So long, farewell.

Tomorrow is moving day! If all goes well then Monday or Tuesday we will will officially be full-time, underaged RVers.


Rachel's retirement cake.


Dan's retirement party at the fire department.


My favorite part of our house.


Another view of our yard.


All our worldly posessions all packed up for moving.

Time Out

We took a break from packing and moving to go fishing with a new friend. Ben was on our Upper Animas trip from the last post and he is a guide on the San Juan River. You will note the lack of pictures of us with fish- this is not because we didn't catch any- in fact we caught too many, and had no time for pictures :) Thanks to Ben for a great diversion. Now back to packing. We are planning to be out of our house and into the camper by Monday.


Dan and Ben on the drift boat.


Combat fishing- this is a VERY popular spot.


When we go fishing Dan almost always catches the bigger fish, but I catch more fish :)


Ben's boat.

The Upper A.

For about a decade Dan and I have worked on the Upper Animas, a stretch of class V whitewater between Silverton and Durango, Colorado. Our trip is an overnight and it is where we spend the night that has kept us hooked into working up there all of these years. Camp Needleton is a big one on the “to be missed” list. Here are some pictures from our weekend. Additionally I would like to include my first ever blog “shout out” to the fabulous folks we took down this Sunday/ Monday. Here’s to you guys- what a great couple of days and especially, here’s to the a**master.
If anyone is interested in knowing more about this trip check out the company we work for Mountain Waters Rafting


The camp is semi-permanent. This is the main guest tent.


The kitchen.


Breakfast.


Guide's quarters


Needle Creek a short hike from our camp.


Sunset on the cliffs.


We use the Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Train to run our shuttle. Here's the train coming by camp Sunday morning.


See the frost on the boats? It was a bit cool that morning.


The Upper is class V and anything can happen. One of our boats got cut by some metal in the river. But didn't our buddy Dale do a nice stitch job?!


What a great town.

What we will miss...

I figured I ought to take some time to reflect on what I love about Durango and the wonderful life we have had here. So as time permits over the next two weeks I will upload some pictures of what I love and will miss about this great little cowboy town.






There is a town run on the river that is so easily accessed and is so much fun- where else can you run through town at 6pm?? I am sure there are other towns with fun whitewater runs right in them- hopefully we'll find one during this next year.


We will miss our rafting buddies- we love you guys and have no idea where we'll find people who can make a phone call and get everybody on the river a half hour later.


If one must work...at least I got to work in a beautiful historic building in the heart of town.




These columbine grow right under my office window.


More to come....

La vida loca

Rachel's folks at the Pyramids in Egypt this Monday! How cool is this?!?

Sorry to have gone so long between posts- we are livin’ la vida loca- (also sorry for the Ricky Martin quote). In the past two weeks we held our yard sale and peddled off all of our wares, also we sold our house and finally we have been house-sitting for Dan’s folks, who were in Thailand- wow do we have jet setting families or what !?! Wonder where we got our wanderlust???

In the midst of all of this we have been trying to pack up the rest of our belongings and putting our ducks in their various rows prior to our departure. With the sale of our house comes an expedited moving plan. We had sort of counted on being able to gradually move out throughout June, but now we are planning on being in the camper on June 13th. This leaves a mere 17 days for us to condense our lives down from 1000 square feet into our 8x11 mobile aluminum can.

Additionally I am training my replacement at work and since Dan’s mother is also my boss, I was training while filling in for her. My normal amount of free time (and thereby blog maintenance time) at work has been greatly diminished.

I am guessing things aren’t going to get any calmer in the next few weeks so I trust you’ll all forgive me if my posts are infrequent until we are on the road. However, I am happy to answer any specific pre-trip questions if you’d care to email us. Cheers to all, and check back soon.

Slash and Burn Sale

My glorious weekend was spent parceling out items from my past that at one time or another I just had to have. Now these things have been reduced to close to worthless trinkets. Yes, it was yard sale preparation weekend. You don't know joy until you put a .50-cent price tag on a dry top you paid $250 for.

After the initial sting, of the devaluation of my life's acquisitions, there is a strange peacefulness that arises out of cutting the dead weight. While we will not be able to reduce our load to only the camper's contents, we really won't have much to tote along should we ever settle down again. Our household has been reduced to a camper, a full raft trailer and a half-full Zircon container. Tomorrow is the big sale, after that we will be living pretty bare bones for a month. Good practice for us, no?

