Our Volksvegan Adventure

The Temple at Burning Man 2009

Wow. That’s really the only word that can accurately describe our first Burning Man experience. We’d been hearing about the crazy event in the temporary “Black Rock City” in the Nevada desert for years, and this year, we decided to check it out with a bunch of our good friends. What an amazing experience it was, and quite the adventure!

We decided to take the volksvegan to Burning Man, and she weathered the dust storms, heat, and the long trek quite well. However, no journey in an old VW is without its technical difficulties! On the way there, it was getting dark and we had just turned the headlights on. Suddenly we heard a crackling noise and putrid smoke started pouring out of the dashboard! We radioed to our friends ahead of us in the caravan as we pulled over and rolled down windows. Sen spent at least an hour fixing and jerry-rigging the headlight wiring, which he had just fixed a few weeks before. An entire wire in the front burned, but he managed to hotwire the headlights and get us back on the road.

We made several stops and our caravan of seven people in three cars got a late start, so we drove through the night and watched the sun rise as we got stuck in the long line leading into Black Rock City, about 2 hours northeast of Reno. Burning Man is held on a dry lakebed in the desert called the playa, which is devoid of all life and covered in a fine, silty dust. We excitedly waited in line for hours as the sun came up. At some point we decided to stop idling the van and turned it off, put it in neutral, and pushed it as the line slowly inched forward. It was quite the workout, but it was the green thing to do, so push we did!

Once we found our camp and got settled, we walked out to the man statue at the center of the playa. It was a beautiful sight – a huge man surrounded by organic flame shapes made out of wood. Later that day, we endured quite the hazing as a brutal dust storm blew through, with high winds and dust so thick we couldn’t see (goggles and dust masks are a must on the playa). Luckily, it cooled down enough during the storm to allow us to take a nap. That first day we found it pretty difficult to adjust to the harsh playa atmosphere, but we were lucky enough to camp in Martian camp with many experienced and very fun people that made our transition easier.

Over the next week, we got very little sleep but had the time of our lives! There is so much to do and see at Burning Man, there is no way we could have seen it all in a week. There are huge interactive art projects and sculptures, “mutant vehicles” pumping music to ride around on, classes and workshops, talks, activities, games like mini-golf and tetris on a giant screen, light shows, live music, dance parties, bars and clubs, performances, alternative energy in action, and countless other amazing ways to keep busy. The best part is that once we were inside, everything was free (except ice and coffee, the only things sold at the event). Free drinks, free fun, free expression and freedom in general!

The photo above shows my favorite art installation, the temple. It varies every year and serves as a memorial and sacred space. Like the man, it is a temporary masterpiece, and at the end of the week it goes up in flames, taking with it anything you want to burn and purge. We were simply blown away by the outpourings of creativity we witnessed at Burning Man.

While on the playa, we dressed up in costumes (Seneca even paired a pirate hat with a tutu and stripey socks), played in a giant drum circle (where Sen got to play a hang drum), went to a yoga class and a henna painting party, hooped and made new hula hoops, made new friends, took turns feeding our entire camp, saw live music from Beats Antique, BassNectar and many others, danced our butts off, stayed up all night to watch the sunrise (twice), biked around checking out art, played mini-golf, went to a talk on 2012, and of course, watched the man and the temple burn in extravagant pyrotechnic displays. It was a life-changing and eye-opening event, but it definitely took a lot of stamina just to endure the harsh climate and conditions out there. We had to really want to have a great time and make the best of whatever nature threw our way (which was mostly heat, insane winds, and loads of dust).

The only bad part of the entire week was that my camera did not cooperate, and I now have only a tiny handful of pictures of our experience. Sometime in the middle of the week, after I’d taken a few hundred amazing pictures, suddenly my memory card was empty and they were all deleted. Later in the week it happened again twice, deleting hundreds of pictures with no warning. Not cool! Then the screen broke, and I could no longer see what I was taking a picture of. I switched memory cards and managed to get a few crooked, blurry pictures of the last day and a half of the trip. Sad!

Perhaps the camera was just another lesson learned at Burning Man… you can’t get too wrapped up in technology or capturing memories, you just have to live fully and let go to enjoy the moment. I’m sad to lose the hundreds of beautiful photos I took, but it makes me even more determined to go back next year and prepare for the worst!

