The Blog

When we took off in August, we had our route in mind but nothing was set in stone. We completed the TransAmerica trail in its entirety starting on the east coast and ended at the west coast. We really had no intention of staying in the Pacific Northwest until pet sitting opportunities kept us there and we really enjoyed the months we got to explore, even if it was cold and wet.

We had also planned on heading to Alaska after spending March in Scottsdale with my mom. But as we traveled during the pandemic, even as things were slowly opening up, the Canadian border continues to stay closed. We kept saying if it opens by April…then May, we can still make it work. It has become clear that it won’t be open anytime soon so we made other plans. 

We spent a lot of time in the desert after we met some cool people through a Facebook group called Nomads Helping Nomads at the beginning of February. We ended up meeting up with them a handful of times over the past couple months and have really enoyed spending time with them and hearing their stories of being nomads too. One visit brought us to Wickenburg, AZ and our friend Scott mentioned there were multiple school buses for auction in Kingman, AZ for cheap. We hadn’t really been talking too much about getting a bus but this peaked our interest. So we took off to Kingman which was 2 hours away and inspected the few buses that checked the boxes of what we thought we would want. After checking them out we were really excited about Bus 197! We put in our bid and waited.Checking out Bus 197

The auction ended March 22 and we are now the proud owners of a 2002 36′ Bluebird school bus. We are excited to be bringing it back to Michigan to build it out into a tiny home. The Vug Bus will be in addition to our Adventure Rig. We will move between the bus and Adventure Rig depending on the time of year and where we want to go.

Once we knew we had the bus, we went back to Kingman on March 25 and drove the bus back to Chandler, AZ. We had a week left of our stay with my mom so we put it in storage until we could get back to it.

Craig driving the bus for the first time! Craig actually got it up to 75 mph on the highway! Safe & sound in storage

After we left Scottsdale, we headed north to Utah. Our friends in Utah had been storing some truck parts for us and we decided that since we now had a bus, we could transport them back and we always love to see the Grimmers!! We also returned to where we had work done on the truck in Salt Lake City because the locker we had installed never worked. We were happy they could fix it. After a few fun days with Randy & Kristen in Northern Utah, we headed back south.

We plan on picking up the bus tomorrow then head to SanTan Solar. It is located very close to where we put the bus in storage. We already ordered solar panels for the bus since we were so close and it will save us a ton in shipping. We had bought our solar panels for the Adventure Rig from this company and have been very happy with them. Then we will make the long drive home…separately. Craig will drive the bus and I will follow in the Adventure Rig. If all goes well we will be home this weekend. We are excited for a new project and really excited to see everyone at home.

A lot of people have said they didn’t see this coming…well, neither did we. We are adapting and adjusting as needed and are always open to different adventures. We are loving our life on the road! We love figuring out what we want to do day by day and the people we have met has been awesome. It’s a very freeing way to live and we are happy for the chance to do it together.

It’s hard to believe we’ve been on the road for six months. In one aspect it feels like we just left, but mostly it feels like we’ve been gone forever. We have put in a lot of miles in a short time and have seen so much different scenery and been to so many places. It was hard to keep updating the blog with our ever changing day to day travels.

We kind of knew what to expect when we left although the feel this time was a bit different than when we left in 2018. In 2018, we knew we had an end date and we had a house to go back to. This time we left without the stress of continued expenses of a house, property taxes, renters, etc and it felt so good. We talked so much in 2018 about how it would feel when we didn’t have our high maintenance house holding us back. I thought I would be really sad for a long time and even have regrets about selling, but we don’t. Although we absolutely loved our house and are really happy we were able to enjoy 16 years in it, we are happy with the steps we have taken to free ourselves from stuff. It feels really good to be able to wake up every day with no alarm and decide together what to do, where to go and have a wide open schedule. We love the sights we have seen, the experiences we’ve had, and being able to stop and see friends along the way has been so fun. We appreciate everyone that gave us a place to stay, invited us for dinner or just reached out to see how we are doing. It breaks up our time in our tiny home.