Time sure is ticking away now. A few posts back I ranted about the pre-trip depression that had set in, that has been replaced by pre-trip euphoria. This period may be the best time of our entire trip. I mean right now I am excited. I still think we can do this, that we can make it a whole year in an 11x8 foot aluminum can. As of today the truck hasn't broken down, the tires haven't blown out, we have yet to be robbed, led astray or woken at 2am at Maglight-point and asked to mosey along. This is a hopeful, fun time. 28 days to go :)

38 Days and a Degree.

This weekend I graduated from Fort Lewis College, (if you are not aware of the length of time this took me then refer to the February archives). In honor of this momentous occasion we had a good ‘ol fashioned pig roast attended by all of our friends and my parents who came to town from Ohio. Graduating was a big one to check of the pre-trip list, now all that is left is:

___ Pack up house, sell all non-essential belongings.
___ Quit job.
___ Load up camper.
___ Say goodbye to friends and family.
___ Hit the road.

Here are some pictures from this weekend’s festivities.


Dan and Rachel on the FLC campus.


Rachel and fellow graduate Jesse with their pig. (Sorry to any of our vegetarian readers ;)


Dan this is a party for your wife, not your boat!


We gave .50 cent tours of the camper, or as our friend Brook insists on calling it, the trailer.

The Joys of XM Radio

For Christmas Dan's family very generously gave us XM Radio for our camper. We were so excited; until we learned what a project this would turn out to be.

Note to Goddard Family: We still love the gift and now, 4 months later, we think we may have figured it out- thanks again.

Now that I have covered my derriere with the in-laws let me tell you about the joys of XM Radio. First you have to be able to get a southern signal for the antenna. This is problematic because when you get the radio installed the logical place to put the antenna is on the roof of the truck, but then you add the cab-over and you can't get a signal to save your life. So you have to find a way to get the antenna up to the roof of the camper.

Again this is where Dan and Rachel realize that engineering would have been a useful major for one of us. After much deliberation we have come up with the solution featured in the pictures below. Now I must tell you that I am a bit apprehensive about posting this pre-trial, as in before we have driven the newly modified truck at 60mph for a day or two. Who knows if this will hold up.

However, after some thought I decided that this blog will contain our victories and our defeats, so I am posting this and you may keep your eyes out for a future posting entitled "The #@$*& Joys of XM Radio- Part II".



The antenna is magnetic, so we had to affix a metal plate to our aluminum roof.




Note: Dan his been properly scolded for his non-osha-approved ladder usage.
The antenna wire runs through the truck's fire wall, then up the rubber on the outside of the windshield to the truck's roof. The there is about 6" of expeosed wire between the truck roof and the cab-over bottom. The wire runs from underneath the cab-over, along the edge up to the roof.


Dan used self-adhesive clips to run the wire up to the roof.

Non-recommended modifications.

In the Moab installment I spoke about our non-lance recommended rack modification, and many have asked for pictures. Well it seems that the snow has finally stopped here so last night we uncovered and loaded the camper, and I had a chance to take some photos.





We need the rack to carry two whitewater kayaks and two surfboards- that is what the towers (which are folded down in this picture) are for. The "rocket box" on the other side will haul our snorkel, fishing and kayaking gear. Then in the winter we'll switch out some of the gear for ski equipment.





The kayak towers.


To install the rack we had to drill in the rails for the rack towers to go into. This required drilling aprox. 10 self sinking screws into the roof and 4 lag-bolts THROUGH the roof.


The rails that support the rack.


The towers that go into the rails to support the rack.


We wanted the lag-bolts to come through to the interior INSIDE the cabinets. In this pic, the bolt is inside the cabinet over the dinette, the door is folded down for the picture, but i assure we accomplished our goal. :)


The Rocket Box.


This shows how close to the roof the rack really is.


Dan admiring his handy work, and the river.

Knowing what you’ve got before it’s gone.

We have seven and a half weeks left before we leave this beautiful place we have called home for so long. I am trying to soak it all in one last time.

Last week I was invited on a Piedra River trip. Now this river is in a notoriously wet environment and for those of you not up on your Spanish piedra = rock, as in at low water, say in early season, say in April, there will be many MANY rocks. So confronted with the opportunity to raft a low water, rocky river where snow is a very real possibility, a lesser woman might have declined. But since I am about to live in a camper for a year- I decided that a potentially bitterly cold and frustrating day was exactly the kind of primer I needed. And who knows if I will ever get to float this amazingly beautiful stretch of white water again.

