After a couple months of being still in central Texas with a lot of social time, it was time to get back into motion. Our impending plans seemed to be calling us towards heading to St. Louis for Gateway Burn, and then traveling westward through Canada.  However, on the morning we were pulling out of Austin to head to Burning Flipside (the regional Burning Man event near Austin), I got a call from my parents that my father had just been diagnosed with lung cancer.

It was crushing news, to say the least – and all plans were put on hold. We played things day by day, ready to head to Florida when needed as we awaited more test results to let us know what we were dealing with.

Burning Flipside – San Gabriel, TX

We had been sticking around Texas through May because we had been able to procure tickets to the Austin regional Burning Man event. It’s the largest regional, with about 2500 people in attendance. It’s so popular, that they only have ticket sales for one week – and then they have a lottery to draw who gets tickets.  We had been greatly looking forward to checking this event out.

Obviously, with the news of my father, we went into the event with less enthusiasm.  We were graciously invited to camp with our St. Louis burner community who had put together a camp called ‘Starship Inner Thighs’. It was great to camp with people we know, and we had a great time serving drinks at our community starship bar.

Burning Flipside is a fabulous event, and we highly recommend it. It’s large enough to attract larger scale art projects, but yet small enough that you can actually see it all. Our favorite part was that the San Gabriel River runs through the land, so hot afternoons were spent chilling in the river rapids.

Austin

After Flipside we headed back to Austin to pick up Kiki from her cat sitter.  As my father’s biopsy result was due back in the coming days, we opted to stick around Austin for a couple days before making a decision if we should head on to St. Louis or go directly to Florida.

This gave us the opportunity to hang out more with my brother and his wife, as well as Brice & Rose of TackyTexans, who did henna art on my feet.

The biopsy results on my dad turned out to be inconclusive at this point, and seeing as he had more testing to be done before he was even scheduled to meet with a surgeon, we figured we likely had just enough time to get to St. Louis before heading to Florida.

St. Louis

We had a few reasons why attending Gateway Burn was such a high priority for us.  For one, the St. Louis burner community has thus far been most welcoming of us nomadic folks. When we attended last year, we immediately felt appreciated and included – and then they further invited Camp Nomadia into their fantastic placement at Burning Man later in the summer. The organizers this year decided that they wanted to be a nomad friendly regional burn, and went to great lengths to write their rules in such a way that if following their rule of ‘Leave the pets at home‘ meant bringing them with you – that they would allow nomadic pets to attend. So Kiki was super excited to get to attend her first burn!

We had also put a lot of effort into inviting other nomads to join us at the event – and we had assembled a smaller Camp Nomadia. We ended up having a bit of a NuRVer’s repeat in St. Louis with Ben & Karen and Sam & Tracy (ZenNomads) converging with us.  I also had a dear friend and custom jeweler, Barb, and her daughter, Wendy, who were former full time sailing nomads come out from Philadelphia to join us for their first burn event.

It turned out that everyone was converging in St. Louis a week prior to Gateway, so we would get an opportunity to share one of our favorite cities with some of our favorite people! We took our nomadic tribe to the top of the St. Louis arch and to the ever awesome City Museum.

Barb has also developed a fascination with Gooey Butter Cakes, which seem to be a regional thing in St. Louis that spread to Philadelphia. So Chris’ mom graciously got out her family recipes and hosted a Gooey Butter Cake Extravaganza in which we all spent an afternoon baking. As you might imagine, these cakes are gooey and buttery.. and they’re also super sweet.  No one in their right mind should ever attempt to eat this much gooey butter richness!

Gateway Burn

Our nomadic tribe left St. Louis and caravanned down to Camp Zoe near Salem, MO for Gateway Burn. After some adventurous driving navigating 3 RVs down steep dirt mountain roads – we arrived to Camp Nomadia.

The land where the event was held was fabulous, and also featured a stream suitable for floating and swimming. This helped make the hot afternoons a delight.

Gateway had about 200 folks this year, double what it had last year. The land will give them a lot of room to grow the event and perhaps become a major regional event. It was lovely to be with our St. Louis friends and introduce our nomadic tribe.

Kiki also had a great time sporting her elwire harness!

Melbourne, FL

On the way into Gateway Burn, my father finally received results from his PET scan and had talked to his surgeon. The cancer appeared to be contained and not spread, but needed to come out ASAP. Surgery would be scheduled in just a few days to remove at least one lobe of his lung.

We left Gateway Burn in a bit of a hurry on Sunday morning so that we could make a mad dash to Florida. We wanted to arrive in time to spend some quality time with my folks before the surgery, and get settled in.  After driving through the night with a couple stops for long naps, we made it to Melbourne in time for dinner on Monday.  We set up camp and it was off to surgery early Wednesday morning.

The placement of my dad’s tumor unfortunately necessitated taking his entire right lung, but the good news is – so far, it looks like there was no spreading, and my father will not need further treatments. He’s been making great progress on healing, and will have several months of adapting to life with one lung.  Apparently John Wayne did it, and so can my dad!

————-

We’ve not done much else while in Florida but spend time with my family, a few friends, catching up on some projects, getting the truck maintenance caught up and juggling logistics of reorganizing the software business I run with my folks to glide my father into retirement to fully enjoy this life he was just gifted.

Interesting times ahead for us as I go back to being more involved in the business than I have been in the past couple of years.

After SXSW wrapped up, we entered into an intentionally still time. We knew we needed focused time to concentrate on giving birth to our first iPhone application which became State Lines.

This is probably the least amount of miles driven in any such Travelogue we’ve posted, but yet likely one of the most eventful.   Just goes to show – experience is not just about the miles driven, and sometimes slowing down the pace invites awesome to your doorstep.

Our awesome mileage these past two months has been astronomically off the charts.

McKinney Falls State Park – Austin, TX

With SXSW chaos in Austin over, our spot at McKinney Falls State Park became available. It’s one of our favorite places to stay – beautiful surroundings, but yet close enough to south Austin to be accessible without feeling like you’re out in the boonies. We stayed here last year on our way through Texas, and fell in love with it – and been looking forward to launching our development here while keeping close enough to Cherie’s brother for quality hang out time.

When we arrived, most of the trees were still barren from a hard winter in Texas. Over our two weeks there, we watched spring bloom around us and turn brown into brillant greens. Wildflowers, including the Texas Bluebonnet, had an epic bloom.  It was an awakening after a long cold winter, and a perfect environment for launching new projects.

The start of our stay at McKinney Falls was a visit from our friends in Hemet, CA to Austin – Helene and her brother Victor. We had a blast doing a photo walk with Helene, and introducing them to Cherie’s brother, Ken, in Austin.

Aside from breaking the back development wise on State Lines, we also took on a new personal challenge – health improvement. Keeping fit on the road can be a challenge, and our options are limited with little space for carrying things like bikes. The Couch to 5K running program kept popping up in our social circles, and we found there was an iPhone app that took away the need to think about interval training. We decided to take advantage of the wonderful trails at McKinney Falls to start up running/jogging.

While at McKinney Falls, one of Cherie’s major software development contracts was up for renewal – which she rebid and won. It secures another couple years at minimum of guaranteed mobile friendly income for us.

We also received an invitation for dinner (delivered to our campsite) from a blog reader in Austin who had just purchased their first RV to gear up their lives to be mobile. Brice & Rose, the Tacky Texans, turned out to be folks very much of like minds, and offered to be our tour guides in exploring Austin.  It was awesome having new friends in Austin to encourage us to take breaks from development to get out and explore.

Hill Shade RV Park – Gonzales, TX

Texas state parks have a 2 week limit on them, so we knew we’d have to move on. When the NuRVers Days of Nu 2 location was announced in nearby Gonzales, we decided to contact the park about securing a spot for a month or so.  We wrote the owners to ask about their wifi and if it was parkwide.  Their response blew us away – they said it should, and if we encountered problems – they’d make it work!  So off we went to Hill Shade RV Park, with intentions in mind of being out in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks before the rally to concentrate on launching State Lines without distractions.

Intentions rarely live up to reality.

The Happy Janssen’s had also decided to make Hill Shade home prior to the rally – so our mobile tribe was already gathering. And soon more started to trickle in. Sam & Tracy, ZenNomads, made an early arrival, and there (happily) went our evenings to ourselves. Every night became a new adventure in community – of campfires, pot luck meals, gaming and movies. Happy community bliss.

And wouldn’t you know it, our intended social-free time was further thwarted by the awesomeness of Hill Shade’s owners, Christine & Michael and their amazing kids. A friendship quickly started to bud with them, and we just couldn’t resist the temptation to be distracted from our seclusion.

By the time the rally officially started, there were already a dozen NuRVers, including our long time technomadic rendezvous buddy and his new sweetie – Ben & Karen who we hadn’t seen since last November. Hill Shade was already rocking before the sound of the rally tweets. It was an amazing and connective experience to be part of the ramp up energy.

We did take a break and made one trip up to Austin, while Cherie’s parents came in from Florida for a small family reunion. Otherwise, we barely left Hill Shade for weeks.

Despite all the attempts at distracting us, by the time the rally started we had the core of State Lines completed with just need for polishing. We wanted to show off our new creation to the very type of people the app had in mind to get initial feedback.

Days of the Nu 2

We had missed the first gathering of NuRVers the year prior, and had made it a priority to make this gathering. All and all, 17 nomadic households made their way to Hill Shade – all in different stages of their nomadness. There were several families on the road in attendance, as well as many childfree folks. It was an interesting experience in trying to find balance to make sure events met the needs of all involved.. and much learned for future events.

The rally was a mix of scheduled and spontaneous events – a field trip to the Shiner brewery, jewelry making workshop, happy hours, crowdsourced meals, costume night (which we won for ‘Best coordinated couple’), bartender wars and more.  The days quickly became a chaotic blur to us, especially as we had taken on the challenge of documenting the event with video. All footage has now been shot, and now we start the long process of condensing down several hours of footage into an approachable documentary to share with all the variety of ways we make this lifestyle work.

Instead of trying to recap all that happened at the gathering, check some of the posts made by other attendees who somehow found the time to record the daily happenings:

Sara Janssen’s Daily Wrap-Ups: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
Karen’s:  Pre-Gathering Wrap Up
Jim & Rene’s: Tequila Tasting
Jonathan & Dasy’s: Wrap Up
Tara & Justin’s: Sculpting Passion
Becky and Chris’: Traveling Neighborhood
Jennifer’s: First RV Rally
Brice & Rose’s: A Rally at a Perfect Time
Shonda’s: Intimidation amongst peers

Us: Cast of Characters at NuRVers

Photos:  NuRVer Flickr Pool

Gonzales Inquirer Newspaper Article (notice that everyone’s names in the paper is wrong?  Small town publishing or protecting the innocent?)

While the rally officially lasted 4 nights – things ramped down like they ramped up – slowly. It would be almost nearly a week before the majority of the nomadic households moved on. This was wonderful, as it allowed us to experience community without the chaos of a rally schedule to follow.

Hill Shade – Post NuRVers

Us and ZenNomads decided to stick around Hill Shade post rally to finish up various projects we were working on.

We dove back into finishing up State Lines, which got submitted to Apple early morning on May 8, and was in the App Store on May 17.  We loved being able to share our joys with community, and are proud to consider Hill Shade the birthplace of our first app.

We enjoyed hanging out more with Christine & Michael, and made some trips into Austin to see Cherie’s brother, into San Antonio with ZenNomads and more touring around Austin with Tacky Texans. We even got to help them learn their new home on wheels, which was a joy to see their excitement with their new home and life simplification.

We also got to know some of the locals in Gonzales and sampled lots of home made wine, collect our own chicken eggs right from underneath hens and help harvest fruit for future batches of wine to enjoy on our next trip through.

Landa RV – New Braunfels, TX

While some of us stayed behind in Gonzales, some of the NuRVers moved to nearby New Braunfels to enjoy some time along the Comal River.  With our app launched, and starting to get a bit of nomadic itch – ZenNomads and us decided to hit the road and join up too. So a sort of round two of NuRVers happened for a few days, in a much more chill fashion.  It was a lovely time along the Comal, with tube floating, swimming, shared meals and community. Christine & Michael and Tacky Texans even joined up for the fun!  How cool is that that the owners of your previous RV Park drive to come join you??

Pecan Grove RV Park – Austin, TX

Next stop would be the fabulous Pecan Grove in Austin, TX – a spot we had been itching to check out. Both ZenNomads and us were able to score spots next to each other for a few days.  The location is fabulous, on Barton Springs Road – and in walking distance to yummy places to eat, Town Lake, Zilker Gardens, downtown and even a brewery next door.   We’ve been enjoying a lot of social time in our little nomadic caravan.

We’re also using the opportunity in Austin to provision for attending Burning Flipside this coming weekend.

——–

We’ll part ways with ZenNomads in the morning, only to join up again in a couple weeks near St. Louis for Gateway Burn.  Where some others from our nomadic tribe will join up too, including Ben & Karen.   If you have any inclination to join up with Camp Nomadia at Gateway, tickets are on sale through June 5.

After that, it’s back to traveling on our own for a while – which is going to be a strange experience after so much abundance of nomadic community.   Our route to Burning Man for the summer is still unknown.

