Homesteading in an Airstream Water, Electric, Sewer and More

We showed up in April, hoping we might be able to get to work. We were greeted instead by snow up to our knees.

That was April, 2018. The summer before, we’d scouted all around Colorado, camping out of our Ford E-350 and looking at every small town, every national forest, for what place we might like to call home. The ten years prior we’d spent on the road, traveling full-time as a family all across America, Canada, Mexico and Belize.

By that time, we had three sons, two much younger but one who was 16 and, after spending more than half of his life on the road, he was ready to settle down for his last two years of high school. Make some friends, maybe meet a girl. We decided Durango was a town of perfect size, amenities and surroundings. While driving around a lake full of just so-so properties for sale, none particularly exciting but all relatively near a lake, we were about to give up on the area and look elsewhere. Then we saw a sign, nearly knocked over, that read, “Property for sale. Call Kristen Daily.”

It was a small piece of land, situated immediately on the lake itself, and it was beautiful. Undeveloped, surrounded by firs, spruce and aspen, something that could truly be referred to as a hidden gem.

We closed in November of 2017, but by then it was too late and too cold to continue living in the van in Colorado, let alone on a plot with nowhere to park, at 9000′ in the San Juan Mountains. We migrated to Texas for the winter, but here it was, spring of 2018 and we were ready to get to work.

April being a bust, we took one last loop through the American Southwest, just waiting out the snow. By the time we returned to the property in May, the snow had melted. We were ready to break ground.

The Concept

Eventually, we would build a cabin. Eventually, this would be a rental property, something to bring in a little money once our oldest had gone off to college or the Navy or wherever his future took him, so that I might work a little less as we continued our attempt at seeing as much of the world as possible.

We also knew we wanted the property to remain somewhat like a campground, a simple place, a spot in the forest, not a forested spot that we would level and bend to our will, but one where everything we built worked naturally with the features the land and plants there upon had developed over the eons before us.

We would install electric, water and septic. And we would live here, even before the cabin was built, in a vintage Airstream which we once called home, but which had now been in storage for several years.

When we arrived, nothing had been touched. Willows grew at the front of the property, aspens behind them, and firs and gamble oak coated the granite cliffs that fell down to the lake below. And so, we got to work.

A Spot to Park

It seemed obvious that the first step was to determine the best spot to park our van, our now home and the one we’d continue to live in for the foreseeable future, as we began carving our way carefully into a life of homesteading.

The ground beneath the willows was still, only slightly, damp, and I realized immediately that working with the land would not simply help us remain stinky hippies, one with nature, but it would also save us a ton of headaches. Willows love sucking up water, they’re essentially straws, and as feet worth of snow melt here every spring, as the front of our property essentially serves as a drainage valley for the rest of the mountain beyond it, leaving them in tact would mean they’d continue to do the job of slurping up mountain runoff, preventing us from being washed away, surrounded by mud or, worse, some future cabin we’d build from being flooded regularly.

And so, with a clear plan of how we’d cut enough space to park our van, to make a driveway, a spot to camp, we bought a chainsaw.

To be clear, I’m not a “chainsaw” type of guy. I like a good cry, enjoy craft beer, and hug trees before I cut them down. My goal was to never cut anything larger than 2″ in diameter. To be conscious of every cut. I knew I would likely get drunk with the power of a spinning, cutting chain, and even more intoxicated by exhaustion after working hard to clear a spot large enough for our van, to clear a small path to the nearest next neighbor with power, and a space large enough for what we planned to live in come winter. But I swore I’d be careful, and I was, both with the use of the chainsaw itself and the frequency of how often I sliced trees to the ground.

And then we had a place to call camp.

And then, it snowed. Setbacks would be a recurring thing for a family of travelers who’ve now decided to pursue the polar opposite.

Luckily, our entire home could roll away. One of the largest head starts we had to this concept of creating a homestead, was that we were adaptable, able to pick up and go, come back, and know the difference between when it was bad enough to evacuate and when we were just in need of a little sit back and relax around the fire.

The Driveway

After getting caught up in the snow, with our 2-wheel drive van, we realized that an essential ingredient to this homesteading life would be a solid driveway. That meant having about 45 tons of road base delivered by a big truck from a quarry back in Durango. If you’re wondering, 45 tons of road base is delivered in three truckloads. Big ol’ dump trucks. It cost about $800 for the whole batch, which was sufficient for a thirteen foot wide, 46′ long driveway.

