Adventure Buddies

  • Goodbye Ohio…Adventure Awaits

    We hit the road early Monday morning. We said “see you soon” to all of our wonderful animals, family, and friends. Lucy(our golden doodle) was able to make the cut, but we had to leave all the others at home. We know that the person living in our home will spoil our animals. So thankful for that piece to come together.

    We arrived at my parents house in Illinois(about 4.5 hours away from our home) on Monday afternoon to break up the drive. We have aimed to not drive so many long hours at a time. On our last trip out west, Eric drove straight through some areas and drove nonstop for 14 hours. We knew we didn’t want to EVER do that again.

    Having an RV where we easily move around, use restrooms, and cook has made life a bit better on the road for all of us. With 6 of us, this is huge. We’ve found that when Eric needs to take a break, we pull in to a quick rest area. Luckily, my parents are on the way. What a blessing it was to visit and spend the night.

    My parents spoiled all of us and made some great home cooked meals before we hit the road again. Thanks, mom and dad. 🙂

    These two had to run three miles before we hit the road.

    Yep, I made matching shirts for our BIG stops. Grandma and Grandpa’s house is a BIG stop. Peace out OHIO….we will touch base in Oklahoma.

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  • Ready..Set…STUFF THE BUS!!

    After 10 months of planning, we FINALLY started to move items needed for the trip out west from our house to our bus. This couldn’t have come at a crazier time. The month of May is so busy with end of school activities with our four kids and all that comes with teaching Kindergarten. Having an organized list to accomplish tasks daily helped. We spent the whole weekend “stuffing the bus” and washing it.

    We’ve had piles and piles of items throughout the house and barn ready to go. We had final inspections on the bus and Eric gave us the go to start loading it. We spent about 10 hours each day working tirelessly to finish. Eric is best at organizing and we had many hands to load things in all spaces. Here are a few pictures of the crazy weekend. We made final preparations for someone living in our home for the summer and taking care of the animals.

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  • Prepping for our West Adventure 2024

    When we decided that we wanted to travel out west again, we picked our favorite places from our previous trip and added a few bucket list places.

    We knew we wanted to visit The Mighty Five in Utah, Yellowstone, Glacier, and we knew we wanted to try Canada. We’ve watched many blogs about visiting Banff National Park and knew that if we could make it work, this would be at the top of the list.

    We narrowed down a list of MUST SEE places on this trip. We got out a map and started jotting down ideas. We didn’t use any app or websites. We basically put stars on our favorites cities and national parks.

    Little did we know, in order to book at most of the big national parks(Glacier, Arches, Zion, Yellowstone, Canada National Parks) you have to book way out in advance. We bought our RV in July and started planning immediately. We knew we wanted to start Arizona as our first booked spot, so we basically booked each place based on where we would go first. There were many places that were completely booked when we inquired about making a reservation, so we knew we had to act fast.

    Booking vehicle registration passes was a MUST at a few of the parks that we are going to be visiting. That requires a separate post, but the website below is where you book those. Permits for certain hikes are mandatory. All the information about each national park can be found here. I would NOT advise looking at social media pages or links regarding booking information. A lot of times, I noticed that the dates were wrong or the information would be partially correct, but not %100 factual information. You have to do your homework on each park before you decide to visit. Planning at least a 12-18 months out for most parts is also important. There are windows(dates) where you can book vehicle registration passes and permits for hikes. Please be advised that vehicle passes and certain permits fill up within the first 30 seconds that they become available online. Hikes are based on a lottery system. I will also make a post later about that information. https://www.recreation.gov/

    Below you will find the link to start researching for a trip to Canada. I will write a separate post with more in depth information about this adventure. Canada was definitely much harder to reserve. https://parks.canada.ca/voyage-travel/reserve

    As you can see below, we used many devices to try to get a reservation for vehicle passes, shuttle tickets, lodging, and hiking permits.

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  • Will you tow a vehicle?

    We decided it would be best to tow a vehicle because we knew we wanted to park the RV and we wanted to be able to have the freedom to leave and go on adventures each day.

    This was an easy decision for us because we knew that in order to leave the RV campgrounds, we had to had a vehicle.