After an extended stay in Florida catching up with family and friends, checking out sail boats and making new friends – we decided to head on to Austin to be in the area while SXSW Interactive was going on.

With so many bloggers and friends planning to be there, we decided to splurge and booked the last RV spot we could find in Austin. We also decided to just wing it, and not actually buy badges – instead relying on serendipity to social network our way around.

And on a bit of a whim.. off we set, taking backroads whenever feasible.

Manatee Springs State Park – Chiefland, FL

We made our way west, aiming to find the western most road north out of Florida, exploring an area of Florida neither of us had been in much before.   Just about when we were ready to call it a day, we saw a park sign for Manatee Springs State Park. A quick confirmation that there was camping in the park with our handy RV Camping in State Parks book, and off we set in hopes of making it to the gate before the park office closed.

We totally scored by making it just in time, and were assigned a beautiful camp site and set off for a hike around the lagoon at sunset.  The campground is also close by the manatee viewing area, and we caught sight of a few swimming around in the morning. Unfortunately, due to high waters, swimming with them was off limits during our stay.

New Orleans

In the morning we continued our drive west, boondocking overnight in Pensacola. We drove the coastal route along the Florida panhandle, and got to witness the chaotic kick off of spring break in Panama City Beach.

We had decided before we left Orlando that we’d like to treat ourselves to a couple days in New Orleans, as neither of us had been back there since Katrina. Researching camping options online surfaced the French Quarter RV Resort, located just on the edge of the French Quarter.  While pricey , we decided being able to walk to everywhere  was worth it.  The resort itself was nice – huge spaces, a central courtyard with private bath suites, an ice machine and a hot tub.  It was a nice departure from our normal style of boondocking and public campgrounds.

We spent a couple days wandering around the French Quarter and the Frenchman area. On our way into town, we happened to catch a tweet from Carl Nelson, and remembered that he had recently settled in NOLA.  Carl immediately offered to meet up with us while we were in town.  He directed us to a jazz club, where we marveled at his awesome Lindy Hop swing dance talents.   Carl is also known as the Dance Nomad, and teaches swing dance around the world and online.  It turned out that Carl was heading to SXSW, and would also be ‘not’ attending like us.

Houston

On our way west, we were contacted by Rasheed Hooda of Present Day Nomads, who had done a feature on us last year. He invited us to dinner and to street camp in front of his home in Houston on our way into Austin. Perfect timing!

After a drive-break stop in Avery Island, Louisiana for a tour of the Tabasco Factory – we arrived to join Rasheed for an evening of very yummy Pakistani food, and great conversations.

In the morning, Rasheed shared with us how he’s currently making his income – by twisting balloon animals!  He left the corporate world to find something that brought him joy. And, it’s a portable business model that he plans to take on the road with him as a nomad eventually.

He shared with us that at first, when people asked him how much a balloon animal cost, he quoted a price of $2-3.  And, as one would expect, he received just about that. A while back he started answering the question with ‘Pay whatever you think it’s worth’.  He’s now averaging $5-10 an animal.

Something to think about, for sure.  We tend to undervalue ourselves.

Austin – SXSW

And then.. our arrival to Austin!  We pretty much hit the ground running, attending various SXSW Interactive social events we were invited to.

First off was breakfast hosted by our friend and podcaster Ewan Spence at Magnolia Cafe (yum). We were immediately seated with Dave Delaney (part of the Griffin road trip to SXSW), Julien Smith (co-author of Trust Agents) and C. C. Chapman (Campfire Creative) – we indulged in gingerbread chocolate chip pancakes while talking about life on the road with mobile technology.

Next was the Location Independent Professionals MeetUp, where we got to rendezvous again with the fabulous Cath Duncan (who we met last year when our paths crossed in Colorado) and Carl Nelson.  We also finally met many other location independent folks we had been corresponding with, including: Jon Woodward, Andy Hayes of Sharing Travel Experiences, Mike Boyink, Adam Baker (Man Vs Debt) and a video chat with Lea Woodward, who stayed back in the UK.  Our breakfast meetup ended up going well into the afternoon, and we followed a string of serendipity, and ended up attending SXSW social events well into the late evening.

We got to spend a lot of time with our friend Kaye Porter, and help her map out her next business venture, and ended up crossing paths repeatedly with Carl, Andy and Cath. We ended up meeting many more fabulous people – including Pace and Kyeli of FreakRevolution,  Ali Hale of Aliventures, Nathalie Lussier of Raw Foods Witch, Kelly of Sticky eBooks and a whole crew of author’s of Thrivable.

Our heads are still spinning after all the awesome new friends we met!

We ended SXSW the same way we started it – breakfast with Ewan at Magnolia Cafe.  We then stopped by our campground for him to tell Kiki scary stories before dropping him off at the airport to return to Scotland.

And that’s just our first week in Austin…  stay tuned for our anticipated upcoming plans.

After an extended month long winter and holiday stop in St. Louis visiting Chris’ family, it was time to head south for the remainder of the winter. Cherie previously lived in Florida for 12 years before we hit the road, and that’s where her parents and a lot of our friends live. We knew we’d be in for a hectic schedule of trying to fit seeing everyone in.  We started our adventure south on January 20, 2010.

Atlanta

Our first planned stop would be in Atlanta, a place we never seem to get enough time in as we’re alway just passing through. However we wanted to be sure to stop in and see Diane and Jill, who own a T@b clamshell twin to our former home on wheels. We used to be able to park at their place, but with our slightly larger Oliver Travel Trailer, we weren’t certain our trailer would still fit in their back lot.

And then serendipity happened.  We received a well timed e-mail from someone who almost camped with us at Camp Nomadia the very first year we brought the camp together. Dale was formerly a nomad, but he ended up camping elsewhere and we only got to meet briefly at Burning Man 2008.  Before he switched camps, he had made up some awesome caribineer/flashlight/bottle openers with ‘Camp Nomadia’ printed on them. He gifted us a handful, and they’ve been quite useful. Especially for lightpainting!

As it turns out, Dale has since settled in Atlanta, and invited us to stop in – citing he had plenty of parking space.  His directions ended with ‘park anywhere on the tennis court’ – which raised an eyebrow.  So thus we parked, intending to only stay a couple nights, on his tennis court in front of his airplane hanger converted loft.  It was awesome to get to know Dale and compare stories from the road, Burning Man and geekery. Our intended couple night stay turned into 5 nights (see what we mean about Nomadic Standard Time?) until we figured we really did need to be on our way.

While in Atlanta, we also got to meet up with Diane, however Jill was sick. We also got to make a new friend, who was introduced to us via a mutual friend in California. We went to an independent artists fundraiser and saw a cool afro-celt band play.

Tomoka State Park

After coming off of our intense month working at Amazon.com, holidays, cold weather in St. Louis and our unexpected social time in Atlanta – we were craving some alone time with just the three of us before heading into more social time. One thing we’ve found in our travels is that if we want time for ourselves, we have to carve it out.

So we selected one of our favorite campgrounds in Florida – Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach. It was one of our destinations when we were first trying out nomadic life together back in early 2007. We love it for it’s authentic Florida hammocks and nicely wooded campsites along the waterway.

We got some relaxing and alone time in. However, one thing about state parks in the middle of the week, is that we’re not the only interesting people traveling through. We ended up meeting two other traveling couples.  They were closer to traditional retirement age than us – but what was interesting, is that in each couple, one of them was earning an income by being online professors. They were each using mobile technology to explore their wanderlust, visit their families and keep funded.  It’s so inspiring to encounter so many people exploring these mobile lifestyles before retirement.

Titusville

Next stop was Titusville, primarily to visit with Cherie’s ex and her former cat, Alma.  Cherie and Fritz dissolved as a couple primarily because they were simply on different life paths – Cherie wanting more mobility and adventure, and Fritz wanting to settle into one spot and focus on planning for retirement with a stable career.  Their solution was to seek what they both wanted in life and remain close friends.. instead of getting bitter and angry over it.  It was wonderful to see just how happy they were now that they were well into their chosen paths.

We did split our time down in Melbourne, staying with Cherie’s parents a few nights.  Unfortunately, they live in one of those neighborhoods where they don’t allow RVs, so we opted to stay in their guest room while we left our camper at Fritz’. It’s worth it to get quality time!

While in Titusville, we noticed that the last planned night shuttle launch was planned, and ended up being temporary neighbors with the delightfully awesome nomadic Louis and Sean of Our Oddyssey. We were part of ‘Camp STS-130′ – an amazing temporary RV city that forms around launch time.

James and his partner Maria came over from Tampa – he’s better known as @NomadRIP, to join the fun. We look forward to many future rendezvouses with all these like minded folks.

The launch was delayed an evening, but it was an amazing 4:14am launch of Shuttle Endevour.

Melbourne

We relocated down to Wickham Park, a county run park in Melbourne for a couple nights.  Chris’ parents are experimenting with being snowbirds on the west coast of Florida this winter, and came over for a fajita cookout at Cherie’s parents place.    Chris also took care of routine medical exams at our primary care physician in Melbourne, and we both had our routine eye exams.  While we have medical access all over the country via our individual health plans, we do prefer to establish providers in spots we consider ‘home bases’.

Orlando.. no.. now Miami!

At first we were planning to relocate to the Orlando area, where we have friends with several wooded acres who extend an open invite. However, we got hit with a Nautical Bug, and found our way to Miami instead to attend the Miami Internatational Boat Show.  Chris has written prolifically about this.

Following Nomadic Serendipity

The next week was an amazing ride of following the Ripples of Serendipity – which took us down to Marathon to check out an older catamaran we were intrigued by.

Then up to Jupiter Farms to meet with some awesome readers of our blog – Richard & Claire and Dave & Julie, and answer their questions about nomadism on wheels. Richard and Claire have a pig and backyard chickens, and we spent an evening combusting Christmas trees in their backyard firepit with their awesome sons, Glenn & Patrick.

Then serendipity decided we weren’t done yet, and handed us a connection to a similarly aged full time sailing couple, Gray and Cindy, who seemed happy to spend an afternoon sharing their lifestyle with us. It was great to be on the other side of the table, inquisiting someone else about a lifestyle we’re interested in embarking upon.

Orlando.. and beyond?

We finally found our way to the Orlando area, a full week after our original intentions.  We plan to stay here a week or so – get caught up on a bunch of projects, and just enjoy the solitude of our wooded nest camped next to great friends, Cec & Paula, who truly embrace our self sufficiency and temporary neighbor preference.

—–

Soon we’ll decide when we need to start heading to Texas. We’re still undecided about South by Southwest, mostly because we just can’t justify the high ticket cost.   If we make it to Austin by mid-March, we may just meet up with friends attending outside the event, and enjoy the ancillary festivals and events that apparently happen.  Perhaps next year we’ll submit a proposal for a Technomadic panel and try to get in as presenters.  At the very least, we need to make it to Central Texas by late April for the NuRVer’s Gathering (or whatever they decide to call it) – a rally of other younger full time RVers.

With plans to spend the holidays with family in the St. Louis area, we looked ahead to doing a mid-country run very much similar to the path we took earlier in the year.  We decided to sign on to workamp at Amazon’s distribution center in Kansas on the way to kill a month, which would mean the trip across country would be at a much quicker pace than our normal.

San Diego, CA

Upon discovering that we had potential vehicle issues with our Jeep that might need additional attention before attempting another cross country jaunt, we decided to relocate from Hemet, CA to San Diego – where there would be more resources for repairs. It also helped that our technomadic friend, Ben Willmore, was also hanging out there – so for only the fifth time in our travels we stayed in a commercial RV park.

And much to our surprise, the park was able to place our tiny 17′ rig right next to his 40′ bus. It was nice to be temporary neighbors with Ben for a week while we took care of our chores and he took care of his. And as it was the San Diego Beer Week, we spent many an evening sampling some fine craft beers together.

In the end, it turned out that repairing the Jeep didn’t make sense, so our focus shifted to finding a replacement tow vehicle  more suited for full time towing. We said good bye to our beloved diesel Jeep Liberty CRD, and hello to a 2006 Toyota Tundra.

Exploring the Salton Sea

With a new tow vehicle procured, it was time to start our eastward journey – but not before a long anticipated rendezvous with nomadic photographer Sandi Wheaton.  She had been put in touch with us several months ago after she lost her job and decided to spend several weeks doing an epic phootography roadtrip down Route 66 in a small travel trailer. During the course of conversing about the lifestyle, a friendship was formed.

With her now  in Los Angeles and ready to start her eastward trek back home – we rendezvoused back near Hemet at a paragliding field that Chris had been practicing jumping off mountains at.  While we just missed the opportunity for him to have a sled ride down, we had an awesome time meeting Sandi – so much so, we called our awesome artist friends Sean Mahonney and Helene Lohr (who we had spent the past 6 weeks with).   They came out and joined us, and an epic Salton Sea photo exploration for the next day was conceived.

Arriving after dark, our first night on the Salton Sea was spent boondocking at the old Niland Marina and doing some epic light painting.  Both with Cherie doing fire and LED poi dance, and of Sandi’s triangle trailer.

In the morning, we all spent several hours photo exploring this area – coming up with some amazing shots!   And then, Sandi offered to give us a tour of Slab City and introduce us to her friend who lives there.

