying roots, however we additionally say that we’ll all the time have a necessity for journey. We joke that possibly we may have a tiny dwelling with a basis…and an RV parked proper exterior, able to hit the street after we are.