    We decided to use the tow dolly in the above picture. We even went as far as going to the Honda dealership where we purchased our van to see if it was okay to tow.

    We were able to get the van hooked up and set out for our great adventure. When we pulled on the interstate, we immediately noticed that the back van tire that was on the tow dolly was smoking. When we quickly pulled over to check to see what was going on, we immediately noticed that the tire had been shredded because the tow dolly was too narrow for the van. Each time we turned hard with the RV, the tow dolly would cause the wheel base to rub up against the metal piece. Needless to say, we decided that it wasn’t the smartest idea.

    What was sad was that we ended up taking the RV and tow dolly with the van hooked to it on a week trip prior to the one we were embarking on and we didn’t have this problem at all. How frustrating!

    I wouldn’t recommend using a tow dolly unless you have a much lighter vehicle to pull.

    We were super thankful to be able to have a vehicle even though we spent so much trouble with this trip. We were thankful to come and go as we pleased and didn’t have to call a taxi when we wanted to leave.

  • RV or hotel?

    There were many factors that we thought of as we started to plan for our trip out west. The biggest factor before we started to plan was either to buy an RV or spend each evening hopping from hotel to hotel. The hotel part did not sound very enjoyable and seemed exhausted with four kids. We decided to go the RV route and wanted to make sure that we were able to pull our vehicle behind. Here’s what we found out about this whole experience.

    We found our RV on rvtrader.com. We didn’t buy a brand new RV, but wanted one with low mileage because we knew we’d put at least 7,000 miles on it. Our plan was to sell the RV as soon as we got home from the trip. We had the RV sold within 3 weeks of returning. We knew we wanted to separate our boys and girls to give them their own space. We decided on the bunkhouse model with a bed above the driving area for the girls. This was perfect so the kids could each have their own space together. Our RV was not diesel. After the huge elevations we climbed, we know that when we will always have a diesel traveling out west moving forward. Our RV was a Class A. We had a full kitchen, master bedroom and 2 bathrooms.

    Having the space was key for the trip. I was able to prepare many meals and freeze those for the trip, as well as pack numerous containers that could be stored underneath in the storage space. We had a full sized refrigerator and many storage compartments.

    The biggest benefit to traveling with an RV was that we could make use of all of the space while driving. The kids could relax at the table or sit on the sofa and still be able to wear seatbelts. We could watch movies on the TV or trade spots since there were times we drove 12-16 hours straight. We played Bingo, watched shows, sang songs, and looked out at all the beautiful scenery through the many windows while driving. There were such breathtaking views out every window.

    My husband drove the RV the whole entire time. I didn’t feel comfortable driving. When he felt like he couldn’t drive another mile, we were able to boon dock at a Walmart, Cracker Barrel, or any school. It was nice knowing we didn’t have to check in at a hotel and drag all of our luggage out of the vehicle. Everything was in it’s place the whole time. We felt very safe doing this the few times we had to during the duration of our trip.

    I would say that this may not be for everyone. Luckily, my husband was a pro at this and it seemed easy to him.

  • We are heading out west!

    When I was a child, I didn’t travel a lot. In fact, I didn’t really know that Disney existed. Before I met my husband, I had never been to the ocean or on an airplane. I grew up in a small town in Illinois and my parents gave me many wonderful experiences living out in the country. We had a farm and spent our weekends running through the woods and playing in the dirt.

    Fast forward 17 years of marriage with four children who are interested in traveling. We decided that this would be the perfect time to travel out west. We knew that it would be possible, but we had lots of planning to do. Eric does most of the planning and I am the one that always goes along with his “ideas”. He tends to be more the adventurous type. We also knew that the 4th grade National Park free access pass would be a fun option for our family and save us a lot of money visiting National Parks.

    We decided to surprise the kids at Christmas. We wrapped up four sets of hiking shoes(they didn’t even fit them when we left for our trip) and wrapped up a frame of the United States of America. We basically told them that we would be traveling out west. They were excited in the moment, but really didn’t seem too thrilled when we shared the news. I didn’t even get a chance to snap a pic of all four of them holding the frame. The above picture was the only one I could find right after we opened our gifts.