Traveling how we travel isn’t always easy. Living in a small space together has it’s challenges and we both have our off days. We aren’t always excited about where we end up having to make camp but deal with what we can find. Rest areas or busy campgrounds aren’t our favorite but sometimes that’s the only choice. Dealing with weather is another thing that definitely affects our moods. It’s hard not to get sick of constant rain or extreme cold when living in a truck camper. Sitting around reading and sleeping all day long is fun for a day, maybe two, but then it just gets old and frankly makes us feel lazy.

When we left, our plan was to try and chase 70 degree weather but once we started pet sitting and finding some great spots in the Pacific North West, we realized how hard it is to camp when it gets cold and dark so early. We truly enjoyed November and December in Washington in the homes people welcomed us into. We wouldn’t change it for anything. Not only did we make some good friends and got to love on some really great pets, we were able to fly my mom out for Christmas and enjoy a great time with her too.

We continue to deal with the Covid stuff like everybody else. It’s frustrating to see some things open but other things still shut down. I know everyone is sick of it and trying to make sense of the decisions being made. We just roll with the flow, complaining to each other but just doing what we have to do and just thankful that we can continue to be on the road through it all.

People ask us what our favorite part so far as been. That’s such a hard thing to answer. There are so many places that we love for different reasons. Some places stick out just because of the people we were with, others because of the scenery, others because of how different it was from anything else we’ve ever seen. I don’t think we’ll ever say with absolute certainty that one place is our favorite. We’ve said in the past that Alaska is one of our favorite states, but that too is such a vast huge area that to narrow it down to one spot is impossible. The lower 48 has so much beauty. Staying off the highways and seeing it from the back roads, off road trails and paths less traveled has truly been eye opening. Having a rig that can go to further places has been so much fun.

So our favorite things have been visits with friends & family, beautiful sunsets and sunrises, mountain passes, rock filled rivers, beautiful hikes, wildlife, awesome beaches, elephant seals, bridges, water crossings, Joshua trees, fields of flowers, salt flats, and meeting new people.

So what’s next? We will be spending the next two months in Arizona meandering on trails that Craig finds and hopefully getting to enjoy warmer weather, free camping and more campfires. We are excited that my mom will be spending all of March in Arizona as well and we plan on staying with her for most of that time. After that our plan got a little derailed. We were going to head back to Alaska but with the border still closed with no projected opening for nonessential travel, we won’t be able to go ahead with that plan. Right now we will just enjoy ourselves and will decide where to go when we need to move again.

A week ago Friday, we were standing in our empty garage getting ready to hand it over to someone else. I think that’s when it hit us both. We walked through the house and garage one last time. I did cry, a lot. We have so many memories in that house, it was just hard to imagine not living there. We drove away and although I know we have great adventures ahead, I was not in a good mood.

Everything leading up to leaving was hard. It was hard selling stuff, storing stuff and packing stuff into our tiny house. I didn’t even want to think about leaving family and friends. We were so busy dealing with all of that, seeing friends and saying last goodbyes that when the the 31st came, I don’t think I had actually processed the fact that we were leaving our dream house. We just drove around a bit Friday afternoon and ended up having one last dinner with some great friends at our neighborhood bar. That was just what we needed. After a night of talking and laughing with Mark & Jackie, we were feeling better.

Saturday morning was another hard goodbye. We had stayed in my mom’s driveway and after she spoiled us with her awesome french toast, we said a teary goodbye. We appreciate all of our family and friends and the support they have shown us as we planned and are now living our dream. Thankfully we are only a phone call or plane ride away.

We meandered our way to my brother’s house in Decatur, Indiana. We stayed a couple nights and Craig was able to finish a few things on the rig he hadn’t been able to get to. Ryan and I put his old movies onto DVD and we had so many laughs watching old Christmas parties, hunting videos, and movies of his kids when they were young. If you knew my dad, he was the ultimate commentator. He would video us and ask us questions and we always hated it but seems it carried over because Ryan did the same thing to us and his friends on those videos. The videos just wouldn’t be the same without that funny sarcastic commentary. It was a relaxing couple days and I was sad to say goodbye.