We’re finally done with our mountains of laundry and in the process of unpacking and cleaning everything. The bus is so dusty, it’s going to take days to clean it out from top to bottom! Everything we own (including us) was covered in a layer of dust, and I still don’t think I’ve gotten the playa completely out of my hair! But it was all worth it for one of the craziest parties we’ve ever been to. What an amazing journey!

Next up is Earthdance, in nearby Laytonville, September 25-27. The bus makes a perfect hangout for our favorite local event. Now, if we could just get it clean enough for the next trip!

The first camping trip of the summer was amazing! The volksvegan made the trip beautifully – though I am really glad Sen was driving, because the little one-lane dirt road from Highway 1 to Usal campground is insane! It was a steep eroded road with huge ruts, tight switchbacks and loose gravel, and was really close to the edge of the cliff at some points. But boy was it an amazing view from the edge!

We packed up the volksvegan and followed our friends Pal & Ottie out to Usal. It takes about two hours from home, though it’s only about 60 miles or so. The volksvegan carried us up up up and then across a ridge along a steep cliff, then down down down into a big valley, overlooking Usal beach as we descended. When we got there, we easily found the campsite where our friends Mike & Kelsie and Rick & Paula were already set up. It was a fairly secluded site with lots of room for all 8 of us. We set up the pop-top quickly and then figured out how to put up the canopy that attaches to the side of the bus (it has been a while) before hopping on the bikes and heading to the beach. When we were almost at the beach, we stopped dead in our tracks: just ahead of us, near the side of the road, was a herd of HUGE elk. And we forgot the dog leashes at camp. So we headed back, got the leashes, and sped back to the beach in time to see watch the elk and check out the area. Apparently the elk that live there are one of the largest subspecies of elk in the world. They had huge fuzzy antlers and seemed totally oblivious to us. Good thing the pooches were leashed up so they couldn’t scare them away! Unfortunately my camera was acting up when we first got there and I didn’t get very good elk shots. 

We hung out with our closest friends all weekend, met the “neighbors” and brought them some midnight munchies (lots of fruit). We went for a hike up the ridge to an overlook where we could see the whole beach and had a close view of an osprey nest just above us on a dead tree. We also took another hike to a really crazy grove of redwoods. I have never seen redwoods like this before! They were gnarly, with huge trunks and branches that twisted and turned in all directions. The whole hillside was covered with them in one area, it made me wonder what made them grow that way. We spent a lot of time with one tree in particular (check out the picture at the top of this post), which looked like an octopus with tons of branches coming off a huge trunk. It was definitely a magical place!

We got to watch sunsets at the beach, cook big meals outside, and got lots of exercise biking and hiking around all weekend. We headed home after visiting the gnarly redwood grove one more time. The forest was teeming with life and lush. Juneau and Niko had such a blast running around, hiking with us, and playing on the beach. The Lost Coast is definitely a special place, we’d love to return soon and do the backpacking trip from Usal to Shelter Cove. It hardly felt like camping with our little home away from home – both pooches fit nicely in the bus with us and we were quite comfy!

It was a beautiful mini-vacation! You can see all the photos of the trip on flickr.

Next up for the volksvegan: Seneca and Pal will be heading to Hopland’s Solar Living Institute in the van in a little over a week, where they will learn how to make bio-diesel, create a processor, and learn how to run a bio-business. Hopefully they’ll learn enough to start producing fuel for ourselves and gradually build a client base from there. It’s exciting that we’re finally moving forward with a business and becoming a bigger part of the biofuel revolution! Stay tuned for notes from the course.

Well, it certainly has been a while. We’ve been keeping very busy with our new organic garden (the volksvegan has been quite handy in hauling straw for mulch and bags of soil and amendments) and have been doing lots of traveling in Loretta the Jetta lately. Summer is finally just around the corner, so we’ll be celebrating the summer solstice by taking the volksvegan out for our first camping trip of the year. I just got ‘er all vaccuumed out today (boy, there was a lot of straw in there) and we’ll be doing a check up, finishing the spring cleaning, filling up the propane and water tanks, and packing her up for our trip.