Even if we had a 4-wheel drive vehicle, it would be necessary to create a driveway. Otherwise, spring rain makes for mud pits and dollops of goo on shoes when living in a van gets old, quickly. Not to mention the large trucks that, if you don’t plan to dig a well by hand, will be necessary to get your water flowing.

Our goal here was not a paved driveway by any means. We simply wanted something akin to what you might find would you pull into a national forest site. Solid dirt, able to hold up a tire and keep small babies from being lost in muddy sink holes.

The general concept is, after clearing the area of bushes, and removing roots that will just sprout back up through the driveway you’re about to work hard to, you rake your proposed area flat, and then compact it with a machine like this, called a vibratory plate. Fortune turned its gaze our way here in Durango, as a local company by the name of Target Rental had basically every machine we’d need to create our little homestead, and they’d even deliver the bigger boys. But more on that later.

Next up, “road fabric,” more officially known these days as geotextiles.

We found a company by the name of US Fabrics, and a simple phone call, no high pressure sales I might add, had the rep listening to our needs and recommending exactly the right amount of material.

Once placed, held down with some stakes and large rocks, this material was sturdy enough for the dump trucks to carefully back over. Thanks Tim the dump truck driver!

All of this work, the shrub removal, raking, planning and shovel after shoveling, was done by the whole family. Just as setbacks would become a recurring theme, doing this with my lady and sons would as well.

We went with two 3″ layers of road base. As you compact each layer, with the vibratory compactor, you’re supposed to add water, keeping it wet so that it really smashes itself into a wet dirt, rock and clay hash. Given our lack of a water source at this point, we did our best with chucking water via five gallon buckets.

At this point, we have a place to park the van we live in. We have a sturdy foundation for additional big trucks to roll in, when needed, and summer is just getting started. Our goal is to next have a well dug, dig our own ditch to run electricity from the nearest neighbors’ telephone pole, and have a working septic system by the end of the year. Friends of ours have also been hired to renovate a vintage Airstream we once traveled in, but which had been in storage for several years. With May only now wrapping up, we felt quite on track.

And then, setbacks.

The 416 Fire, as it would come to be known, sparked the first day of June. Everyone knew, and eye witnesses confirmed, that it was started by sparks from the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a scenic, steam engine driven train which shuttles tourists–and brings in their dollars–from around the world up through the San Juan Mountains. We took this picture on our way to dog sit for some friends. Driving down the mountain that day, we had no idea it would completely change our next several weeks.

Again, being vandwellers whose home went everywhere they drove proved such a boon for our little escapade.

We setup camp over forty miles away, but could still see the smoke plumes, still wake up with the feeling of sleeping too close to a campfire in our nostrils.

And soon enough, smoke still lingering over the next mountain ridge, we were home again.

I’d note, finally and with regards to the driveway, that this required approval from the local county here. Would my driveway have been longer, I would have needed to pay for a permit, since they would need to more thoroughly review the width and length of the driveway in relation to the future home site, primarily to ensure fire trucks would be able to access everything easily and without putting those good men in danger.

Water, from a Well

Digging a well was not an endeavor we were equipped to do on our own. It’s a damn near impossible feat, frankly, considering we’d need to go down at least 200′ to hit the type of water that would prove reliable over the years. So, we hired a guy who does have the machinery.

He bid $15,000 to do the job. His was the lowest of all bids, and though we’d heard he had old equipment and rarely got the job done on the timeline he proposed, we went with him anyway, as he was born and raised in the area, and came with good recommendations if we didn’t mind him being late to his own funeral.

In the end, the job came with a bill closer to $8000.

Next up was getting that water connected to a place we could actually access it. For this, and to pipe electric down from the nearest telephone pole, we’d need this guy.

It was a ton of fun, and a little scary, to use. We chose it over a larger excavator as that meant we could snake through trees instead of wiping them out all along the way. Renting one of these cost around $200 per day, or closer to $300 over the weekend where our local rental place does “weekend specials,” basically three days to operate the unit, as long as you don’t use it for more than a total of 8 hours. Easier for the novice than trying to pack a full 8 hour day into a single run.