The first leg of our adventure is the TransAmerica Trail (TAT). It begins in Ripley, West Virginia and goes east across America on 90% dirt & gravel roads. We took all back roads to get to Ripley and began the TAT at 5:20pm on Monday night. It started out paved and eventually turned into a skinny gravel road. It brought us up into the mountains and past farms and beautiful country. We saw so many deer as we crawled through.

To follow the TAT, we purchased tracks that are sold by a guy that runs it every couple of years. I am the navigator and had to watch them pretty closely as it was easy to miss a turn. I actually like to navigate and it went pretty well. We assumed we would be able to find a place to pull off and camp but this leg didn’t offer any place to do that as most of the land is privately owned. We drove until dark and finally found a pull off that looked okay. We decided to stealth camp in case we had to move quickly, which means we didn’t pop up the top of the camper. We folded down our new chairs we had put in the camper and settled in on the floor. The problem was that it was raining and it was hot! We couldn’t have the windows open and we were squooshed on the floor together and both pretty miserable. It as about 4:30am when we just couldn’t handle it anymore. We got up and decided to just keep driving. This is when we heard a loud annoying noise coming from the truck. We couldn’t really fiure out what it was with a flashlight and me driving so instead of quietly coming down from the mountain at 5 am, we were the horrible annoying tourists. We got to a gas station and Craig discovered a small rock had landed between the heat shield and the caliper on the passenger front side and that was causing all the racket. I drank my coffee and people watched at the small West Virginia gas station while Craig took care of our issue.

We drove the rest of West Virginia and started on the Virginia portion when we were both getting pretty tired. We found a small little campground and set up camp and settled in. The weather was nice and after a little nap we took a walk to a little river.

We knew at some point we were going to jump off the main trail of the TAT and drive the Atlantic spur that starts in Nagshead, NC and goes to Virginia. We decided to jump off at that intersection and head to Wake Forest, NC to visit Ronnie and his wife, Amy Jo. We had met Ronnie in Chicken, Alaska in 2018. He had ridden his Harley up there and we all met at the saloon and had a night of drinks and laughter. We ended up seeing him again in Fairbanks two weeks later when we were having dinner in a restaurant and he happened to walk into the same restaurant. We’ve kept in touch the past two years and we were so happy to see him, meet his wife and their cute pup Cooper. They have a beautiful property (and donkeys) and were so welcoming, it felt like we’d been friends forever.

Another friend and former colleage from JR Automation, reached out and invited us to his home in Greenville, NC. Brad and his wife, Jaclyn, had moved to NC in 2018. We pulled into Greenville with the hopes of camping at a campground that we had found close to them. Due to COVID, they were not taking campers and just as we were getting this information, it started to downpour. We raced back to the truck, soaking wet and feeling a little discouraged because the next closest campground was 45 minutes away. We knew finding places to camp the way we like to camp was going to be hard on the East coast, so we got a hotel just a few minutes from Brad & Jaclyn’s house.

Brad and Jaclyn spoiled us as well! They met us with drinks and served us an amazing meal. I had never met Jaclyn before and we talked all night as the boys meandered around Brad’s garage talking about boy things. We got to meet their sweet pup, Dozer, and threatened to take him on the road with us because he was so sweet and close to the right size for us. Pretty sure he was having none of that.

So after being on the road a week, we can say we are happy. We’ve already figured out a few things to change, we’ve enjoyed the beautiful back roads and small towns, and are happy living a slower paced life. We are headed to Nagshead today and hope to find a camping spot on the beach and then get back on the TAT tomorrow.

We haven’t posted much since we’ve been home because there wasn’t a lot to talk about. We spent the last year and a half getting the house ready to sell and then this spring, like everybody else, we were surprised and confused and were just trying to figure out what was going to happen when COVID hit. We had a loose plan of putting the house up for sale early May but with everything shut down that didn’t happen.