We’re taking the volksvegan just a bit over an hour north on Highway One to the Lost Coast. The lost coast is named as such because Highway One turns inland and connects with the 101, leaving a long stretch of coastline in Mendocino and Humboldt counties free of highways and major roads. It’s also blanketed in fog a lot of the time, and disappearing into the mist can tend to make a place “lost.” We’ll be staying at Usal campground with some friends for hopefully 4 or 5 days. We have never been to the lost coast, and have heard great things about Usal, so we’re pretty excited! There will be plenty of hula hooping and yoga on the beach, playing music around the fire, hiking along the coast and in the redwoods, and much needed relaxation!

It’s been a busy spring and we’ve been working, gardening, and especially traveling a lot (though never together, since one of us has to stick around with the dogs and water the garden), so we’re ready for a much-needed break together. We’ll be taking Juneau and our new dog, Niko, who is a two-year-old rotweiller we recently adopted. Usal campground is right on the beach, 5 or 6 miles from the highway down a windy dirt road. It should be the perfect place to set up our little home away from home and relax for a few days! I will of course be taking lots of pictures!

In biofuel news, we have decided for now to use biodiesel in the volksvegans rather than wvo. Seneca and our friend Pal are taking courses from the Solar Living Institute in Hopland next month on how to make biodiesel, build a processor, and start a biodiesel business. Hopefully from then on out we’ll be making our own fuel from the waste veggie oil rather than running on the oil itself. Biodiesel is a bit of an involved process, but is much more refined and reliable than straight veggie oil. Though it is not yet regulated like gasoline and diesel, biodiesel has been used for thousands of miles successfully and is often commercially available blended with diesel (we found quite a bit of B20 and even up to B99 on our volksvegan adventure). Any diesel engine can run on it without modification, though in older engines eventually the rubber seals will need to be replaced (which we’ve already done in the van). There are several businesses in California and Oregon that make and sell it, but the closest one – Yokayo Biofuels – is Ukiah, which is over an hour away. So we figured the coast needed a biodiesel business, and we’ll be our own best customers! Sen and Pal will be working on starting the business (small steps at first) over the next few months, so stay tuned!

Other than greening our transportation, we’ve also been working on making our diet more sustainable by working on our own little piece of eden. We moved into a new place in January that is simply perfect for us: situated on about 5 acres of redwoods with a huge fenced organic garden and plenty of space, we truly feel at home. We have been busy turning the overgrown and neglected garden space into a thriving eden bursting with food. We put up a hoop house, tilled and dug beds, started a compost pile, and planted seeds. It’s been a lot of work (there were, and still are, SO many weeds!) but we’re starting to reap the benefits in the form of strawberries, asparagus, greens, and broccoli. Several perennials were already in the garden (blueberries, raspberries, asparagus, strawberries, and herbs) and we’ve planted nearly all the available space with as many veggies as we can fit, as well as some more unusual plants like quinoa, amaranth, artichokes, and even a goji berry bush! It’s a constant work in progress, but we hope to feed ourselves, our friends, and maybe have enough left over to sell at the farmer’s market or the co-op. So far we’ve had more salad than we know what to do with, and we’ve already noticed a big decrease in the grocery bills. There’s nothing better than fresh-picked organic produce! I’ve started writing about gardening regularly on EatDrinkBetter.com. You can see an archive of my articles here.

We plan to take the volksvegan on several more trips this summer, hopefully to a few local festivals like Earthdance in September, and our big trip this year will be to Burning Man! We’ve never been to this annual festival in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, but we’re definitely looking forward to finding out what it’s all about. There will be lots of art, so I’m sure I’ll love it. The volksvegan will make a perfect retreat from the heat and the dust storms. So, stay tuned for pictures from our first camping trip of the summer, gettin’ greasy with a biodiesel business, and many more adventures to come!

Long time no update! Where do we begin? The volksvegan recently had some major work done on her (again!) after we broke down in Grant’s Pass, Oregon on our way up to the barter faire in October. Luckily, we found a shop there to work on her while we rented a minivan for the faire. It wasn’t quite the same without our beloved van, but we still had a great time and sold lots of t-shirts, soaps, and jewelry at our booth. Seneca put in new glow plugs and clutch parts recently, so she’s running like a champ once again. We also had the injector pump rebuilt with synthetic seals so that biodiesel won’t be able to cause any more problems or clog the injection system.

After putting so much time and money into the volksvegan, we aren’t sure if we want to continue running such an experimental fuel. So for the time being, we’re sticking to biodiesel rather than wvo. It’s sad that this technology hasn’t been perfected enough to make it viable yet, but the engine is just too finicky (and expensive) to make it worth it for us to continue using grease. We’re now looking into ordering biodiesel from a local collective, and eventually making our own biodiesel from waste veggie oil!