Since it would hold water lines, as well as electric, and we’re at 9000′, the trench needed to be 6 feet deep. That’s deep, especially when you get to granite that doesn’t want to be used by “the little baby man’s excavator,” as a neighbor once called it.

The white stuff in that photo is a combination of what came up when they drilled the well, and flakes of my knuckles after digging the trench so close to the well head we’d just paid to have installed. No issues arose however, and we celebrated with beers and a campfire that night.

Trench dug, pipe laid and wiring from the well’s pump all in place, the next step was to set one of these frost free hydrants up where we’d eventually park our forthcoming Airstream home and have real, running water. Quite the treat after years living out of a van with no such amenities.

The way these work is simple, when you push the handle back down, the water falls down through a trap and into the ground, preventing the pipe itself from freezing.

At this point, we had working water, and great water pressure, I might add, a lucky thing in the world of homesteading! The water was quite silty though, a problem we’d need to deal with down the road.

Electric

Before the homesteading operation, we’d existed primarily on solar power for the past several years. In vanlife, we simply needed to power a small fridge, keep our phones and iPad charged, and provide enough energy to keep my laptop going for work. We also had a small 12v fan, but this was the extent of the electricity we’d need to consume.

I considered solar, briefly, for this homesteading excursion, but quickly shot the idea down–at least for now–when I realized that it would be best fitted atop the roof of some future cabin, and didn’t want to waste the investment initially with a temporary panel install.

Plus, we’d be using loads of power tools and, though I didn’t realize it at the time, electric heat when winter fell. To that end, and since we had a trench dug for the well anyway, I contacted the local electric authority and got to work.

The process was significantly more involved than anything we’d approached previously. The general steps were:

1. Contact the electric co-op for our area.
2. A rep would come out and discuss our building plan, measure the distance from the nearest telephone pole (our neighbor up the road, who already had power.)
3. Get a permit from the county for it all.
4. They would have me run this by the electrician who oversaw it all.
5. He approved everything and created the plan for what type of cable would need to be run.
6. The two of us installed the cables themselves, they would all run underground, no power lines on our property at all.
7. A county inspector came to approve all of the work, before I covered it back up with dirt.
8. Once it was approved, I covered it with dirt.
9. A final inspection sent word to the electric co-op that we were good to go.
10. They flipped the switch and we had power!

The electric co-op was fairly quick to move, from setting up appointments to calling me back. Results may vary in other regions.

The best part of this all was the electrician I found. He was an older man, self-employed after decades of working for government agencies, a kind fellow who didn’t mind me asking questions and allowed me to work beside him the entire time. He even took me to Home Depot where we picked out everything we’d need to get the job done, I paid for it, and all of this on a Sunday. His entire cost was $400, by far the cheapest thing we’d pay someone else to help with.

From the neighbor’s telephone pole, the electric co-op installed a meter on right-of-way and I was responsible for everything after that. The cable we ran held hot, neutral and copper ground wire. Local codes dictated how far underground the wire needed to be buried, and the electrician assured me that it wouldn’t need to be run in a “pipe” (grey PVC pipe made for just such an application) though I now wish that I had, in case anything eve goes wrong it would be much easier to replace the wire that way. Instead, he simply insisted that I make sure there were no rocks directly touching the wire’s casings, which could lead to significant issues should corrosion kick in.

After we were done, he told me a story of his own property, where a rockchuck (aka, marmot or whistlepig) had chewed into his wires underground, forcing him to redo the entire outside electrical setup at his home. This is when I really wished I would have shelled out some additional cash for the pipe.

Without it, all of the wiring, breaker boxes, breakers themselves, the RV outlet panel we’d install while we lived here temporarily (before the cabin was built) and various odds and ends that were necessary ran just under $600.

I dug the rest of the trench, which would continue from the wellhead to the meter, with the same Bobcat E20 I’d rented previously, so no additional cost there.

Permits, labor and materials, the electrical install came in at around $1300.

Suddenly, we had power, and the whims of the sun’s shining were replaced with a regular electric bill, something I hadn’t had in over a decade.

A Place to Live

At this point, we had running water, power and space to park our van, pitch our oldest son’s tent. We had this vintage 1976 Airstream we had traveled in years ago, now in storage in New Mexico. Neither the tent nor the van would be enough to make it through a winter here in the San Juans, at 9000′, with well over 300″ of snow on the way (which we couldn’t know at that time, but was very much in our future.)