We stayed home and stayed busy working on things, but every time the stay at home order was extended, we got a little more nervous. All the fears raced through our heads as we waited. Is this a good time to be trying to sell a house? When can we put it up for sale and actually have people walk through it? Obviously no one had the answers and our problems were not devastating in the grand scheme of things especially compared to so many others that were struggling so much more because of it. We just had to be patient.

We decided to put the house up for sale on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. My good friend from Tennessee is a realtor and offered to come up and take awesome pictures and drone footage of the house and help us with the for sale ad. We had a ton of fun while he and his friend Bill did the pictures. We drank some beers and talked a lot about how the for sale by owner process would go. By the end of breakfast on Sunday, we had an awesome Zillow ad and we put it out there. By Thursday, the new buyers would be walking through and making an offer. After all the anxiety and a few tears about putting our dream home up for sale, a couple just down the street wanted it and they made an offer that insured we didn’t hold the open houses we were planning the next weekend.

As we got to know this couple, the more we realized that they are the perfect fit for our house. We always hoped we would sell to someone who would love it and take care of it like we do, but that doesn’t always happen. As we signed the contract the next day, it just felt easy even without realtors involved. We got through the paperwork, had a beer, wandered in the garage after, figured out we had friends in common and they even have a dog named Gus. They also had no contingencies and were fine with us moving out on our schedule. We officially close on July 17 and will vacate on July 31. We plan on celebrating with them after closing at Odd Side Ales. What an exciting beginning for us all!

Craig has been working hard on the new rig and it is almost finished. We added solar panels, a new battery, new flooring, a new fridge, and outside shower and so many other things to help make living on the road a little more comfortable. We are looking forward to being fully contained and not pulling a trailer.

Now to answer what many have asked, what is next? As we said before, it all depended on when the house sold. We are now able to say we are leaving August 1 and will head to the East Coast. We’ll stop in Indiana to visit my brother and his family and then head to North Carolina to see a friend we met in 2018 in Alaska. After that we’ll hop on the TransAmerica Trail at Nags Head, NC.

The TransAmerica Trail started out as a dual sport motorcycle route but now attracts all 4WD adventurers. It runs from the East coast to the West coast and is 90% dirt and gravel roads. We are very excited to try it in our new rig. We plan on stopping to see friends in Tennessee, Colorado and Utah for sure. We’ll probably end up in Oregon in November and that is where our plan ends. That is the beauty of how the next few years of our lives will be. No plans! We can bust home to Michigan if we want or need to or chase 70 degree weather. We are looking forward to doing whatever we want to do and seeing more amazing sights that our country has to offer.

Stay tuned! We hope to share some grand adventures!

We came home from our 180 adventure a year and a few days ago, January 17 to be exact. We had traveled 31,000 miles in 8 months and learned a lot about what we wanted for our future. The “trip of a lifetime” became what we wanted to do with our lives indefinitely. Traveling together was amazing. Seeing sights, meeting people, relaxing with no stress of intense jobs was exactly what we were looking for and we knew we wanted to figure out how to continue doing it. This is not to say we are running away from Michigan. We love our beautiful state and even when we came home just in time for the polar vortex to hit West Michigan, it was nice to be home.

2019 was a year of figuring out new routines and deciding what was next. We had a general idea but it all felt like “in the future” decisions. We wanted to stick around home for the year, reconnect with friends and family, work on the house a little and really talk about our goals and how we were going to achieve them.

The plan, although at the core stayed the same, changed over the course of the year. When we came home, the plan was to sell the house in the spring of 2020, put our belongings, including the 2002 F250 diesel truck and 2006 Jeep Wrangler in storage, buy a regular cab gas truck and brand new Four Wheel camper flatbed Hawk and wander the country for a few years.