And now for the big news: we are the proud new owners of another Volkswagen! We recently got a 2009 Jetta TDI named Loretta the Jetta! We had been looking for something to replace our little Ford Escort that had been racking up miles, and wanted another car that could run on biodiesel that was more efficient for short trips and everyday driving. After doing some research, we found that the most efficient diesel vehicle on the market was the VW Jetta TDI. Unfortunately, they are very difficult to find and waiting lists are common (I guess that’s a sign that they’re great cars) and the used ones were often more expensive than the new ones. But, with the help of my parents (thanks mom & dad!), Loretta was found in nearby Ukiah, and came home with us.

Loretta is spiffy, quiet, and boasts VW’s new “clean diesel” technology, which reduces 95% of all sooty emissions. The fact that Jetta TDIs can get up to 50 mpg and that a tax break was offered on the new diesels due to their efficiency and clean technology made Loretta impossible to resist. And even better, the ’09 Jetta TDI was awarded the Green Car of the Year award by Green Car Journal. She’s our dream car, and we love driving her on the curvy coastal roads of Mendocino.

Now that we have Loretta, we hope to save our ol’ volksvegan from racking up too many miles. We’ll mostly be using the volksvegan for trips when we need to haul large, heavy things (like when we move into a new place just up the road later this month) and when we go camping and to local festivals. There are certainly plenty of festivals around here where our little home away from home will come in handy! For everything else, we’re happy to have Loretta, and especially stoked about the great mileage she gets. So far we’ve been averaging in the high 30s in-town and the mid-40s on the highway. Look for Loretta zooming gracefully down Highway One!

We recently took the volksvegan on a small journey a little over an hour away to Earthdance a very eco-conscious music and peace festival near Laytonville. Pictured here is our camp. As you can see, we put our handy dandy canopy to good use. It attaches to the side of the van and gives us much needed shade. It was a hot and dusty weekend, but we had a great time and saw some awesome live music. We were also surprised at how green and veg-friendly the festival as a whole and all the vendors were. It was definitely worth supporting this event, which is synched up with others around the world in an international prayer for peace.

On the horizon is the Okanogan Family Faire in northern Washington, October 17-19. Since we’re now a lot farther away, it will be quite a long trip. We’re working on getting the volksvegan ready for the long trip. The clutch has been giving us issues, apparently because it is leaking fluid. Seneca has replaced the clutch master cylinder but we found out it’s still leaking, so now we’re going to try replacing the slave cylinder, even though it was replaced last year in Salt Lake. He also installed new glow plugs, which had burned out, making the bus difficult to start. We’ll be giving her a bath and hopefully troubleshooting various small issues before loading up our gear and making the trip up north. We can’t wait to go to the faire, which will be our only barter faire of the season, although we seemed to have swapped the barter faires of the northwest with the heady music festivals of northern California. Either way, the volksvegan makes the ultimate road trip and camping mobile, and despite her age, she’s still getting us to these fun events. See you in Tonasket for Okanogan Family Faire!

Well, we’ve moved again. This time it wasn’t far. We are now in Mendocino Village, about 10 miles south of Fort Bragg. Mendocino is where we wanted to move when we first visited the area, so we’re really happy where we’re at now. The town is historical and really cute, and we’re right up the hill from town, just a short walk or bike ride away. While we no longer have redwoods on the property where we live, we do have an ocean view, plenty of sunshine, and lots of room for an organic garden!

The volksvegan has taken us on a few small adventures this summer. We went to Sierra Nevada World Music festival for a day, and Reggae Rising for a day. It sure is nice to be able to roll into a festival, pop the top and have a cozy home base to camp in. We haven’t taken the bus on any long road trips this summer though, because she needs a bit of work. The glow plugs have burned out again (grrr!) and the muffler still needs to be replaced with a heavier duty one that won’t fall apart. We’re hoping to have her fixed in time for Okanogan Family Faire in October, where the bus makes a great camping spot as well as a vending booth (thanks to our canopy that attaches to the side), and we also plan to go to Earthdance a little closer to home.