Went spent the rest of the day in an artistic wonderland that is known as East Jesus in Slab City, and exploring Salvation Mountain – both of which we’ve written about separately.   We ended up staying the next two nights at East Jesus before continuing on our way eastward.  We will be returning for an extended visit.

Eastward to Kansas

As we had previously gone a very similar route through Arizona and New Mexico earlier in the year,  we opted to traverse this section of the trip on the interstate and make good time.

We did stop off for a couple nights in Lake Havasu City to visit our Oliver-owning Burning Man friends – where Andrew was sweet enough to help us track down some problems we were having with our tail lights.

We made good time through Albuquerque, then decided to slow the pace down a bit and started taking our preferred backroads once we hit Tucumcari. We got across the great state of Texas in record time by just crossing the tip of the panhandle, and explored around Oklahoma. Spotting a sign for the city of Laverne, we took a detour to do a special photography holiday gift for Chris’ grandmother – of the same name.

We arrived to Independence, Kansas and began scoping out our camping options for our month long stay in the area while we worked at Amazon. We checked out the closet options in Coffeyville – but at the time the only spots left were spack dab in the middle where we’d have neighbors on all four sides. While the commute would have been nicer, we opted for the open meadows and lakes that Elk City State Park offered, which is also where another Oliver owning friend of ours was staying as they workamped too.

Amazon.com

The month of December was mostly working at Amazon.com’s fullfillment center in Coffeyville, Kansas. It was a physically intense experience that left us with a lot of illumination on many aspects of American culture we might not have otherwise received.  We’ve already written some of our initial impressions about the experience, and did an interview with Gizmodo that has been since featured on Slashdot. We find it a bit humorous that us normally tech-enabled nomads taking on a manual labor job gets us so much publicity!

We will be following up in the coming weeks with a lot more information on our experience at Amazon – mostly we’re just waiting on our final paycheck to make it through our forwarding system so that we can show exactly how much money can be made at these sorts of gigs.

St. Louis

We’re  now in St. Louis spending the holidays with Chris’ family.   Mostly we’ve been catching up on sleep, readjusting back to daylight hours and catching up on all of the chores that can accumulate in a month.

In a few weeks, we’ll start heading south to warmer climates and time with Cherie’s family.

Time Period: September 6 – October 24
Miles Driven: 1179
(not including non-RV trips)

Post Burning Man we only had one specific goal – to make it to Hemet, CA for much needed down time. We had met some folks in the area during our travels earlier in the year that we only had the opportunity to visit for a few days back in April – and we were anxious to return to their beautiful home.

We stayed at Burning Man late, helping with the clean-up efforts and taking responsibility for our camp achieving a ‘green’ rating for leaving no trace behind.

Directly from Black Rock City, we went back to Fallon, NV to pick up Kiki and wash some dust off.

Afterburn at PermaBurn

Eyeing a handout we received during our clean-up days, we were intrigued by an opportunity to visit PermaBurn for their Afterburn event.  PermaBurn is 600+ acres that were purchased about 85 miles due west of Gerlach, with the intentions of being an intentional full time Burning Man inspired community. Well within range of the playa, it’s an ideal place for testing out and staging art projects.  The vision is one of community effort and manifestation.

Always in search of nomadic ports with like minds, we were intrigued enough to divert up to Northern California for a few days to check it out. It was a small gathering of folks for the weekend and we had opportunity to meet many of the folks behind the project. It was just what we needed – an opportunity to chill with community post Burning Man, before returning to the ‘real’ world. And bonus, there’s cell phone signal out there!

For just $200, interested folks can buy in with a lifetime membership – which gives you a vote in how the land is used. It also gives you full access to the land for as long as its held as part of PermaBurn. An awesome opportunity, and one that we definitely recommend checking out if you’re so intrigued. The folks behind it are awesome and well intentioned.

Sacramento and San Francisco

After PermaBurn we returned to Sacramento, where we have dear friends – Sean & Lindsay, as well as our storage unit. We spent a few days putting our Burning Man gear back in storage and getting our house reorganized and prepared for potentially not returning to the area for a while.

And then it was on to San Francisco for an evening to spend with our dance community – Rhythm Society. It was their quarterly All Night Dance Celebration. Not even a fire marshall could keep the event from happening, and it was quickly re-tooled to take place at an alternate location right on time. It was definitely worthwhile to make the stop on our way south.

After lunch on the Presido munching down on our favorite burritos from Taqueria Cancun, we started our southward journey.  We opted to take the interstate instead of a slow meandering way – anxious to get to Hemet.

Hemet, CA

There are definitely places in our travels that feel more like a homebase than a stop,  and Hemet is amongst them. It’s not so much about the place, as it about the people. Fortunately for us, this place has both!  Beautiful scenery and awesome people.  Here they also have a little porch with RV hook-ups right off of it. We’ve taken it over, giving us a beautiful outdoor living room and office.

Another reason for hanging out in this area of the country was its proximity to Las Vegas, as we had been invited to attend Photoshop World as a guest of our technomadic friend Ben Willmore (who is a presenter there).  Deciding it was cheaper to carpool up and split a room with our friends from Hemet – Sean & Helene and us made the trip together up to Vegas.

We had a lot of fun, including participating in the iStockPhoto party invite process – which involved decorating Munny dolls. We made ours to resemble Ben with his rocking mohawk – which he boldly decided to keep from Burning Man where we last saw him.

Upon returning to Hemet, we each got invitations to attend two different conferences in two different places.  Cherie was invited to the Experts Academy up in San Francisco, and Chris to the Los Angeles Idea Project.  For the first time in our 2.5 years of travel together – we went our separate ways for a few days – which is probably a good thing for traveling couples to do every so often.  With no rush to be anywhere, Cherie opted to take the Coast Starlight train back – enjoying a relaxing and scenic adventure.

We’re now hanging around Hemet for a few days more as our Jeep has some maintenance and warranty issues taken care of.  Chris has been practicing his paragliding, a sport he’s not done in a couple of years.

We anticipate in the next few days we’ll embark on the next adventure – which we actually have no clue where we’re headed yet.

The last segment of our Summer 2009 travels was wrapping up our cross country adventure and arriving for Burning Man. With a month ahead of us to get there, we looked for ways to optimize backroads and scenic routes. We aimed to visit a few more National Parks along the way, as well as friends.   We also put ourselves up to the challenge to try not to pay for camping and to stay entirely off grid by not needing hookups for the month ahead. Given the higher temperature month of August, this was an especially tall order.

Thus we conceived of the Technomad Trifecta: Scenic. Free. Connectivity.   And we aimed to find it wherever we went.

Missouri

When we left St. Louis we anticipated that we’d jet as quickly as possible through Missouri and Kansas – figuring there wouldn’t be many options for the Technomad Trifecta.  We were proven wrong.

To avoid heavy traffic along the interstate out of St. Louis, we quickly diverted to backroads and followed the Missouri River westward towards Jefferson City. Beautiful drive with rolling hills and lots of pulls offs for scenic views.   With the approaching setting sun, we started researching possible camping options.

Not actually expecting to find scenic free camping in the area, were thrilled to discover that the Pine Ridge campground within the Mark Twain National Forest was on a donation basis. The campground was not far off the road and only offered a few camp spots, only a couple of them suitable for RVs.  But we found one that was available and pulled in.

The next morning we received the crushing news that our Burning Man theme camp for Nomads, Camp Nomadia, was denied placement.  Too bummed to move on, we took advantage of the wooded camping for another night to sleep on the news another day. In the morning we headed on, and I remembered that a dear friend was now located in Kansas City. A quick call to touch base, and off we were for a lunch rendezvous of catching up.

Kansas

We were dreading Kansas. Our mental image was of flat land, endless roads, farms and sunflowers. Mostly we were right.  We eyed a free campground outside of Junction City, Kansas run by the Army Corp of Engineers called Rolling Hills.  It hit the Technomad Trifecta perfectly. All of the campspots were spread out along Millford Lake, each with private lake access. There was ample cellular sign. And it was free.

We stayed two nights, enjoying amazing sunsets, online catching up and relishing in the beauty that Kansas could offer. On the way out of Kansas, we went in search of Mt. Sunflower – the highest point in the state.

Colorado

We had aims to visit our friends Teresa and Andrew in Salida, Colorado. We also anticipated it would be a decent spot to put down the landing gear for a few days and enjoy a truly wonderful little mountain town.

We found perfect free boondocking just east of the city along the river with excellent cell phone coverage – again, the Trifecta manifested. We ended up staying a week – enjoying awesome microbrews, farmer’s markets, art shops, live music and hanging out with our friends. We also had a nomadic rendezvous with Cath & Andy Duncan, who were passing through town on their USA tour.

We considered the routing we would take out of Colorado to get new vistas and opted to head north up to I-70, fabled to be amazing hiway as art through the natural features. We were not disappointed – definitely some of the most beautiful interstate around.

Utah

Utah has more than its fair share of scenic driving and vistas. We’ve heard it said that you can drive an hour and visit new landscape that seems like an entirely different planet.  And it certainly seems true.

For this pass through Utah we decided to aim for Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument.  We got into Capitol Reef to discover that their first come first serve campground was already completely full at mid afternoon on a weekday.  Initially disappointed, we decided to head westward to find some of the campgrounds in the neighboring national forest.

Just as we left the park and before we reached the town of Torrey – we saw a little dirt road. Curious, we stopped and checked it out. Definitely dispersed camping on National Forest land.  We backed into a spot with an amazing view of Capitol Reef and enjoyed free boondocking for a few nights – with cellular internet from the nearby town. Amazing. And definitely a Technomad Trifecta score.  And bonus, the Persiad Meteor Shower was starting up – so we enjoyed some of the most spectacular star gazing we could possibly imagine. We literally had dozens of shooting starts per minute at peak hours.

The heat was building each day, almost tempting us to hook up the generator for air conditioning. Instead, we experimented with evaporative cooling with a water mister – to much success.  We were able to keep in the temperature to a cool 88 while the outside temperature was peaking at 98.

Onwards from Capitol Reef we experienced a new planet every few dozen miles. From red rocks, to forests, to white cliffs, to the spectacular formations of the escalante.

Absolutely jaw dropping amazing driving.

We arrived to Bryce Canyon to lots of crowds.  We entered the park just to get a few pictures and take a short hike. We had a tip on Cedar Breaks that it was similar scenery but without the crowds that we were banking on for a better experience.  And we were not disappointed at all.

We were so impressed by Cedar Breaks – both in the formations, lack of crowds  and friendly rangers – that we decided to break our free camping streak and pay for a night in the park.  We were much rewarded for this choice, as soon after making camp we had the ranger stop by and invite us to the evening’s talk about the geology of the region. The talk was interesting and informative, however spending quite a while afterwards talking with the ranger about her motivations for switching out of nursing and into geology was even more fascinating.

Nevada

Nevada is beautiful in its own right. However its monotonous series of 600+ distinct mountain ranges and valleys have caused me to call it the Crumple  Zone of the west. After going over a few passes in Nevada, you pretty much get the point.  On previous traverses, we’ve taken the Loneliest Highway – this time we wanted something different.  So, we selected the Extraterrestrial Highway, in hopes of meeting some aliens or something.

Beautiful drive, but no aliens found. Not to give up hope, we followed our GPS’s advice to take a short cut via a 40 mile dirt road across the valley into Warm Springs.  It’s always an adventure to choose an overland road – you just don’t know what you’ll find.  Nearing sunset we had dashing antelope, fox, cows and wild mustangs.   Somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn, because we ended up at a back gate of Nellis Air Force Base Bombing range.  Whoops.

Around we turned and found our correct little dirt road.  And just as we reached the turn off our GPS was telling us to take – we discovered we still had many more miles of dirt road traversing to go.  Instead of missing a sunset by driving precarious roads, we opted to stop right there and stay the night at an old mine shaft.  It wasn’t a trifecta night – as there was no cellular signal to be found. However we’re quite sure we were the only humans in the valley, and there was not a single artificial light to be seen.  Another amazing star gazing night.

In the morning we went exploring around, and found a lot of old abandonded stuff – propane tanks, a VW Beetle, a stove and more. And the most amazing find?  A huge barrel being fed by a spring full of coy fish.   Fish.  In the middle of nowhere off the ET highway in the Nevada Desert.  That’ll count as being alien enough for us !

California

We came into the backside of Yosemite and stayed a night near Mono Lake, anticipating hitting Yosemite on a Sunday afternoon in hopes of less crowds.  We were wrong, Yosmite was insanely packed making the experience pretty miserable. Guess we should have timed our visit to not be on one of the National Park free weekends.  We’ll just have to check it out at a different time of year.

We made our way to our homebase in Sacramento with Lindsay & Sean, discovering that our trailer exactly fits in their side driveway allowing us to utilize the front porch too and get off the street.  Awesome.  Our time in Sacramento was mainly spent getting our Burning Man gear out of storage.

Burning Man

We ducked down to the San Francisco Bay Area to catch up with a few folks, and then started the journey back into Nevada for Burning Man, stopping a night in Reno to meet up with Kev & Ang of NuRVers.com. It was awesome to finally cross paths with them.

We then headed down to Fallon, which is where we had run a field office for the Obama campaign the year prior. Our host family there had offered to take care of Kiki while we were at the burn. It was great to catch up with them and provision for our time on the playa.