As the year progressed, our garage talks and road trips allowed us to talk out these plans, voice our concerns, our frustrations, and realize what we really want to get out of these huge decisions we are making. What we really want is a simple life that allows us to see more. Wanting less is a really good feeling when you finally get there. We realized even after coming home we were still wanting things we didn’t need. We took a step back and even though a brand new camper would be great, what we had already would work just fine. So that was the first change in the plan. We are keeping our 2007 Four Wheel Grandby truck camper and will just outfit it with a stove, refrigerator, more storage and more comfortable seating and mount it on a flatbed with a lot more outside storage.

Another really hard decision was the the decision to sell both the gray diesel truck and the Jeep Wrangler. We have owned the diesel truck for almost 11 years and have traveled the country a few times over with it. It’s been a good truck and as much as we would love to store it, we see no use for it in the future. The reason we decided to go to a regular cab gas truck was to be smaller, quieter and more off road friendly. The new truck will also be our tow truck if we need it in the future so again, we are evaluating our needs and adjusting to them.

We have owned the Jeep for 2 1/2 years. It was my dream to have a paid off Wrangler in our paid off garage and I pictured myself driving it on beautiful Michigan summer/fall days with the top off to work or to the beach. Since being back, I realize that my dream has changed. We were so happy to have that Jeep along with us last year. We put 9,100 miles on it on some of the most beautiful trails and roads in the country. It was perfect for us and our dog, Gus, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. But looking forward, we know we don’t want to haul a trailer again so we would be storing the Jeep until we figure out where we are going to stay for an extended period of time. So again we would be paying to store something that we really have no use for.

These decisions have been really hard. It’s hard to let things go once you have them because you think “someday” you’ll want/need it again. By simplifying our lives, we are accepting that we are okay with saying goodbye to things that don’t fit our lives or our goals.

We took the first big step a couple weeks ago when we found the next truck for our overlanding rig. It’s a 2005 F350 regular cab V10 gas truck with only 85,000 miles. It was located just outside of Omaha, Nebraska. We had been looking quite extensively all over the country for exactly this truck which we found out was really hard to find.

We left January 5 in the diesel with the camper and pulling a trailer. We left around 6pm knowing we wanted to go through Chicago a little later. We drove about 4 hours and spent the night at a little boat launch in Annawan, IL. We made our way to Seward, NE the next day to Meyer Automotive. We did a test drive and decided this was our truck. We loaded it on the trailer and went back to Council Bluffs, IA to meet my friend Angie who I had met back in 2003 at the FBI Academy.

We hadn’t seen each other since 2014 so it was so fun catching up with her and seeing her in person instead of just watching each other’s lives on social media. I’m very thankful for the job that I had for 17 years because it brought me all over the country and I met some really great people. It’s really fun to reconnect with some of those people even years later. I’m looking forward to more fun visits in the coming years.

The next day we took a little detour to Cresco, IA to Alum-Line. Of course in Vug fashion, we blew out a tire while headed north on Highway 35. We are used to this at this point and were just happy it wasn’t raining.

We had heard really good things about Alum-Line and were excited to talk about our options for a flatbed. Even though we are not buying a brand new flatbed camper, we decided to put our slide-in camper on a flatbed and have boxes built in to give us outside storage. We were very happy with our meeting and excited to design the flatbed to meet our needs at a decent price.

We made our way home on Tuesday the 7th and talked most of the way home about storage, the camper, the truck, and much more. I love our road trips because we throw out weird, crazy, never-really-thought about that ideas. We’ve found ourselves getting tunnel vision in the past when we are excited about something so we have been trying to continue to think outside of the box for all of our decisions and have found that once the excitement wears off, we still really just want to save money and live simple. By selling the diesel truck and Jeep, purchasing an older truck, keeping our old camper and buying a reasonably priced flatbed, we will be so far ahead of where we would be had we bought a brand new camper and pay to store two vehicles we wouldn’t use for years.

