Browsing Category2016

Parma, ID

Big wheels have been turning toward middle America. We don’t have a firm plan of when we’ll arrive. We don’t have a specific route we’re planning to drive. But, we do have a goal of reaching Colorado in the near-ish future.  Idaho is currently providing us with a road to explore while headed in that general direction. Idaho also touts many roadside attractions. Alright, alright– so far, most of those ‘roadside attractions’ have been potatoes and onions laying alongside the road. But hey, an attraction is an attraction. And an attraction being edible is definitely a bonus.  We happened upon…

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Eugene, OR (Round 2)

Some stops are glamorous only in retrospect. Our second rendezvous with the greater Eugene, OR, area was glamorous only in retrospect. We spent much of our second date with Eugene hopping between RV shops. The Eugene, Oregon area (specifically, Coburg and Junction City) is a mecca for RV craftsmen. So, we hunted a few down. We beat them into submission. We forced them to agree to install a new floor, re-upholster our couch, and paint a few trouble spots on Dyna’s 15 year old exterior. (Okay, we paid them- same difference).  We also coerced these poor folks into letting us…

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Olympia, WA

Sometimes, the realization that we are ‘living the dream’ hits me like a sack of hard candy. So many moments of perfection. I don’t believe in perfection as a constant state. But I do believe in it as moments; which are usually interuppted by something small pest (i.e. mosquito, roll of the ankle, cat pooping in the littler box, lube pump giving out- again, etc.).  But damn, when you’re in that moment, it’s good. So good. Perfect, in fact.  We did a bit of ‘back tracking’ this month and headed back down towards Central-Western Oregon in preparation for getting some…

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Whidbey Island, WA

What’s more fun than living on an island for a week? Living on an island where family also resides. What’s not fun about living on an island for a week? When the campground you have booked has no cellular reception, thus rendering you internetless. This doesn’t sound too awful- except when you rely on the internet to earn the money you need to travel full time in an awesome but cranky RV. Jake spent a lot of time at the local library, and I spent a lot of time climbing the highest nearby hill and attempting to get enough signal…

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Seattle, WA

What’s better than getting to visit a highly hyped new-to-you place like Seattle for the first time? Your sister coming to visit it with you for the first time! That’s right, readers of lifewithdyna. Kay Pfleghardt is in the (wheeled) house! We’ve been looking forward to both Seattle and Kay for a bit now; we love being tourists and Seattle is pretty much the perfect place to practice that art. So, we played tourist. Hard. Even purchasing a Seattle CityPASS. Because it gives you (cheaper) access to all the (expensive) touristy highlights of the beautiful, bustling city of Seattle.  We used…

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Portland, OR

Portland, Oregon. RIP City. Bridgetown. The city of roses. PDX. Stumptown. Portlandia. Homeless folk central station nation. Ok, the last nickname was given to the city by us. But after we drove RedRammer through several piles of human feces while attempting to park in order to go check out the Saturday Market, I think it might be fitting. (Poor ‘Rammer smelled putrid for the remainder of the day). Because homelessness marked the landscape so prominently, I did a bit of research into why Portland seemed to have so many more people living on the streets than other places we’ve visited. I found…

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A Year of Notes to Our Pre-Nomadic Selves

Year 1: ‘Go see the world. Let it change you.’ So, it’s been a year. Yep. Today (7/1/2015) is our 1 year anniversary with Dyna. (I’m going to go ahead and get the elephant out of this virtual room now- I don’t remember the anniversary of Jake and I becoming a couple.)  I’d say things with Dyna and us are going pretty well; I mean, I haven’t taken her home to meet my mom yet, but I’ve shown both mom & dad pictures, and I write this blog about living in her for my mom. So, you could say it’s pretty serious.…

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Eugene, OR

On our drive up to Eugene from Northern Cali, I was rambling on and on about how great the city of Eugene was going to be. At some point in my soliloquy of praise, Jake stopped me and said “you know Eugene is a small city right?” To which I argued, “well, it’s bigger than Rochester!” Which is false. And I was wrong. Somewhere in my highschool/college girl track runner dreams, I had some up with the idea that the fantasitical city of Eugene must be HUGE in order to hold in all the greatness that it contained. Greatness like Hayward…

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Weed, CA

After reviewing Jake’s in depth expense reports (yes, we track our $ flow quite closely), we decided that if we could find a free place to crash for a bit before heading up to Eugene, OR for a month, we should do that. Also, free is awesome (I feel like I say that a lot). We researched into options that a.) wouldn’t be too far off of our trajectory from Lathrop, CA to Eugene, OR b.) would be free or damned near close to that c.) wouldn’t be too far up some windy road where Dyna could fall off a cliff due…

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Lathrop, CA (Yosemite & Wine Country)

We thoroughly enjoy visitors from our non-nomadic life joining us for stints during our nomadic life. And when our visitors leave, we get sad. Because we miss them. And also, because we have to catch up on the work we put off while they were with us. So, mostly missing them. But also, sucky work. After a whirlwind of familiar faces back on the California Coast and in San Francisco, we had a lot of catching up to do. Since Jake holds down a typical (ok, not so typical- his company is awesome) 40hr+ a week job, we like to plan to…

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