We finally found a grease source nearby! A sushi restaurant in Fort Bragg has agreed to let us collect their waste veggie oil. Now we need to get a new barrel and test out our filtration system. We are very excited about this, because it has been difficult to find restaurants that didn’t already give their used oil to a greaser! California has a lot more veg-oil powered cars than Idaho. That’s a good thing, but it makes used oil harder to find. With the price of diesel and bio-diesel lately though, jugs of virgin veggie oil from Costco might be cheaper!

We are also dreaming about Volksvegan II, a second bio-powered VW we hope to get. We’d like to sell our small gas car and get a newer VW Jetta TDI. We use the small car to run errands that are too far to ride or walk, and to visit our community garden plot and friends in Fort Bragg. Jetta TDIs get great gas mileage since diesel engines are more efficient, and they’re bio-diesel ready. There is a bio-diesel collective about an hour from us that delivers large quantities, so with two Volksvegans we might use enough to warrant having it delivered.

We love our new home. The Mendocino coast is full of like-minded and eco-conscious people. I see Priuses everywhere, organic gardening is popular, and there are many great local environmental organizations. We’ve been going to a drum circle on the beach every Friday, making new friends, growing organic food in the community garden, and spending lots of time outdoors in the redwoods and on the beaches. I’ve found a tree-hugger’s paradise. So despite my urge to travel in the volksvegan, I don’t think we’ll be going too far for a while.

After about a month of living in Fort Bragg, we truly feel like we have found home. It has been fun exploring the area, meeting new people, and getting involved in the community. We enjoy living near the ocean and visit various beaches as often as we can. It’s amazing that in January and February it is often in the 50s and 60s here! We’ve had our share of rain, but the last week or so has been beautiful, sunny, and clear.

We’ve been using the volksvegan mainly for hauling driftwood from the beach to burn in our woodstove. Once again, the muffler has come disconnected and we need to get it fixed before any road trips. (Note to self: Bruneel Tire SUCKS at mufflers, never ever trust a tire place to do your muffler, as it has broken at least six times now).Here’s my top ten favorite things about living on the Mendocino Coast:

1. Glass Beach (see photo): unfortunately the site of an old dump before people knew that dumping trash in the ocean was not cool, glass beach is now a beautiful mix of human influence and nature. The “pebbles” on this beach are mostly sea glass and ceramic pieces worn down by the ocean.
2. Organic and vegetarian food abounds! There are several organic and/or vegetarian restaurants in the area, and even a raw vegan culinary institute with a take-out cafe. Farmers markets happen in every little town around here during the spring, summer, and fall.
3. No Monsanto. GMOs were banned in Mendocino county, so we won’t be seeing our least favorite corporation around here.
4. Living among redwoods. There are redwoods all around the two acres our house is on. Every window I look out has a view of these majestic giants, and I can hug them whenever I want. Unfortunately they block satellite waves though, so we can’t have satellite internet here.
5. California is the epicenter of all things green and sustainable. I see solar panels on the roof of stores and homes every day, and there is talk about generating wave energy from the ocean’s waves.
6. Sunsets over the Pacific ocean. ‘Nuff said.
7. The people here are really friendly and we’ve made quite a few friends so far. Even the cops seem friendlier than normal.
8. Rural, small town vibes. I am really surprised that more people don’t live on the Mendocino coast, because it seems like a little slice of heaven to me, but the area is surprisingly rural. That means no traffic or road rage, very few fast food restaurants, and lots of open green spaces.
9. For being such a small town, Fort Bragg is pretty happenin’ – there are a lot of music acts that stop here, there seem to be a lot of young people here, and there are many arts and cultural events.
10. In less than a month I have managed to find a local non-profit organic farming organization that needs (and actually has a budget for) a graphic/web designer. We are already making connections and getting involved in the community, and people are really accepting and open minded.

One of the more exciting developments (that I alluded to in #10) is our involvement with a really cool local non-profit called Noyo Food Forest. They are a small organization that has set up a learning garden near the local high school that supplies organic produce to the school and to farmer’s market. Seneca is taking an organic farming class from them, and after I heard about them from him, I contacted them to see if they needed any help with graphics or a web site. I got the best response I’ve ever received from a potential client, “you’re a goddess!” They had been looking for someone for a while and were really excited that I got in touch with them. They need help with refining/redesigning their logo and creating a web site, as well as updating their brochures and other materials to create a cohesive branding package. And they understand the value of good design and actually have a budget for it. So I got my first local client!We also went to a workday at Noyo Food Forest’s new community garden, which isn’t far from our house. They are starting a community garden where people can rent plots (we hope to have one since there’s too many redwoods to get much sun where we live) to grow organic produce. We helped clear the land and sheet compost the garden area this weekend. I shoveled sheep poo and it really wasn’t that bad! The people involved are really cool and we all hit it off right away, and we are learning a lot about organic gardening in the process. Hopefully this is just the beginning of our involvement in the community we now call home.