And then off we headed towards Black Rock City, where the adventures have already been documented:

Connected at Burning Man

Camp Nomadia at Burning Man 2009

Burning Man From Start to Finish

Indiania to St. Louis via Philadelphia & DC

Time Period: June 30 – July 29
Miles Driven: 1904

We had no plans for how to spend the summer. We had toyed with the idea of finding a nice campground in the Smokey Mountains and parking for several weeks to catch up on some work projects.  We had toyed with ducking into Canada and getting some international time under our wheels in a cooler climate.  But then one of Cherie’s clients called and asked if she could be in Washington DC in mid-July to teach a class. We looked at the calendar, and said yes!   So we booked time in Philadelphia with friends, and off we went.

Philadephia, Pennsylvania

On the day before we planned to leave Indiana, we got a call from Chris’s folks who were leaving Baltimore and headed back to St. Louis. We saw that there was an opportunity for a rendezvous, so we left a day early and met up with them outside of Dayton, OH for dinner. It’s wonderful to be able to take advantage of nomadic serendipity.

When then traversed across Ohio and Pennsylvania, stopping a couple of nights at Laurell Hill State Park, and then serendipitiously discovered the Flight 93 Memorial while driving around backroads.

We arrived in Philadelphia in time to attend a 4th of July party at a 300+ year old house that one of our followers invited us to attend. There was live music jamming and a hoppy local IPA beer on tap.  It was incredible to celebrate the 4th at a house that literally saw the birth of our nation.

We toured around Philadelphia, on actual assignment from TripFilms to produce a few video pieces on things to do and eat in the city. It was fun playing tourist and visiting the Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, Waterworks, Comcast’s Largest Television and more.  We also were blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with dear friends.  We both had friends in the area that pre-dated our relationship together, which always makes for a wonderful time of getting to know each other better via our past connections.

Washington, DC

Next up was our visit to our nation’s Capital. We found Cherry Hill RV Park in College Park to stay at, our first experience with staying at a RV park that dubbed itself a resort. It was close enough to Bethesda, that it made Cherie’s classes easy enough to teach.

Still on assignment from TripFilms, we played tourist in on the Mall in DC. We even got to meet up with a friend who was also on business from Florida and spend the evening catching up and visiting museums.  We also had the pleasure to meet Jonathan and Dasy of WeGoFar, who are about to set off on a long term nomadic RVing adventure! We can’t wait to rendezvous with them out on the road!

After DC, we relocated out to Reston, Virginia where there’s a reputable Jeep dealer – as we were due for our regular maintenance on our tow vehicle.  We took care of that.. and off we continued.

Appalachians

The Transformus regional Burning Man event was about to happen in Asheville, NC, and we had hopes that perhaps tickets to it would manifest for us. Unfortunately their ticketing process is not very nomad friendly – and we couldn’t find last minute tickets to attend.

So, we started our eastward trek and decided to spend some time in the Appalachians. Off we headed to Shenendoah National Park for a couple nights.  We loved the scenic drive (sorry Lonely Planet, we don’t concur with your ’scenic drive to end all scenic drives’ evaluation.. but it was pretty nice).

Next, we went into the Blueridge Parkway, which was even more scenic and less untouched.  We stayed a night there, and then started meandering through the mountains westward.

We stumbled upon the Breaks Interstate Park, run by both Virginia and Kentucky.  We ended up staying two nights, as we scored a nice secluded spot with excellent cellular broadband signal!

St. Louis

We explored our options for our westward trek, and decided to go ahead and route through St. Louis again to spend some more time with Chris’ folks. Afterall, they are awesome.

We spent a week at their place, and got to catch up with new friends we made recently at Gateway Burn.

We explored the City Museum, Hobo University and Chris ordered a new MacbookPro and got situated with it.

After St. Louis, we continued our trek westward following the Missouri River.

After a couple of weeks of our adventures being driven on visiting family in Texas and St. Louis, our attentions turned to social time with new and old friends. We had found some regional Burning Man events to attend, and even rendezvoused with another friend and took him road tripping with us.

Gateway Burn – Potosi, MO

We took a jaunt down to Potosi, MO to attend the St. Louis regional Burning Man style event called Gateway Burn. We figured it would be an excellent way to meet some awesome people in the St. Louis area, so that next time we’re visiting the area we have people other than family to visit.

It had been raining lots, and the land the event was held on was very primitive. A lot of vehicles where having difficulty getting in. When we arrived, they stationed a huge 4×4 truck with a tow rope at the top of the hill, in case we got stuck. But Chris mastered pulling our Oliver up a muddy slippery hill with ease with our 4×4 Jeep – and everyone watching was suitably impressed. We spent most of the event giving tours of our Oliver – which was a great way to meet folks.

And did we ever meet some great folks!  We’re looking forward to future visits to St. Louis to not only spend quality time with family, but further develop a community there.

Midwest Couchsurfing Roadtrip

Our good friend Matt Bell was just finishing up his 4.5 month sabbatical world trip, and decided to join us in the midwest before heading home to San Francisco. We promised him a midwest roadtrip so that he could also get a taste of what full time technomadic life is like for us.  It was also our first time taking on a passenger in our travels.  We picked Matt up at a local hostel upon our return from Gateway Burn, and then swept him away to Chris’ father’s Flag Day celebration at the local Elks. A fitting reintroduction to America, we think.

We also took Matt to explore to totally uber awesome City Museum in St. Louis. And then we packed up the Oliver and converted the space around for sleeping a third.

Is it still Couchsurfing if the couch is moving?

Matt booked his flight out of Chicago, so we took a 3 day meandering tour up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers – exploring riverside towns along the way.

Northern Indiana & Chicago

We dropped Matt off for his flight in Chicago, and then headed to our friends place in northern Indiana. She had ample trailer parking for us.  I knew Kele back when I lived in Florida, and it’s been a true pleasure to be able to stay close to her by rendezvousing in our travels.

We took a day and trained into Chicago to meet up with some other friends from Florida, Sterling and Melissa.  Melissa is now living in the Chicago area, and Sterling just happened to be up visiting. We also rendezvoused with them last year while they were vacationing in Las Vegas.   While in Chicago, Chris also upgraded his iPhone to the new 3G S.

Lakes of Fire – Lacota, Michigan

One of our purposes for our visit to this region was to attend the Lakes of Fire regional Burning Man event in western Michigan – and introduce Kele to the community. It would be her first Burning Man experience.

We had also met quite a number of folks at Gateway Burn who were heading up to Lakes of Fire, so we formed an impromptu theme camp with them. It was awesome to spend more time getting to know these folks!  Lakes of Fire was a much larger event – about 500 people, and extremely well run. We had a blast, and Kele really seemed to click with it all.

We headed back to Kele’s place for a couple of days to decompress and catch up.

Next up..  we headed to Philadelphia and Washington DC… but those stories will come later.

Our Loop to Hohenwald

After arriving in St. Louis for Mother’s Day and learning that Chris’ grandmother’s surgery would be scheduled in early June, we opted to take the opportunity to divert down to Hohenwald, TN to visit the folks at the Oliver Travel Trailer factory for some tweaks and fixes.  We also used the opportunity to test out our new ‘Two Night’ Rule, to force us to travel a bit slower and be still a bit more.

Down the Mississippi River

We routed down the Mississippi River from Columbia, IL, passing through Popeye’s hometown of Chester and enjoying many scenic overlooks.  The Mississippi was also pretty full and we heard weather reports anticipating flooding in the coming days.

We ended up camped at Columbia-Belmont State Park in Kentucky, scoring a river front spot along the bluff. We stuck to our rule, and stayed two nights – utilizing a day working outside with a gorgeous view of barges moving up the river.  We tried as best we could to ignore the lawn care crew tending to the Kentucky blue grass most of the day with their buzzing mowers and weed whackers.

Hohenwald, TN

We arrived at the Oliver factory in Hohenwald on May 20, where the crew got right to work on our fixes.  Most impending was that our axle was showing signs of defect by causing uneven tire wear on the outside of one tire. After a couple rounds of eliminating other causes, the great folks at Oliver had a new axle made for us, and replaced our now balding tires.   We also had been fighting a leak in the roof vent fan, which they finally solved for us.  Now, we can enjoy a rain storm without bringing out towels to keep from indoor flooding.

We camped overnight in the factory – which is an awesome experience to be alone in a 7 acre industrial factory, and even bumped into Jim & Evon Oliver on their super cool Harley – we had just seen them in Lake Havasu City, AZ a few weeks back. We also had a chance to learn about their new product line which is keeping the plant open while the entire RV industry is experiencing financial troubles.

We then turned our focus to finding a spot to stop for about a week that might have availability over Memorial Day weekend. Our contact at Oliver mentioned that the nearby Meriwether Lewis National Monument along the Natchez Trace had a primitive campground that he thought was free. So off we went to check it out.  And indeed it was free!   We enjoyed 6 nights of free camping in the forest, which gave us much needed catch up time on various work projects and relaxation. We even encountered another Oliver owner coming in for upgrades to their trailer.

Land Between The Lakes and back to St. Louis

We then started our journey back to the St. Louis area so we could help out with Chris’ grandma’s upcoming surgery and celebrate his mom’s birthday.  Leaving in time to try out our 2-night rule again, we built in time to camp along the way.  We selected Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, as it simply looked scenic on a map.  Our camp spot was a bit indulgent, as we opted for a waterfront spot – which came with unnecessary hookups.

Along our route we spotted these tall rock structures, and stopped in Bear Springs, TN to check one out. Some friendly locals pulled up and told us all about them. It was great fun to share travel stories and meet folks along back roads. The rock towers turned out to be furnaces, used in the late 1800s to melt iron for weapons and tools.

But we did enjoy another day to enjoy a gorgeous office view!

We then meandered around backroads in Illinois coming back to Columbia. Along the way we stumbled into The Chocolate Factory, who were tempting us with free kittens.  We thought better of bringing one of these cuties back as a birthday gift to Chris’ mom and instead brought her chocolates.

St. Louis

Back in St. Louis, Chris’ folks graciously offered to let us park our home in their park-like yard poolside.  Being able to stay in our own home while being temporary neighbors with his folks worked out to be a fantastic balance for us – and what a view we had!  Kiki loved bird watching and going for daily visits to see her Grandmeow and Aunt-dog Molly.

Chris’ grandma came through surgery with flying colors, we helped his folks switch from PC to Mac, attended a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game and caught up on some tech upgrades of our own.

All the while, we prepared for the next chapter of our adventure – a regional burning man event and taking a passenger for a midwest road trip.  That’s up next!

Travelogue: Texas to St. Louis

Time period: April 24 – May 17, 2009
Miles Driven: 1593

After weeks of no firm plans and trusting in nomadic serendipity to guide our journey through Arizona and New Mexico, after Carlsbad Caverns we were back on route to our next planned destination – Austin, Texas.

Austin is where Cherie grew up, and her brother now lives – so it’s a frequent stop over point for us as we criss cross the country visiting friends and family.

Our specific timing for being in the area was to rendezvous with Cherie’s parents in nearby San Antonio for her father’s USS Robert E Lee SSBN-601 Submarine Reunion, which he organizes – and was finally stepping down as president.

Austin, Texas

Anxious to be stopped for a bit, we opted to violate our own intentions of only driving a few hours a day and made the drive from New Mexico into Austin in one day. It seemed the right thing to do after weeks of overwhelming beautiful and amazing views. The scenary in west Texas just can’t compare. So we got on I-10 and made good time getting into Austin in time for Tex-Mex food for dinner with Cherie’s brother, Ken and his wife, Kristina.

We stayed at McKinney Falls State Park in South Austin, which proved to be the perfect place to stay to be close by but on our own. It was beautiful, affordable and close to everywhere we needed to be. We spent the week catching up, meeting with other nearby Oliver Travel Trailer owners, socializing with Ken & Kristina in the evenings and Ken even took Chris rock climbing at the Barton Creek Greenbelt. Cherie’s parents arrived and came up to Austin for a family dinner, and they also got to meet Orion (our Oliver Travel Trailer) and Kiki for the first time.

New Braunsfels & San Antonio

And then we relocated down to New Braunsfels to Landa RV & Campground, where some of the NuRVer crowd was supposed to still be lingering, but they had all departed by the time we arrived. Oh well, we’ll catch up with them some time down the road. The advantage of staying here was that it was closer to San Antonio for attending and helping out at the reunion.

Cherie helped her father with organizing the troops for an Eternal Patrol Table Ceremony, as well as handing out awards. She even got to pin a ‘Submarine Angel’ on her mother – making mother and daughter the only submarine angels for the USS Robert E. Lee. Afterwards, Elvis hit on her mother during a performance.

East Texas Driving

From New Braunsfel, we started our northeastward trek towards spending time with Chris’ family up in St. Louis. We stopped in Round Rock for lunch with Digital Nomads moderator, Bill Bivins, and then overnighted near Lexington, TX at the property of another fellow Oliver Travel Trailer owner, Doug & Geneva. Awesome folks, and we have so appreciated the little community that the Oliver Forums have provided for us in our travels.

Eastward on, we decided to use our Texas State Park pass one more time, and overnighted at Martin Creek Lake State Park.