I’m a visual person, so once we got home, I asked Craig to lay out the flatbed and camper in the garage so I could see where everything would go. We are so excited to see how much extra outside storage we are going to get. That was a huge issue for us both. We didn’t want to have to store outside things on the floor of our camper. The brand new camper wouldn’t have given us this much outside storage so that just reiterates our decision to keep what we have.

The next huge endeavor is going to be putting our house up for sale in a couple months. It’s going to be really hard to say goodbye to this house we love. We have so many great memories here but we both realize that to stay here changes what we can do in the future. We will be selling the house by owner to start. We know the pros and cons of this, but this is a decision we have made since we have the time to be home and deal with it all. We are doing our research and hopefully we find someone who sees the value of our beloved home.

We still have no dates for our next adventure. It’s all about timing. The sale of the house will determine when we leave. We will for sure be here until June to watch two of our nephews graduate. We have a tentative plan as far as what route we would like to take, but again that really depends on when we leave.

We’ll keep updating on our progress. We just wanted to share what’s been going on.

We knew going into the trip that we wanted to drive the Dalton Highway to Deadhorse, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. It is the furthest north you can drive to in the continental United States. That has always intrigued me. We set out knowing we couldn’t drive to the Arctic Ocean like we did at Tuk. That was it’s own adventure. We traveled 415 miles up the Dalton Highway following the pipeline to Deadhorse. We took the loop road up around Colleen Lake and reached latitude 70* 13′ 32.0448″ N (70.2255680).

We didn’t realize that we were going to be at the furthest west point you can drive when we went to Manley Hot Springs at the end of the Elliot Highway. We were there to drive Tofty Road in the Jeep as a fun day trip as recommended by a friend. It was a new road from Manley Hot Springs to the Yukon River that was completed in 2016 as a supply link for the town of Tanana, AK across the river and downstream a few miles of the end of the road.

The bartender at the Manly Roadhouse told us this is the furthest west point you can drive. So now we have driven to longitude 151* 56′ 6.1872″ W (-151.9350520). This is as close as I can get to the longitude as Google maps are not up-to-date for this area and I had to approximate where we met the river based on a road proposal document I found on-line that said the road meets the river six miles upriver of Tanana. This is very close in longitude to a point in Anchor Point, AK near Homer at 151* 51′ 49.2084″ W (-151.8636690).

We visited that site as well and there was signage for being the westernmost point, but we are pretty sure the end of Tofty Road is the new most western point. The points we drove to are able to be reached by contiguous roads to the rest of North America. There are roads in Nome and other more western communities that you must fly into in order to drive around.

We decided to drive down to the Florida Keys and get to the southernmost point in the continental US. This is a well documented site and has a concrete buoy marker proclaiming you’ve made it to the Southernmost Point of the Continental US. This is at latitude 24* 32′ 47.7024″ N (24.5465840). We made it to this milestone just after the new year on our loop around North America.

We would like to have added the easternmost point to our trip and get to the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lupec, Maine and be at the most eastern point in the continental US at 66* 57′ 3.0910″ W (-66.9508586), and complete this odd quest. We will add this to a summertime NE North America trip in the future.

We didn’t start out our trip trying to hit these four points. We were going to drive the Dalton and maybe down to Key West, but when we found out our last minute side trip got us to the westernmost point, we decided to add the southernmost and will eventually get to the easternmost point as well. It’s a strange endeavor, I know, but we travel differently than most. This is a fun adventure that very few people do and engages my curiosity in maps so I guess that’s why we decided to drive to the Further Places.

We’ve been back for two weeks. We got home just in time to experience some of the coldest weather Michigan has seen in a very long time. Many do not like it, we actually don’t mind it at all. Granted we have a different view now that we aren’t forced to face it first thing every morning during a commute to work.

Besides being here to see the beautiful winter, we are able to help out family and friends. Of course we are shoveling and plowing at my mom’s. She’s inundated us with food and giving us a roof over our heads so we are trying to pay her back any way we can. We are able to shovel and plow at my Grandpa’s, and help out a few others who needed a quick hand. It’s been nice not having a schedule and helping out keeps us busy.