We hope to have some visitors soon (we’ve had a couple already), and would especially love to have people we stayed with on our journey come to visit. We owe y’all one, after all! And it’s simply gorgeous down here, we love it!

We made it to Fort Bragg in two days, and luckily we had beautiful clear weather and clear roads, even over Donner Pass. (There was 4 feet of snow on each side of the road, but the roads were clear and no chains were required). The volksvegan made the trip just fine with me at the wheel while Sen drove the Uhaul.

It’s still hard to believe that we’re living in another state in a town where we don’t know anyone. We’re in the process of unpacking and moving into the new place, and our friend Jake is our first house guest. He came up from the Bay Area to see us for the weekend. Not that there’s much to see in our house full of boxes in various stages of disarray… Anyway, we’re glad to be here and we’re starting to get settled and explore our new home. Stay tuned for more volksvegan adventures around our new home in California!

After holidays and visiting friends one last time in Moscow and Boise, we are ready at last to embark on our greatest adventure yet: the big move.

We are leaving in just a couple of days to move to Fort Bragg, California. While we’re very excited to finally settle somewhere we love, the journey there will be a bit scary. It’s January, not a good time to move. We are planning to make the shorter trek through Nevada instead of the longer way we’re used to down the Oregon and California coasts. The coast is very wet, often flooded, and prone to mudslides, so road closures are very common this time of year. Instead, we’ll face the wrath of Donner Pass, a big snowy mountain pass over the Sierra Nevadas. I’ll be driving the volksvegan while Sen drives the Uhaul towing our little car. We’re prepared with good tires and chains if need be (except for the Uhaul, since Uhaul is lame and won’t rent them to us, so we may have to buy them if they are required). But despite knowing quite well how to drive in the snow, there’s something about Donner Pass that scares me silly.

So here’s hoping for a safe trip with no delays or major weather issues (forecast looks pretty good). Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers during our travels – we’ll need all the good vibes we can get!

Since we’ll be settling down, my posts here will probably be less frequent, but don’t worry, there are still many adventures ahead in our volksvegan. I will continue to post about any grease-powered trips we take in the bus, as well as our efforts in collecting grease in a place where we know next to nobody, the restoration and repair of our ol’ VW, and much more. So stay tuned, one epic journey may be coming to an end, but there are many more miles of fun ahead!

Here’s wishing everyone who has been following our adventures a Happy Holiday season! I procrastinated on my annual Holiday e-card, as usual, but of course I had to use a photo from our trip. The tree is a giant sequoia called General Grant, which was named “The Nation’s Christmas Tree” by President Coolidge. General Grant is the second largest tree (by mass) in the world, and is simply breathtaking. It’s obviously too big to hang lights on or even take a picture of in one frame!

We also visited the world’s largest tree nearby, General Sherman. These and many other giant sequoias only grow on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas – you can see them in Yosemite, King’s Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks, all of which we visited this year. They are truly amazing trees, able to withstand year after year of fires as long as some portion of them from top to bottom is left intact. As a result, many are hollowed out inside or have huge tunnels through them, making them a lot of fun to explore!

Seneca and I are on separate sides of the country this holiday season (our first time apart since we started our adventure in June), but we’ll be back together for New Year’s Eve, just in time to pack up and move down to California. Here’s hoping that mudslide season can wait a few more days until after our big move!

To all our family and friends who have made this trip possible: thank you for giving us a place to park or stay on our journey, letting us use your showers and kitchens (and even your beds), praying for our safe travels, and in some cases storing our stuff for six months while we were on the road. We are so grateful to have so many wonderful people in our lives all over the place! Now once we’re settled in a new place, we’ll be ready to return the favor and give our friends and family a place to stay while we play tour guide in our new home town. You’re all invited (just not all at once)!

Happy Holidays!