Louisiana and Arkansas

And then dipped into the northern corner of Louisana (just so we can mark it as a state visited this year, in case we don’t get back), and then decided to aim for making it into Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas.

We found ourselves at the beautiful Gulpha Gorge campground, and in the morning indulged ourselves in traditional baths the Buckstaff Bathhouse. It’s quite surreal to have a bath, scrub down by your attendant and a massage at a national park, and definitely an experience to remember. It was a strange combination of being in a hospital setting and being processed through the various steps, and being at a spa. We both came out relaxed and refreshed.

From Hot Springs, we took scenic highway 7 through the Ouachita National Forest. As dark approached for the evening, we saw a sign for a national forest campground along the Buffalo River and made a spontaneous decision to search it out. Down a dirt path we went, and in the darkness of both light and knowledge of what was ahead, it seemed to go on forever until we reached Erbie Campground. It was a full moon night and misty out, and we were all alone – quite enchanting! Kiki and Chris went out for an early morning hike down to the river.

St. Louis

And then it was onward into St. Louis the next day, arriving at Chris’ parents house where Kiki got to meet her Aunt-Dog-Molly for the first time. We caught up on more projects, had a second rendezvous with fellow technomad Ben Willmore as he was passing through, had concretes at Ted Drewes, explored Forest Park and Grants Farm.

All before the next leg of our adventure – starting with a trip down to the Oliver Travel Trailer factory in Hohenwald, TN.

Travelogue: Arizona & New Mexico

Time Period: April 9 – April 23, 2009
Miles Driven: 1255

With very few planned stops and knowing that Arizona and New Mexico were both full of amazing things to see, we opted to primarily follow Route 66 across these states, using the old highway as our guide.  We had both traveled across Arizona and New Mexico independently before, but aside from a brief crossing through the northeastern tip of New Mexico in our travels in 2007, it was the first time for us to explore these states together.  Our route, as it turned out, ended up looking a lot like the roadtrip that Cherie’s family took back in 1983.

Lake Havasu City, AZ

Our first destination in Arizona was to meet up with fellow Oliver Travel Trailer owners, Lisa, Wayne and Andrew.   They had extended an open invite to stop in whenever we got in town and stay as long as we like (our favorite kind of invitation!).

They turned out to be amazingly cool folks, and we ended up geeking out about our trailers, going off-road Jeeping, meeting lots of their fabulous friends, visiting the Desert Bar, and we tempting them to join us for Burning Man 2009.  We even introduced them to light painting after lessons from Ben Willmore the week prior. We  got out on our own a bit and visited THE London Bridge, which was purchased and rebuilt by the founder of Lake Havasu City.

On our way into town via Parker Arizona, we had our first encounter with someone stopping us in the street already knowing what an Oliver Travel Trailer was – and asked if we knew Jim & Evon Oliver, the owners of the company.  We had met Evon last year when we joined up with the Oliver Road Crew at the International Camel Races – but we had yet to meet Jim. We were excited to learn they had a home in Lake Havasu as well, and we might finally get to catch up with him.. and maybe even sneak a peak at the new 22′ Oliver Travel Trailer they had just built the first of!

And indeed we did.  The 22′ version is awesome, adds extra space and addresses a lot of the feature requests folks have had. It felt too big for our needs, but we were definitely impressed by it.  And we do lust after the 4 battery capacity it has.

Route 66

After leaving Lake Havasu, we back tracked a few miles westward to join up with the start of Route 66 in Arizona. There’s a section of about 60 miles between Golden Shores and Kingman that has been beautifully restored and maintained by the BLM, winding through the Black Mountains – and we figured that would be a fabulous way to start our Route 66 tour.

We overnighted on our new friend’s land outside of Hackberry Arizona, and it had an absolutely gorgeous view. We can’t wait to join them on a future group camping trip there.

The drive was beautiful, and we enjoyed checking out old forgotten towns along the way.

The Grand Canyon

We made a quick last minute decision to take a detour off of Route 66 and head on up to the Grand Canyon, since we were in the area anyway. We figured since it was mid-week, we stood decent odds of being able to find camping too. When we arrived, it started snowing – which was a very much unexpected treat for mid-April.

We ended up staying at Mather Campground in the Grand Canyon for two nights, as we had great data signals. It provided a good opportunity to catch up, relax, play in the snow and see some of the most amazing terrain on the planet.

Back to Route 66 in Arizona

After a brief respite in the Grand Canyon National Park, we rejoined Route 66 in Flagstaff but not first without discovering a beautiful traveler’s chapel called Chapel of the Holy Dove along the way.

Continuing eastward we stopped at Walnut Canyon National Monument to check out the cliffside housing ruins of the Sinaqua people, and then took a sunset drive through the Petrified Forest National Park before crossing into New Mexico.

New Mexico: Santa Fe & Albuquerque

We continued following Route 66 all the way to Santa Fe, even going across a section that has turned to gravel road. Wild horses even crossed our path. The emotions of actually driving on the crumbling old road were intense after seeing so many abandoned towns.

We first stopped in Santa Fe and stayed with our friend Bugs, who took us for a tour of the surrounding mountains. We also got to catch up with the couple who bought our T@B (the trailer we traveled in together in 2007) – it’s such a sweet story, he bought the trailer for his wife’s birthday as a surprise to be her mobile painting studio! After Santa Fe, we headed down to catch up with my dear friend Eve and her wife Kelli, and enjoyed a couple days camped on their new property. It was awesome to catch up.

White Sands & Carlsbad Caverns

Leaving Albuquerque, we made stops at Gran Quivira and Three Rivers Petroglyphs on our way to White Sands National Monument, which was overwhelmingly beautiful. Here you drive through a carved out path in the dunes, and then you can climb and play on them. We had great fun here, although Kiki didn’t know quite what to think of it.

And then we moved on to Carlsbad, NM, where we had a serendipitous rendezvous with other fellow Oliver Owners, Geri & Chuck who were on their way to workamp in the area. We had a great time meeting them, comparing trailers and dining together.

The next day, we toured Carlsbad Caverns – another spot that just can’t be missed. Cherie had toured it as a kid and remembered it being impressive – but not as impressive as it is now with life experience behind her.

After Carlsbad, we moved into Texas… where the adventures continued.

Travelogue: California Exodus

Time Period: March 22 – April 9, 2009
Miles Driven: 991

On the morning of March 22, 2009 we pulled up the jacks in South San Francisco, hitched up and made a mad dash out of California. Well, mad dash in a nomadic sense. We didn’t actually cross the border into Arizona for another 2 weeks. What follows is a condensed version of our amazing journey during that time.

Sacramento

Our first stop was Sacramento to visit with our dear friends, Lindsay & Sean. This is also where we keep our storage unit for all the stuff we don’t want to carry with us as we travel. We traded in our winter wardrobes for our spring attire, stocked up on SmartPower Energy Drink (which we currently have a pallet of) and left Chris’ paramotor gear behind.

Sean and Lindsay also gave us a tour around downtown Sacramento and showed us some of their favorite things.

Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards

Next up was back to the San Francisco area for the Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards. We had been invited to attend by our friend, Matthew Cashmore who was in from Australia to run the show. We had been enjoying many evenings hanging out with him. And we met a lot of great travel blogger folks at the awards.

We stayed at our friend Dawn’s place in San Leandro, and enjoyed lots of time hanging out with her daughter Allegra – who our kitten Kiki adores.

Pacific Coast Highway

And then we started heading south along the Pacific Coast Highway, with a stop in Santa Cruz to make a guest appearance on the radio show GeekSpeak.

And then south we went enjoying amazing coastal views the entire way!

Some of our stops included Morro Rock, an old bridge near Gaviota and overnighting at Thornhill Broome State Park along the beach.

Los Angeles

We had intentions of staying in Los Angeles for several days to visit with friends and Chris’ cousins. However, options for parking a trailer in Los Angeles are quite limited. Until we met Melanie of TravelsWithTwo at the Lonely Planet awards. She invited us to park at her place in Studio City, gave us a tour of the neighborhood and did a fun interview with us!

We ended up only staying for a very jam packed 24 hours in the area, which included a private music performance by Chris’ cousin’s band, Watson 66 and a tour of Paramount Studios.

Hemet

Our reason for staying on the west coast for so long was speak at the O’Reilly ETech conference in early March – where we met Victor. He invited us to stop in at his family’s ranch new Hemet if we were ever in the area. And so, there we were.  It was absolutely beautiful.

We met his wife Jennifer, his sister Helene and her boyfriend Sean as well as his parents. All amazing people who felt immediately like family, and they extended an open invite for us to stay as long as we like. However, we already had rendezvous plans with our friend and fellow technomad, Ben Willmore. As serendipity would have it, Helene mentioned she had met him at Photoshop World before. They extended an invite to have our convergence on the ranch, and Ben was quite agreeable to the idea.

So thus, we had a several day stay on the ranch – having lots of fun hiking, learning about sustainable off grid living and working on fun light painting/poi spinning photography projects. We even did a video interview with Ben to compare our technomadic lifestyles. Our stay kept getting extended in the fun of it all, until us technomads made a pact to leave together on Wednesday morning.

Joshua Tree

We then meandered through San Jacinto National Forest and descended into the oasis that is Palm Desert and into our last stop in California – an overnight and drive through Joshua Tree National Park. We arrived at sunset, which also happened to be the rise of a full moon over the mountainscape.

The drive in the morning through the park was gorgeous, and we saw lots of blooming desert flower. We then took Route 62 into Arizona, leaving California behind for now.

On the way up, we of course stopped in Lebanon, OR and encountered Kiki, who joined us up in Seattle on a trial run to see how she did on the road.

It was a quick but fun trip, and we got to visit with many friends and see some great sights.

This being my third trip to Seattle, and having seen Mt. Rainier about 80% of my time in the area, I no longer believe the locals that they hardly ever see it. I love this image we captured after our training class – the cloud formation makes it look like Mt. Rainier is erupting (it wasn’t).

An old friend of ’s, Samantha, who I had met once before in Tampa many years ago contacted me before our trip up and invited us to visit with her and her partner, Anita. They treated us to a wonderful home cooked meal, and then a fantastic walking tours of both the quirky little town of Fremont (complete with a troll and Lenin) and Seattle. They both rock, and it’s awesome to have friends in Seattle to tempt us back up there for a future extended trip.

After Seattle, we headed up to Camano Island, and visited with the original Technomad, Steve Roberts. It was too short of a visit to go see his newest creation, Nomadness, but I did get a tour of Nomadic Research Labs. The three of us had fun geeking out throughout the evening. I look forward to future longer visits.

We took two days to drive back down to the Bay Area – viewing Mt. Shasta for a second time.

We opted not to stop back in Lebanon, as we decided to invite Kiki to become part of Technomadia. Our Journey back to San Francisco was capped off with a brief visit to Sacramento to see Lindsay & Sean.

Now that we are parked in San Francisco and will be here through the end of the year, I present our routing map for our road travel in 2008.

The quick facts:

Left Florida: July 13, 2008
Days intentionally “homeless”: 171
Miles traveled: 9120
States visited: 17

The blue line represents our journey towing the T@b, and the red line represents our time since picking up the Oliver on July 30 in Hohenwald, TN. I only include miles actually in tow.

Combined with our 2007 Adventure, we have a total of 379 days on the road, 22,021 miles and 26 states visited together.

Due to popular demand, here are pictures of actual camels!

From the Camel Races, we ventured on to Carson City to meet up again with the Oliver Road Crew for a couple of days to help them set up their new blog tracking their adventure of touring with a couple of demo Oliver Travel Trailers. (ahem… ORC folks, you need to continue updating it!)

We headed back to Reno to pick up the last remaining parts from our pre-warranty expiration visit to a Jeep Dealer. Nothing major, just didn’t want to let the warranty lapse without having everything looked over. And then we headed to Nevada City to meet up with a potential new client that we met at the Camel Races. We boondocked overnight in the Tahoe National Forest, after Chris did an incredible job of backing up a dirt road, uphill into an old miner’s wagon trail – where we found the one exact spot that was level. It was an amazing feat that was worth every ounce of effort for the view.

After our stay in Nevada City with our gracious host, we headed on into Sacramento for some de-playafication with our intentional family and homebase with Lindsay and Sean. We did lots of laundry, repacked the Jeep and Orion and got everything back out of Burning Man mode. We attended the Tamale Festival as well as toured art on the streets of downtown Sacramento during the ‘Second Saturdy’ event. We had a generally awesome time hanging out with these awesome people.

One evening, Lindsay called us after her workday in need of a substitute bowler on her league team – so Chris and I rushed over and filled in the gap. I hadn’t bowled much at all since my days as a child league bowler (yes, I will now admit my secret past as a bowler, which I think scared Chris a bit when he found out). I did pretty decently, and had an absolute blast.

(Note the jeans I’m wearing – Haven’t been able to fit into them since my hysterectomy back in February..woohoo!)

After Sacramento, it was off to House Weirdness ( and ) in San Leandro for a few nights, where there was a nomadic convergence of sorts happening and we got to hang out more with and meet the lovely .

Our first outing was the quarterly All Night Dance Celebration (ANDC), which had a pajama dress code this time around. Lindsay had loaned me an adorable leopard print nightgown, that I wore with some other things from my wardrobe. And Chris looked absolutely smashing in his silks.