We are excited, however, to get back into our house February 9. We can now tell you that our renters have been planning to leave for a while and he took a job back in their home state of Ohio. We stayed in communication with them and were okay heading back home when they told us in December what their plan was.

We honestly knew what we wanted to do just a few months into our adventure. We loved being on the road, we loved seeing new things, we hated the trailer. We are really happy we hauled the trailer all over the country because we got to do some really awesome trails in the Jeep, but when we left Alaska and Canada and got back into the lower 48, we were frustrated. It was harder to boondock, harder to get gas, harder to turn around if you missed a turn. It was just not what we wanted. We really wanted to go home, sell everything, get a new rig and get back on the road.

Traveling is for us. It suits us perfectly. We had different stresses than what our normal day to day was but we were able to handle it our way and in our own time. Although we absolutely love our house, we realize how much it ties us down. We paid it off two years ago but it still costs money and time to maintain it. We both feel like life is passing us by when we have to turn down fun things because we have to mow, blow leaves, stain, chop, split and stack wood. As we get older, we don’t want to spend all of our free time keeping it up. So yes, it will be up for sale at some point. We don’t have a place we want to live picked out. We want to travel, rent in places that interest us for a few months at a time, and experience more of what our country has to offer.

The vision of our ideal life has changed from what it was 17 years ago when we started building the house and that’s okay! As far as emotion goes, we have every single memory in our heads. We can look at pictures of my dad helping with the trim, Craig’s dad working on the fireplace or all of them helping sort 40 ton of rock in the driveway.

We’ve had many many questions since we’ve been back. What was our favorite place? Are we home to stay? Why did we come home so early? And how we could we possibly afford something like ths?

Our favorite place was Alaska. We’ll be home for about two years, we think. We came home early because our renters were leaving. And we planned together for the trip. We didn’t win the lottery or get an inheritance. Since 2009, when we decided that debt had no place in our lives and this type of trip was in our future at some point, we planned. We made a good income together which helped to start. We continued to work hard and we decided together about all of our purchases. We set ourselves up to pay off our house, put away money for retirement and have money to travel.

We are not going to go into detail about the numbers because it really is nobody’s business. The only thing we can stress is if you want to do something like we did, you have to communicate with your spouse. It’s hard to talk about big purchases with your spouse if you aren’t used to it. Some don’t like “asking for permission”. If you look at it that way, then you’re looking at it wrong.

When you start dreaming together and looking ahead toward a goal that you both want to achieve, then the things you want or think you need to purchase change. And most of the time, you’ll be on the same page about those things. We’re not saying it’s easy. We see many who have nicer vehicles, fun off road toys, and go on Caribbean vacations. It all looks wonderful and like so much fun. We aren’t bashing any of that. All those things make memories as well and we think that’s what is most important. What we are saying is that you can’t do it all. At least we can’t. So we made the decision that long term travel and experiencing different areas of the country is what is most important to us and we are making it happen. We are having the hard talks, making the difficult decisions and we are really excited about spending our lives together traveling in our own way.

Stay tuned, TheVugs180 continues…

239 Days on the Road

31,100 Miles Total
2002 Ford F250 – 22,000 miles (now has 314,0005 miles)
2006 Jeep Wrangler – 9,100 miles (now has 104,197 miles)

(24) States and (4) Canadian Provinces – # of nights
Michigan-8
Wisconsin-0
Minnesota-1
North Dakota-0
Montana-6
Alaska-59
Washington-26
Oregon-17
California-26
Nevada-23
Arizona-13
New Mexico-4
Texas-9
Louisiana-2
Mississippi-2
Alabama-0
Florida-9
Georgia-0
South Carolina-4
North Carolina-1
Tennessee-1
Kentucky-0
Ohio-0
Indiana-1

Alberta-5
British Columbia-9
Yukon-9
Northwest Territories-3

Camping/Lodging
175 nights free
64 nights paid
Total spent for camping/lodging=$1,193.05