The Piedra River flows through two impressive boxes, or canyons. In all there are five class IV rapids, and a class V+, which generally you line, boats through. This means that you tie ropes to the boat and guide it, passenger less through the rapids from the shore. This rapid is called Eye of The Needle or Mudslide depending on who taught you the rapid’s names. There are primitive, natural hot springs near the end of the trip, and they are a great way to warm up and reflect on the day’s adventures. Some local outfitters offer trips on the Piedra and if you are a looking for an exciting, beautiful and remote Colorado rafting trip, I recommend this river. Maybe not in mid-April, but I recommend it.

The river flow was approx. 800cfs at the gauging station on this trip.



Driving to the put-in


The entrance to the Upper Box.


Can you see the water falling into the river?


Lining the boats through Eye of the Needle.


Our heroine :)


Last light before the take-out.

Preliminary Itinerary #2

Due to recent events our plans are changing. Since our beloved mutt passed away, we are now in no hurry to get to California, in fact we don’t NEED to go to Cali at all.
So here’s the new plan, for now:

We will be departing Colorado on June 28th, (congratulations to Lauren and Dusty, and Mead and Lee Ann- and no we don't really hold any ill will against you for planning weddings which delay our departure date :)

First Leg, July: Jackson, WY and Yellowstone National Park for about a week, so far we have only made 2 reservations for the whole year.

Then it’s on to Idaho and Montana for about a week.

From there we’ll cross B.C. with a stop in Nelson to scout out our winter accommodations and ski resort options. We have about a week to explore between Nelson and Vancouver. At the end of July we will be cheating for a few days. For Dan’s birthday I got him 3 days at a B&B in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Really we won’t have enough time there to make ferrying the camper across worth it, and this way we can take a real bath and sleep in a feather bed, just as camper fever is about to set in. This is reservation #2.

Second Leg, August:
Washington and Oregon for 2-3 weeks. Then through Lake Tahoe on our way to Arizona.

(From here on the plan's the same.)

Third Leg, August 20th- September 8th-ish: 18-21day rafting the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon, that's right turn green with envy, we are part of a private river trip through the ditch! Thanks Bjorn for actually applying for a permit, we would have done it if we'd had the $100 permit fee ten years ago, we swear!

Fourth Leg, Late September- Christmas:
Mexico. We will be starting out in Baja for a few months of surfing. Then ferrying across to the mainland, where we hope to meet up with Rachel's folks for Thanksgiving, North of Puerto Vallarta. From there we'll be heading north arriving in Austin, TX in time to spend X-mas with Dan's family.

Fifth Leg, New Years -05 Till the Thaw: British Columbia, Canada. We intend to ski/ snowboard as much as we possibly can :)

Sixth Leg, Thaw- Till the Money Runs Out: East, across Canada and down the coast of the U.S.

When the Money Runs Out: haven't quite gotten this far.....

Never Post Angry

Caveat: As a general rule I try not to post when angry, bored or, as has been the case recently, when I am sad. Last week we had to put down our dog, Kala. She has been with me since I was 19 and I can’t express the level of sadness I have experienced since she passed. However, now that a week has gone by I can again see the forest for the trees and at least for short periods of time I can focus on lighter topics.

Bike racks and the double hitch system:

Where to put all of our toys is becoming a common theme. In our attempt to mount bicycles to our camper we bought a fancy Yakima hitch-mounted, swiveling, bike rack. The idea being that it can mount in the rear hitch, and because it swivels open, we can still get into the camper. This plan was just fine until we figured out that we will need a cargo carrier, or rear “porch”, to haul our generator and extra fuel. No big deal we’ll just install a front hitch and put the bikes up there, simple enough right? No of course it cannot be that simple. Last weekend we assembled the bike rack, it is HUGE. Were we to mount it onto the front of the truck we would be able to haul our bikes, yes, but seeing the road, not so much.

What to do, what to do??? This is when the epiphany came to me. The double hitch. Now I am assuming that I am not the first person to ever come up with this idea but it made me feel pretty smart at the time. We are going to have a second hitch receiver welded below the existing one, in the lower hitch we will install the porch, the upper one will hold the rack. The lower hitch will not be used for towing and will only have to support about 150lbs. Yes folks we will look like the Yuppie Clampets headin’ for B-e-v-e-r-l-y, but we are embracing this fact and if mobile trailer trash is what we are meant to be, then so be it.