This was followed by an amazing weekend of socializing before Chris and I headed to the hills overlooking San Leandro to Anthony Chabot Regional Park. It was beautiful and remote there, even if only 3 miles from where we were. We stayed up there three nights, mostly relaxing and catching up. Aside from a visit from , we stayed pretty much out of physical contact with other humans. The campground is very beautiful, but unfortunately the cellular connectivity was a bit sketchy even with our uber cell phone booster system. We scoped out some potential other sites that may be better for future stays in the park.

And then we moved to Woodside on the other side of the Bay, where had invited us to crash. Little did we know that the room she is subletting is part of a huge lot where a 75′ sailboat is being constructed by the owner of the house. He’s been working on the project for nearly 30 years, and it is arguably the most impressive thing I have seen. It’s mind boggling, and we’re parked right underneath it. made an awesome post about the boat during our tour of it over the weekend by the craftsman complete with pictures.

This past weekend has been much fun with more socializing and fun events that included a ‘Flavor Tripping’ beta test for a party that is hosting soon, a pool party at our host’s home, a tour of TechShop, more social partying and Sunday at Folsom Street Fair.

TechShop was really interesting to explore. Imagine you could construct your dream workshop with every tool and building toy imaginable. Now, imagine that you didn’t have to pay to assemble said workshop and could instead just pay for access to it. And you get the incredible coolness that is TechShop. invited us to join him for his scheduled time on the lasercutting machine and told us to bring something to play with. Inspired by his uber cool jeans he created there, I brought a pair of my jeans and he converted my jeans into artwork in mere minutes:

On Sunday, we joined up again with Matt in downtown San Francisco for Folsom Street Fair. I had never been, but considered it something I just had to experience once in my life as part of the awesomeness that is San Francisco. It’s a street fair dedicated to the gay man’s leather community, and, well.. there is lots of leather, lots of gay men and lots of general sexual openness. It was really cool. (I am so totally dragging to this next year!)

After FSF, Chris and I headed to the Rhythm Society Friend’s Meet, who host the All Night Dance Celebration as well as many other cool spiritually infused dance events, and became an offical ‘Friend’, thanks to my sponsor Peter. It feels really cool to be officially part of that community that I’ve been flirting around the edges of for a year or so now. It’s a perfect spiritual expression and community that I have been feeling a desire for in my life for years. And perhaps even more impressive, I managed to do yoga postures in my leather corset dress I was still wearing post-Folsom.

Monday was a very hectic day of moving Chris’ storage unit from San Francisco to Sacramento – there was much public transit goodness and heavy lifting involved. And we did it one day.

For a man who espouses the ‘Stuff is an Anchor’ philosophy, I just gotta say – he has too much stuff for a nomad!!

So, that catches us up until now.

We currently await word from the Obama Campaign, as we have applied to volunteer until election day in anyway we can best contribute. We may be relocating to Nevada (a swing state) for the month of October. Our stay in the Bay Area is on a day-to-day basis until we hear otherwise.

And then it was a really quick trip across Nebraska and into Wyoming, where we overnighted at the Flaming Gorge. Most have already seen the rainbow picture we got there, but I’ll include it here anyway to complete the story of this leg of the journey.

We had time for a quick stop in Salt Lake City for dinner with ..

.. before we headed into southeast Utah to visit Zion National Park. The purpose of our routing this way was to meet up with the good folks at Powerful Signal, who provide the cell phone booster systems for the Oliver. The repeater antenna was overpowered for the size of the trailer and causing oscillations with the receiver, so they offered to help us tweak it out if we were in their area of the country. So, since St. George, UT was only a couple hundred miles off our already rushed track, we thought – why not? So we headed towards St. George, UT – and they recommended we stay at Zion, and they’d be happy to come to our campsite. They left us with all sorts of toys to try out to maximize our connection. What fabulous customer service and mega-cool people to boot! Definitely – go to them for any of your signal boosting needs – mobile, stationary, personal or business. These guys rock and know their stuff.

The trip through Zion was absolutely, without a doubt, breathtaking. and I used up our week’s ration of ‘Wow’ within minutes. Just a sampling of the photos I took..

We stayed two nights in Zion, despite not scoring a campspot with power. It was topping 105 degrees during the heat of the day while we were there, and 2 days was just about all we could handle without air conditioning. But it was good prep for Burning Man to start conditioning our bodies for the elements.

And since we knew our friends Sterling and Melissa where planning a weekend in Vegas and had invited us along – we felt it was nomadic serendipity to plan to rendezvous with them.

And as soon as we made that decision, Curtis & DeeAnn who are on a 6 month nomadic journey across the US traveling in a Prius with 2 blogging cats contacted us to let us know they would be in Vegas around the same time. So viola – instant party in Vegas.

I don’t think we really needed the following days of 115 degree weather in Vegas to remind our bodies what desert heat is – Burning Man should feel temperate in comparison. But it was completely awesome to spend time with friends and experience Las Vegas for my first time.

Our other highlights in Vegas included attending Coverville 500 and seeing Le Reve, as well as some of the most awesome sushi ever. Oh, and yes – I blew $2 in the slot machines.

And then it was on into California to stay in Sacramento for a few nights. Lindsay and Sean have a new apartment that has room for our trailer in their parking lot – so it was awesome to stay there and mentally catch up from the past few months for a bit. We got some chores done and prep’d to hit the road to Burning Man.

Right now, we’re in Reno where we’re making final procurements before heading out to the playa in the morning to hold land for Camp Nomadia. We had the Most Awesome Shopping Experience last night at Save Mart to get groceries. And this afternoon we passed 5000 miles that we have traveled since departing Florida in mid-July. I am ready to be still for a while.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised in the past couple of days to learn that dear friends have decided to attend Burning Man last minute. And I can honestly say, that for the first time in months – I’m actually excited about it, and not just seeing it as another item to check off my to-do list.

On Saturday, we did a brewery tour at Annheiser-Busch.

It was very cool, but I must admit – after the frustrations with Charter, the free beer samples were much appreciated.

After the free beer, we drove around a bit and came across the Soulard Farmer’s Market, which was started in 1779. We browsed around it for a while, and scored 8 kiwis for 50 cents, 3 avocados for a dollar, a delicious pineapple for a buck ninety and two pairs of fuzzy socks for five bux.

And then it was on to the famous Ted Drewes for concretes (a frozen custard mixed with fun stuff.. sorta like what DQ tries to replicate with a blizzard). I had the Cindermint.. very yummy!

On Sunday, we joined Chris’ Aunt S and Uncle S for a day of exploring the City Museum. Let me preface this by saying that the name ‘City Museum’ may give one a different impression of what you’re about to experience.

It’s a museum showcasing found stuff around the city (old bridges, airplanes, building materials) and such – and put together in a unique, artistic and interactive ways. It’s much better described as being a year round midwest embassy for Burning Man.

It’s entirely interactive.. and not just press-buttons interactive. More like: crawl around inside 5 story tall wire tubes and slide down 3 story tall spiral slides, crawling through mounted open airplanes that exit into castles, explore the inner funky caverns constructed in the middle of the building, watch teams of bouncy circus performers, find hidden cool shops and bars and such. Kinda like a human habitrail that had to be conceived while tripping on something. It’s art! It’s imagination! It’s incredible construction, architecture and vision. It’s the ultimate in reuse philosophy. It’s a playground, and adults can play too!

Words, pictures or stories really can not convey the awesomeness of this place. If we ever settle down somewhere, renting a loft in this building would be *so* cool!

Oh, and the best part.. City Museum is host to the official Midwest Spatula Museum:

After the City Museum, we had the best pizza ever at Feraro’s New Jersey Style Pizza. And it got even better cold for breakfast this morning.

(As always, click on thumbnails to see larger versions of the pictures on Flickr, and I do have more photos posted there that I don’t include in the travelogue.)

Our first stop over point was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We took a friend up on her offer of crash space to use as a springboard for exploring the area for the weekend.

Our arrival into Minneapolis actually happened to coincide with the release of Apple’s Leopard OSX, so we headed directly for the Mall of America to stand in line with the rest of the geeks. Mall of America was *insane*.

We each got one of the limited edition Leopard OSX t-shirts. Since I don’t have a Mac, mine is still in the wrapper and I’m contemplating eBaying it. If any Man-fans want to make an offer for it before I do so.. it’s a size Large. Just let me know.

Over the weekend, we did a bit of driving around the city to get a feel for it, including stopping at Minnehaha Falls, which had been recommended to me by several folks. It was pretty.. for an inner-city waterfall. We also saw cool buildings, and did a good bit of thrift store shopping.

Saturday evening we went out to a live music performance of ‘All The Pretty Horses’ in Uptown, where we ran into some fellow burners (the trick to finding burners is apparently to wear el wire!). That was quite cool. We dressed up a bit in costume for Halloween.. me in my leopard dance suit, and Chris in his Leopard OSX T-shirt – he was my leopard tamer. No one at the club seemed to get it.. but I thought it was a rather clever last minute costume. *giggle*

On Sunday we headed over to visit with David and Nancy, who I had met many years ago when they were down to Florida for a rendezvous with our friend Jay – who Chris has known for many years. It’s a small, small world. We had a lovely time hanging out and gaming, and they treated us to a night in their way luxurious jacuzzi suite bedroom. Oh, my! Decadence.

On Monday, we meet up with a friend of Chris’ that he’s known since grade school for dinner a bit south of Minneapolis in Faribult. It was fun catching up. We found a beautiful place to overnight on the Mississippi near Lake City, and then headed on southward following the river into Wisconsin.

Some beautiful things we saw along the way, including the world’s largest six pack of beer in La Cross, Wisconsin.

We overnighted there just outside of Potosi at the Grant River Corp of Engineers recreational area. It was quite lovely on the banks of the river.

In the morning, we ducked over the border into Dubuque, Iowa to fill up on biodiesel than southeastward into Illinois. Along the way, we took a diversion outside of Bellevue, IA when we saw a sign for the ‘Fritz Chapel’. Lovely back country roads and scenery.

We then made a beeline across Illinois, with a stop in Lockport to see one of Chris’ many childhood houses. We arrived in Chesterton, IN in time to take my friend Kele out for dinner. We’ll stay here until Sunday, with a possible train trip into Chicago on Saturday, then we’ll head to St. Louis. I’m very much looking forward to more hanging out and catch up time with her, and exploring the area.

All photos hosted on my Flickr Technomadic Adventure Set – click any thumbnail for larger versions, comments always welcomed. I also usually upload more photos to Flickr than I include in my travelouges.

When Chris and I were doing research on the best states to set up residency for tax and voting purposes while being nomadic, South Dakota stood out as being very attractive. Only 3% excise tax to register new vehicles, low annual fees, no inspections, no state income tax, low insurance rates and no requirement to actually be in the state except to pick-up your driver’s license. And many companies in South Dakota have set up mail forwarding services just for ‘full timers’ that help handle a lot of things remotely (like registering vehicles).

So all of these factors eventually outweighed the hesitancy of setting up residency in somewhere non-exotic sounding like South Dakota, and on we proceeded with virtually moving Chris there back in July. The only thing left to do was pick up a driver’s license within 90 days, so thus our trek eastward began back in early September. Chris had more immediate needs to set up residency than I did.. being a California resident with a new vehicle to register. I still own a house in Florida with a homestead exemption, and Florida is on the list of top states to set up residency in if you’re nomadic.. so I’ll stay there for now.

We usually get raised eyebrows when we tell folks that Chris is ‘moving’ to South Dakota. I’m guessing, like us, they don’t have much prior experience with the state to go from and have it classed as a ‘good place to be from.’ I know I wasn’t much looking forward to having to visit South Dakota even once, and we planned our trip for Chris to stop in Rapid City, the city closest to the southwest corner of the state with a DMV so we could just bounce in and out quickly.

We arrived in South Dakota almost two weeks ago, and we haven’t left yet.

Rapid City

As we were arriving, I researched our camping options. After a month of being on the constant go with no more than 3 nights in any one spot – we were both craving some down time. I found rave reviews of Mystery Mountain Resort on Hwy 16 between Rapid City and Mt. Rushmore – it sounded like our style. And when we arrived, my online intuition proved right. Friendly staff, well maintained, acres and acres of woods, laundry center and wifi. And, we were maybe one of three folks camped there. All the beauty of state and national parks, with the amenities of a private park.. perfect for an extended stay. We got a deal on a weekly rate, and put up camp. And to our delight, there was a cat hanging around who loved getting snuggles in the evenings.

Our week there was so peaceful, recharging and relaxing. We caught up on work and were productive, ventured into Rapid City a few times for dinner, movies, shopping and strolling. A great little city with all the essentials but not too big. And being still for a little bit was such a treat. Mostly we just ‘lived’ and didn’t make efforts to go and see things. We used rainy weather as a perfect opportunity to extend our stay a few more days.

In our time, we did some exploring around the Black Hills.

Mt. Rushmore

I was expecting this to be a somewhat obligatory American tourist destination. It was actually quite impressive.. more so than I was prepared for. The artistry, the dedication to the project, the vision and the representation of the changing times during when it was built all gave some beautiful ties into American history and cultural climate of the 1920s and 30s.