Nights not spent in our camper – Craig (6) Shauna (10)
(3) nights spent on an air mattress in the trailer
(1) night in a hotel
(2) nights in our friends’s guest bedroom in Nevada
(4) nights at my mom’s house when I flew home for a visit

Vehicle Repairs
(2) Truck Tires
(3) Trailer Tires
(2) U-joints
(2) wheel bearings
(1) alternator
(8) lug studs
(1) very large tow bill
(1) fan clutch for the Jeep
(1) radiator for the Jeep

73 Breweries
Top Favorites:
49th State Brewing Company-Healy, AK
Matanuska Brewing-Palmer, AK
Crux Fermentation Project-Bend, OR
Russian River Brewing Company-Santa Rosa, CA
Cloudcroft Brewing-Cloudcroft, NM
Chafunkta Brewing Company-Mandeville, LA
Mash Monkey Brewing Company-Sebastian, FL

Favorite new beer- King Street IPA from King Street Brewing in Anchorage, AK

12 National Parks
Glacier-Montana
Banff-Alberta
Jasper-Alberta
Gates of the Arctic-Alaska
Denali-Alaska
Wrangell-St. Elias-Alaska
Mount Rainier-Washington
Olympic-Washington
Joshua Tree-California
Yosemite-California
Carlsbad Caverns-New Mexico
Big Bend-Texas

Favorite place: Alaska

Favorite Experience: Driving the Dempster Highway to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT and camping on the Arctic Ocean during Summer Solstice and Aboriginal Day.

It was an amazing 239 days on the road together!

Stay tuned…we’re not done.

We pulled into our driveway in West Olive, Michigan at 1:41 pm on January 17, 2019. After 239 days on the road, we were home.

We parked the rig on the north side of our house and packed the Jeep as much as we could and headed off to my mom’s house. She didn’t know we were coming home and didn’t see us pull in. She was totally surprised when we knocked on the door. She had told us before that if we needed a place to stay we were always welcome. We were met with tears of joy and hugs! Hopefully she’s still happy after having us here for awhile. We come with a lot of stuff!

We had a lot of things to figure out. We knew the snow was coming so we had to figure out a plan for Gus. We got a dog crate from a friend and packed my mom’s car and the Jeep with more stuff from the camper and trailer. We took over the basement but it’s nice to have space to sort through all the stuff. And Gus’ corner should work out nicely for him.

We went back to our house and talked to our renters. It was great to catch up with them, share some of our stories and hear that they really enjoyed living there. The arrangement worked out great for all of us. We assured them we are in no rush but they are looking for a place and are ready for their next step.

Friday morning we stopped in at my Grandpa’s house. It was fun to see his face when we walked in the door. We got to visit for a little bit and then had to run off to get some errands done.

When we left Grandpa’s, Craig had a message from his mom and they had heard we were in town. We had wanted to surprise them but a friend saw us driving through Zeeland and then saw Mom and Dad Vug at a basketball game Thursday night and innocently commented that he saw us in town. They had no clue. Oh well, it was the thought that counts. We assured her we were on our way to see them that afternoon.

We went to their house for dinner and the whole family showed up. We had a great night catching up, eating, drinking and laughing. It feels good to be home. We headed over to Travis and Stacey’s house since Stacey had worked late and missed the family meal. We were happy to see other cousins there as well. It was a late night but so fun seeing all their faces!

This morning we woke up to snow. Gus loves to eat it! Craig made an awesome breakfast and it was so nice to sit at the table with mom. I so wish my Dad was here. I wish I could tell him all about our adventures. It’s been 6 years today since we said goodbye to him. It hardly seems like it can be that long. We miss him every single day.

Tonight we got to surprise our friends, Dunegrass, that were playing at Tripelroot Brewery. It was a fun night of great music, great beer and great friends.

It feels good to be home. We feel a little scattered and unorganized but that’s okay. We have time to relax and time to catch up with family and friends. We are going to continue to keep life simple.

We are thankful to be back safe and sound. All three of us.

We are home.