Chris took some amazing night shots, that I hope he’ll post and share later.

Custer State Park

This park is just south of Mt. Rushmore and contains Sylvan Lake (which had been recommended by several people) and Needle’s Highway, winding it’s way through impressive cathedral like rock formations. Some of the roads also were built to give great views of Mt. Rushmore. And we even had our path blocked by a herd of.. donkeys. Yes. Donkeys.

A beautiful drive, and it had me craving a small car or motorcycle to experience it with. I can see why thousands flock to nearby Sturgis to bike in this area.

Eastward through south South Dakota: Wall drug and Badlands

We then headed eastward and decided to stop in the famous Wall Drug, where you too can get FREE ICE WATER! This midwest icon used to be a failing pharmacy that turned into a stopping point for road travelers on their way to Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone to get some water, ice cream and stock up on supplies. It’s now a huge roadside tourist spot, complete with jackelopes and animatronic T-rex dinosaurs. Bizarre.

And then, the Badlands, which were named exactly because they were bad lands to cross.

But beautiful and other worldly lands indeed.

Eastward and ’stuck’ in Madison

We overnighted in Pierre, intending to head up to Hwy 12 for our eastward trek into Minneapolis. In the morning however, we noticed that staying on 34 would take us through Madison – which is where Chris’ mail forwarding service, My Dakota Address is located. And since we knew we had some Netflix movies and checks waiting for us, we decided to use the opportunity to stop in and pick up our mail, meet the staff and actually step foot in Chris’ new hometown.

We pulled into Madison mid-afternoon and met the awesome Teri, and picked up our mail. We were starting to contemplate where we might overnight, and as we were pulling out – we noticed Jeep’s check engine light was on again. And the transmission was acting funky. A quick look online showed that there was a 5-star Jeep dealership, Prostrollo Auto Mall, just literally around the corner.

Nomadic Serendipity?

We pulled up, explained our situation to the service representative, Dale. He had his mechanics run a diagnostic and determined that the transmission was indeed starting to have problems. He was so considerate of our traveling situation and plans to get to Minneapolis, and said that we might make it there, but there was a good chance of the transmission getting burned up and us being stranded along the way. But the repairs would take likely until Tuesday to be completed, and he was afraid it might interrupt our weekend plans. Not wanting to take a chance of getting stranded and our plans of socializing could be rescheduled, I asked if he had recommendations for places to camp locally. A few moments later he came back with some campgrounds he had called around on our behalf to see what was open, and an offer of a loaner car for the time we’d be in town without Jeep.

Wow. Was this real? He called around for us? Loaner car without begging for it?

What a complete contrast to our experience with Great Valley Jeep in Sacramento, who we couldn’t even get to return a phone call for a week to get a status update, and refused our request of a loaner vehicle.

So, we set up camp last night at a beautiful campground on a lake on the outskirts of town, that amazingly still has the bathhouse/showers open (so many close down after Oct 1 in the north), with a very friendly staff. It’s simply beautiful here, and we’re soaking in the charm and friendliness of a small town.

Speaking of which, nomadic serendipity just arrived.. Teri from My Dakota Address just dropped off firewood and a town paper for us. And our requisite trailer kitty just appeared.

And I will never again have any shame in my voice when we tell folks that our residency is in South Dakota. It’s a beautiful and friendly state I’m proud to be linked to.

Yellowstone National Park

We stayed in Yellowstone for two nights, and spent two days exploring around. It is truly other-worldy there – mud volcanoes, steam vents, geysers and all sorts of other gloopy colorful things venting stinky gases. All the pictures in the world can’t capture the full experience your five senses get to experience in this unique part of the world – smells, textures, sounds, sights and tastes (hot cocoa!).

The wildlife there is abundant – we saw herds of buffalo (side note, did you know that ‘Buffalo buffalo Buffalo’ is a complete sentence?), elk, birds and I even spotted a wolf. There’s massive formations made by seeping minerals, snowy mountains, amazing waterfalls (with closed bathrooms), and miles and miles of roads and hiking trails. There’s even villages located throughout the park with camping, hotels, restaurants, stores and my favorite – hot chocolate! I came in prepared to be all primitive like – fighting bears off with sticks, living off the grid and having no communications. Quite the surprise.

Definitely put Yellowstone on your to-see list.. and do yourself a favor. Give yourself more than 2 days to explore it. I’m definitely looking forward to coming back, and Chris and I are even tempted to explore doing seasonal work there sometime.

Bighorn Canyon National Recreational Area

We took the East exit towards Cody, Wyoming out of Yellowstone. Caught up on some work projects during the day in Cody, then headed north up to Bighorn Canyon National Recreational Area – as suggested by Chris’ dad. And wow, I need to buy the man a beer when we get to St. Louis.. it was absolutely beautiful! And free campground all to ourselves overlooking massive red cliffs and water to boot.

We spent the evening huddled in Tab as a massive thunderstorm blew through with strong cold winds that kept us swaying all night. In the morning, we crossed northwards into Montana one last time to see Devil’s Overlook – the massive canyons in the picture above.

‘Scenic’ Byways and Devil’s Tower

We did a long day of driving eastward through the very scenic Wyoming. We took 14A – a scenic backcountry byway – across most of the state. A very twisty, windy road that goes through a 10,000 ft mountain pass. I’m sure it was quite beautiful, but unfortunately we had very low hanging clouds causing foggy conditions. So much of our view of the drive was like this:

We did get to notice the really cool red roads.

And then it was onwards to northeastern Wyoming, where we passed our 10,000 mile mark for our journey. To commerate the milestone, I have started a journey route map that shows where we’ve been since leaving Florida together on May 10, 2007:

Our last evening in Wyoming was at the nation’s first national monument – Devil’s Tower.

Recognize the formation? Yup, that’s the mountain that was in 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Unfortuantely, we didn’t have that movie with us, so instead we watched Spies Like Us after we got into camp. Eeeks.. I can’t believe I ever thought that was a good movie.

We did a hike around Devil’s Tower in the morning before heading out.

After a yummy lunch (and more hot chocolate) at the Ponderosa Cafe and Bar in Hulett (highly recommended).. we crossed into Chris’ new ‘home’ state for the first time. It’s also the first state that we’ve been to where neither of us has been before. We’ve set up camp near Rapid City, and will likely stay here for a week or so. We’ve got some business to take care of, including getting Chris his driver’s license to complete his residency.

And it’s good to have the stabilizers down for a bit.

We headed east out of Portland, working our ways through the Columbia Gorge – which is some stunning scenery. We stopped and saw and played in waterfalls – even some (Multnomah Falls) that could easily have passed as a set for Lord of the Rings.

We overnighted 3 nights along the gorge – two of them at John Day Dam on the Washington side of the gorge. It’s an Army Corp of Engineers campground – and free. I have come to believe, after staying in a variety of campgrounds – that the free ones tend to be the most amazing in terms of scenery and privacy. We had a stunning private landing, watching ships pass our campsite. And we had an awesome internet connection to boot – making it a great place to use to catch up on work.

From there, we stopped to see Stonehenge. No, not that Stonehenge. This is scale replica of what Stonehenge might have looked like before it decayed, that was built as a war memorial near Maryhill, Washington. Or you could go by my story.. I’m a genie and I restored Stonehenge back to its original condition with a blink.

We briefly crossed back in Oregon before heading into southeastern Washington, stopping in Walla Walla and overnighting at a small state campground. This area of the country is so vastly different than the gorge – fields of caramel and chocolate, reminding me of a marble cake.

And then we were onwards into Idaho, passing through the Clearwater National Forest, which we overnighted in. I had only one image of Idaho in my head – which was fields of potatoes. So the mountains and forests really amazed me. And I didn’t see a single potato.. however, we did find a drive-up soft serve ice cream shack before entering the forest. I love nomadic serendipity.

After a night deep in the forests of Idaho, we crossed into Montana. We worked our way across the western part of the state, overnighting outside of Missoula and then Butte. We actually paid for a commercial campground with hook-ups outside of Butte – as we broke a battery cable while in the Clearwater Forest that we repaired in Missoula, so the batteries were not getting recharged. For the first time since June, we had to actually plug in to top off our batteries (we usually get our power from our solar panel and while driving).

All topped off and rested, we started our trek southward towards Yellowstone as snow flurries started to sprinkle the tops of the surrounding mountains. We overnighted on the way at Harrison Lake – a campground that I had little information to go by to find. Really quite beautiful to wake up to in the morning – particularly watching a flock of birds fly overhead.

And then it was south down 287, passing through Ennis and enjoying an antique soda fountain for lunch (real vanilla creme soda… yum). We were stopped along the route by a herd of cows being wrangled by cowgirls in the street.

This afternoon, we crossed into Wyoming and the western entrance into Yellowstone National Park. This afternoon we have seen so much wildlife.. elk, buffalo, bear, ostrich and even a fox. (There was a warning notice in our entry package into the park that read “Warning: Many visitors have been gored by buffalo”.. gulp.. we’re not in Disney!)

We made our way north to the Mammoth Hot Springs village, and found plenty of camp spots available – and an astonishing high speed data cellular connection. This evening we climbed the terrace around a hot spring deposit site, and the found the grill in the village and enjoyed a nice hot cup of hot cocoa. I never anticipated that camping in Yellowstone would be so luxurious.

We may just stay in Yellowstone a couple days and explore around.

On our way back from Reno, we stopped in Sacramento at Lindsay and Sean’s for a couple of days to get things washed and repacked. As always, an awesome visit with those two. On Thursday, we headed into the Bay Area and stayed in San Leandro to pick up some stuff we had shipped to meet up with us. And then on Friday, we relocated to the South Bay so that we could carpool in with our friend Dave to the Singularity Summit for the weekend.

The Summit was fabulous.. an amazing amount of brain power and focus on Artificial General Intelligence.

Above is a picture of Eliezer Yudkowsky presenting the three differing definitions of the Singularity. Unfortunately, this is the only picture of the summit that came out with any clarity – so I don’t have good pictures to share of the many other fabulous presenters. But I can say, the summation of the the summit that I walked away with is that when we go into the Singularity, AGIs will get bored with us humans and eat the planet on their way out of here. So.. enjoy life while you can *grin*. The other pic is of Chris looking all smart-like as we discussed the summit with Dave during our lunch break on the grasses of the Palace of the Fine Arts.

After the summit, we stuck around in the Bay Area for a couple extra days for a business meeting. Yes folks, Chris and I are working on our first major contract together.. as nomads, no less! Woo-hoo. It’s been a lot of fun meshing brain waves with him to do the research for this and write our technical papers. And it’s really nice to have some funding and biodiesel money.

After the meetings, we headed up the coast with a stop in Benicia for one last stay over with our SmartPower drink friends, Mark and Min. It was awesome to visit with them, hopefully helped get them situated in some great places that can get them more market distribution and stocked up on a few cases ourselves. We are leaving the SmartPower region afterall.. and we have gone on rationing.

And then.. we left the Bay Area for a while, heading up 101 with a goal of being to Portland by September 21st. We loaded up with a tank of B100 biodiesel in Hopland on the way out.. and on we went, releasing french fry smelling emissions in our wake.

We stayed in a couple of Redwood parks on our way up the coast in Northern California. Absolutely stunning. And then we crossed into Oregon.. our first new state in our journey in months! There is something special about Oregon, you feel as soon as you cross the state line – from the flower landscaped ‘Welcome’ sign, to the uber friendly road signs to friendlier drivers and a general shift in attitude in the people you stop to talk to. So warm, inviting and friendly.

And the coast of Oregon? Simply breathtaking. We made a stop in Bandon overnight to stay with the folks of Poly Pots (there is no kidding with the ‘many pots’ there… their house was covered with many pots they handmake and sell), who had invited us to stop in on our travels. Delightful people, and it was amazing to watch them work on their art form.

Next, more driving along the coast and many stunning views. I was also on a mission to stop at Yaquina Head Lighthouse, just north of Newport for my father. We were on our way to meet them in Portland for the reunion of the submarine my father served on in the 1960s, which my father also happens to be the organizer of. As part of the awards banquet, he always gifts my mother with a lighthouse (as, she’s a major lighthouse nut). When they were scoping out Oregon to host the reunion at, they did a romantic night in Newport to see Yaquina Head, but it was shut down for renovations. So, he had us stop and pick up a statue of the lighthouse as her gift. Beautiful lighthouse.

From Newport, we took Highway 20 eastwards towards Lebanon, for a stop over on a former Rhea Ranch that now just has llamas, chickens and bunnies on it. It’s owned by a friend of Chris’, Martha – and it was an absolutely delightful stay to get a taste of more rural Oregon for the week. Many great conversations, and an instant feeling of welcoming and being part of an extended family. Martha also gifted me with some great clothing.. better than going to a thrift store .

After visiting Martha’s ranch, we headed northwards towards Portland to rendezvous with my parents and my brother and his wife who had flown in from Texas to be there as well. A long overdue family reunion.. and a chance for my family to get to know Chris better.

The reunion was amazing, as always. My father pulled out all the stops, organized many great ceremonies, included active service submariners from a local base and really touched a lot of the veterans who attended. And I was once again honored to be able to help out in making the reunion happen.

We also got to tour the SS-581 Blueback, that was at the OMSI in Portland with my family.. lots of fun!

And now.. we’re making our way eastward towards South Dakota. We just picked up a brand new digital camera – a FujiFilm FinePix F50SE, and here’s the first picture of us camped in Cascade Mountains this morning:

It was quite a memorable experience.

But without a doubt, the highlight of the week was 4th of July evening, while I was preparing some late afternoon drinks for Chris and I after he landed the paramotor – a couple coming up to us on bicycles who had just arrived. No, they weren’t coming over to see the cool paramotor that just landed – they were gushing over Tab. Apparently, they had just arrived in their own home built teardrop camper. Nomadic Serendipity and the Playa brought us together to create Camp Teardrop:

We became fast friends with Roy & Courtney, and enjoyed teaming up resources with them and sharing in the misery of the heat.

Temperature Log / July 6 / 102 degrees

On Friday, the four of us broke camp and parted ways. Chris and I decided to head towards the coast for cooler temperatures and started heading northwest. We found Modoc National Forest and their *free* campground. It was gorgeous, deserted and relaxing.. but still hot. So onwards we headed.

Temperature Log / July 7 / 99 degrees

We got into Fall River Mills, and stopped on the side of the road, contemplating where to head towards next. Chris had experience paragliding at Hat Creek Rim nearby, and there was free camping allowed there – or we were debating about heading up into Shasta or Lassin Mountains for the evening. The answer came to us when Chris’ paramotor instructor, Greg, pulled up and invited us back to his home for dinner with his family. The three of us then headed up to Hat Creek, with the intention of me doing a tandem with Greg. I was all set ready to go.. in the harness and everything.. until he mentioned getting air sick. I couldn’t get that out of my mind (it’s my biggest battle with things like that).. and when we had a rough first attempt at taking off.. I just couldn’t convince myself to jump off a 1000′ cliff anymore. Well, the jumping didn’t concern me.. it was the hour under canopy that concerned me.

So instead, I sat on the edge of the cliff and took some gorgeous pics of Chris flying around:

We stayed at the launch zone overnight, and had our slumber interrupted by a couple playing really loud and icky vile gangster rap music. In the middle of the night, I’m sure our minds made the situation out to be worse than it actually was.. but we were scared, played it cautiously and as soon as they left us alone, we left down the opposite side of the mountain. We found a rest stop that seemed peaceful and stayed the rest of the night there.

Temperature Log / July 8 – 2p / 110 degrees

We headed on across the state, taking a back mountain road out of Redding cleverly named A16. It was narrow, windy and absolutely gorgeous. Golden hills and mountains, and the temperature gauge reached 110 degrees.

Temperature Log / July 8 – 4p / 85 degrees

Over a range of mountains and we were into the Trinity National Forest.

Temperature Log / July 8 – 7p / 55 degrees

The temperatures began to drop.. the hillsides turned green and covered with redwoods! Onwards we went to 101, and started heading south in search of a spot to overnight. We ended up staying in Humboldt Redwoods State Park for the next two nights, nestled amongst the redwoods providing delightful cool shade.

Unfortunately, redwoods don’t charge up solar panels very well and we were starting to run low on voltage. So, onwards we went towards the coast into Ft. Bragg. Seeing the Pacific Ocean, after so many days in heat and desert conditions… was a breath of fresh air.

Searching around on Google, we found Camp One – a free campground that is part of the Jackson Demonstration State Forest. It had excellent reviews, and seemed to be pretty off the beaten path and unmarked. Sure enough, we arrive and it lived up to every expectation and more.

Where else can you get a camp space that is at least an acre in size, has bathroom facilities and stunning scenery FOR FREE?? Now granted, we couldn’t get cell signal without hiking a mile up a trail – so we did spend our days in coffee shops of the very cute city of Ft. Bragg working during the day. But this place was amazing and relaxing. And I’m now reluctant to pay upwards of $30-50/night for parking in essentially a parking lot crammed next to other huge RVs.

We stayed there until last weekend, when we relocated to Camp & Sons outside of Willits for the Rhythm Society’s weekend campout.. which was totally amazing. Very magical grounds, lots of cool people and non-stop dancing.. in a pond, no less!

We’re now stationed in Sacramento with Sean & Lindsay, catching up on work, e-mail and vehicle maintenance. We’re also researching where to go next.. because for the first time we actually have no where to be until Burning Man

So.. last I updated, we were at Lake Meredith in Fritch, TX – which was a spectacular location. We actually considered staying there for another night, but thought we should get a move on westward as our desired date of arrive in California is quickly approaching.

So, onwards into New Mexico we went. I loved watching the terrain change the further west we went. We got past the border after a lunch at Red’s Drive-In while still in Texas. We stopped in Clayton, NM for a stop at the traveler’s center for recommendations on where to overnight. It looked like a storm was brewing, and we were not inclined to drive through it. We were pointed towards Clayton Lake State Park just 15 miles away, and we headed out that way – watching the storm approach in the distance. We arrived, and we were the only ones in the non-electric section and took a spot furthest away from anyone. We road out the storm in Tab, and then when it passed there was still plenty of daylight for a hike out to the advertised dinosaur prints by the dam. I’m not convinced they’re anything other than holes in the ground.. but what the heck. It’s apparently the best collection of dinosaur tracks on the planet.

In the morning I woke to the most amazing sunrise out our window, and the winds were gusting. Forecasts where predicting steady 35-45 mph winds with 60 mph gusts. We headed on with our plans, taking the ’short cut’ out of the park – which lead us down dirt roads in NE New Mexico. It was a challenge to navigate through, given that half the roads that Streets & Trips routed us down didn’t exist. But, we found a way through and visited Capulin Volcano. We went to the top and hiked the perimeter in the high winds.. which was quite an experience.

And then it was onwards. Our mileage indicator showed that we had well over 100 miles on the tank – and the nearest city was about 50. No problem we thought. Except that the stiff cross winds greatly reduced our mileage. We ended up pulling into Rotan, NM with just under a gallon of diesel left and the indicator reading zero for the last 7 miles. The winds were brutal and exhausting to drive through, and every time a big rig would pass us we’d shift over a couple feet. Scary.

We got some lunch in town and then decided to find campgrounds not too far out. There was no way we were making it into Salida – which was still a good 4 hours out. We wanted to avoid the interstate so that we could go at our own pace, so routed up a back way down ‘Old Rotan Pass Road’ through the mountains. Beautiful dirt road.. until it ended in a wall of boulders. Grrr. So we backtracked to the interstate – but not before having a wild black bear cross right in front of us!! Amazing.

Up north into Colorado, and across the Highway of Legends. We overnighted in Purgatoire Campgrounds in the San Isabel National Forest. Hardly anyone there, the camp host greeted us and warned us of a bear that had been hanging out near the campground. At dusk, we decided to take a quick stroll around the campgrounds to stretch our legs, and as we were rounding the corner – I spotted the bear not more than 50 ft off. I stopped Chris, and hung still. The bear stood up (to smell) – which was amazing to see in the ‘wild’. It noticed us and turned around to head back up the mountain it came from. Thankfully, we were nearby a restroom so we had shelter nearby if things had gone differently. But wow.. two wild bears in one day!!

The night was rough with all the gusty winds bouncing us about, but we were up and moving fairly early and headed on north towards Salida. We took some gorgeous roads up with incredible Rocky Mountain views, and even saw buffalo roaming in a refuge. We’ve also spotted several deer, chipmunks, birds, bunnies and more. It’s been like our own little southwestern safari!

We arrived in Salida yesterday afternoon to visit with Teresa and Andrew, and decided to put up camp in the RV park they’re staying at near Cotopaxi while they house hunt. We’re off on our own, down in a basin right on the banks of the raging Arkansas River. We even had white water rafters zoom by earlier. It’s breathtakingly beautiful here, and it’s nice to not be in motion today.

We’ll leave out sometime tomorrow and start a pretty direct route, aiming to arrive in Sacramento by Thursday.

This is my view as I type this. Of course, the picture doesn’t do it justice and the colors keep becoming more and more vibrant as the sun sets over the lake and behind a thunderstorm over to the west (probably over New Mexico).

Yes indeed.. this is the stuff that makes nomadic life totally rock.

Oh.. and it’s a national park, so camping is free. Free?!? I can stay here for 14 days free?

I’ve never really been to much of the midwest, besides Chicago and Champaign, IL before. And honestly, I really never previously had much of a desire to visit them – hearing less than exciting tales from friends who grew up or lived there. So we passed through Tennessee, with stops in Chattanooga and Nashville. We cut through Kentucky under the dark of night, so unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of that. And then we crossed through Illinois, arriving at Chris’ folks house outside of St. Louis around 3am – arriving to a very excited mom who had been waiting up for our arrival.

I have to admit, I had low expectations for St. Louis upon my arrival. I had an impression of it being old, crime ridden and nothing of note other than an arch. The last week has totally changed my opinion. I experienced several firsts during my visit – from first tastes of food, adventures and baseball!

Thursday – Columbia, IL

On Thursday, Chris’ mom gave us a tour of their suburban town of Columbia, IL, ending the day with dinner at their country club to celebrate her upcoming 60th birthday, along with Chris’ grandma. I got a tour of their beautiful home, which is on a large lot with a pristine garden that was on par with living in a park. It was a gorgeous environment for working with my wireless connection outside in the shade.

I also got to try roped provel cheese, apparently a St. Louis area speciality. It was super yummy on the salad we had for lunch.

Friday – St. Louis, MO

After working most of the morning, Chris, his mom and I went into St. Louis where they showed off Forrest Park – an uber cool park with lots of free community resources. Including a zoo, amphitheater, museums and more. We went to the zoo, which was awesome and totally amazing that it’s completely free. They had one of the best penguin exhibits that I’ve been to – very open, and the penguins come right up to you. I even got drenched by one.

After the zoo, I got a tour of Chris’ college – Washington University. We then hooked up with Chris’ super cool aunt and uncle who just moved into a loft in downtown St. Louis that used to be a shoe warehouse. They have an awesome view, including the old AT&T building that was filmed in Ghostbusters that the Stay Puff Marshmallow man climbed. We had wine, and then dinner at a quirky Mexican/Cuban patio restaurant with wonderfully cheesy live music. It was super yummy. After dinner we went to the famous Route 66 destination of Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. The crowds gathered there were unbelievable.. but I can see why, it was very yummy.

Saturday – Monday – Lake of the Ozarks

Saturday morning, we picked up Chris’ grandma and headed towards her lakehouse in Lake of the Ozarks, where Chris’ father was already down at for a reunion. We also joined another aunt and uncle for the weekend. It was totally stunning there, and we had such a relaxing time. We had an awesome view from our bedroom. Chris’ uncle had brought down his Sea Doo, and I had my first experience with a personal watercraft. It was super cool fun, and I even got the guts up to take it out on my own. Zoom!!!!

Other notable things from lake: I got to spin fire and LEDs for his family and Chris got some amazing shots with the lake behind me, dinner with his parents on our last evening with lots of live music and just lots of quality time getting to know his family.

Tuesday – St. Louis

Tuesday was getting ready to hit the road again – including scraping love bugs off of Tab & Jeep from our FL exodus, doing laundry and restocking things. After that, Chris’ dad dropped us off in St. Louis with the super cool aunt. We hung out with her for the afternoon getting a tour of downtown St. Louis. We visited the city museum and the arch and had a great walking tour (my favorite way to tour a city).

After an great sushi dinner, we joined up with Chris’ parents at Busch Stadium for my very first baseball game. What an amazing experience – the energy of the crowds, the fireworks, the beer (and drinking games we played) and the whole atmosphere was wonderful to take in. The Cardinals won (beating out the Pittsburg Pirates) – making this the perfect ending to my introductory visit to St. Louis.

I’m highly impressed with St. Louis and it has been added to my list of all time favorite cities. I’m also grateful for the opportunity for so much quality time with Chris and getting to know his family.

Wednesday – Transit to stop-over in Oklahoma

We left out of St. Louis Wednesday morning, heading southwest towards Oklahoma. We overnighted just west of Tulsa in Prue, at Walnut Creek State Park on the Osage Indian Reservation. We rendezvoused with who was in Oklahoma visiting family. It had been two years since I had seen her during my visit to NC after she had major surgery. It was wonderful technomadic serendipity that we were able to arrange the rendezvous, and we had a very pleasant evening catching up at our waterfront campsite along Keystone Lake.

Thursday – Transit to Austin

And now we’re heading south towards Austin – where we’ll be staying with my brother and his wife for the next weekish.

So, Chris and I made it a priority to stop in on our journey across country. After leaving ’s this morning we headed northward and spent the afternoon wandering around the boulders, waterfalls, bridges and caverns that make up Rock City. It was actually much more impressive than I was anticipating – much larger and less cheesy. And quite beautiful.

Also while in the Atlanta area, we stopped in to visit with some folks who invited us over via one of the T@B forums – as they also own a clamshell Tab like Chris and I are traveling around in. It was an extremely delightful evening, and true to their pitch to entice us over – it was a delicious home cooked meal AND they weren’t ax murderers. We had a great time wandering around the Little Five Points area near their home. Plus, we got some cool photo of our twin Tabs:

And now, we’re on our way to the St. Louis area, with a stop in Nashville for dinner.