The Airstream wouldn’t be large enough for all of us, either. The younger boys could share a bunkbed, we imagined, and another short queen would more than suffice for us parents, but we’d need a place for the teenager to grow into the things that teenagers become. We planned to renovate the Airstream, to meet our needs and because it was full of 40 year old insulation, mold and mouse shit. And we’d build a shed for Tristan to live in.

The shed would double as a building experiment, a chance to learn how to do the basics of constructing a building before trying it out on the cabin some day.

So, we got to work.

Building the Shed: Part 1

I first decided that I would try and construct a garage to involve as few cuts as possible. Heights and widths would be based around existing lengths two which 2x4s and plywood were precut. This was a brilliant plan, and one I quickly abandoned for much of the work after I realized how much a permit would cost to build a proper garage. Not to mention, how slow the county was at issuing such permits.

If I kept the garage under 200 square feet, I wouldn’t need a permit. Thus, the garage became a shed, which we began lovingly referring to as our visitors center.

It would still be large enough to house our old VW Bus, so that once the teenager was grown and off to college, we could store our beloved former home on the road until some date at which we were ready to fix it up and travel in it again.

The main room in the visitors center would be 9′ by 18′ and a small off-shoot, the bottom of which would serve as my workshop, the top a loft for the oldest boy, would be 5′ x 7′.

Step one was to make sure we had enough space cleared. I marked the outer dimensions of the shed with stakes and string, raked the ground beneath as level as possible, removing all of the big trunks and root stubs sticking out of the ground.

I then dug holes at each corner, in preparation for a post-barn construction. Used ready-mix concrete, I put four or five inches of cement down into those holes to help support the posts.

I did the back wall first. To give the main room of the visitors center enough height so that the Bus’ pop top could go up fully even while parked inside, I calculated the roof needed to be 10′ high. You may know already that, for most wood, the dimensions by which it’s labeled are not the actual sizes.

For example, a 2×4 is actually 1.5″ thick, 3.5″ wide. The length, however, is true. To frame a wall, though, you need another 2×4 on the top and bottom each, for a total wall height of 120″ (10′) + 1.5″ + 1.5″ = 123″ high. Some of this would be lost, should we put down flooring (which we would not) or when we added drywall to the ceiling (which we did.) Drywall is about ½” thick though, so it’s a minimal loss.

I bought some plywood as well, to help with a somewhat more flat surface than my dirt driveway would afford. Two build a 2×4 wall, you basically just make a rectangle, placing the studs that will go vertical between those which go horizontal (so the end studs rest atop and beneath, not on the outsides, of the top and bottom studs.) They should be spaced 16″ apart, because, well, that’s how it’s done. I did my best to keep these spacings accurate.

I then placed the poles, using 16′ 6x6s, so that there would be ample post to go into the ground and still reach the tops of my 10′ 2×4 walls. If they ended up being too tall, I could cut some off, but I didn’t want the posts to be shorter than the walls themselves.

Getting the posts square and plumb was difficult, but you can nail 2x4s into them, angled down toward the ground and then staked into the ground. You just place a stake directly next to the lower part of the angled piece of wood, pound it into the ground, ensure you’re plumb (plumb is the vertical equivalent of level, I learned) and then screw the supporting, angled piece of wood into place. It’s at least a two man job, but can be done by one man should he wish to lose globules of hair.

See the top left of this picture for an example of what I’m referring to with the angled support.

I built this back wall, including adding some plywood, first, so that we could install a breaker box while the aforementioned electrician was up here. We were able to install this, so that the visitor center would have power inside, and the RV box at the same time, saving the electrician round trips to my place and us money.

Saving money was a major theme, as you can see by the cheap plastic sawhorses I purchased. They got the job done though.

An RV Pad

Not wanting to sit on level blocks, or live at a tilt, and after the shed was started and the RV pad’s water and electric hookups were completely in place, I ordered a bit more roadbase and created a level spot on which our Airstream would rest, hopefully preventing it from rolling downhill and into the lake, even as spring’s future thawing of the snowpack created rivers out of our land.

At this point, it was July 15th, and I felt good about where we were at. We still needed to finish the shed, renovate our Airstream and come up with a plan for a septic system. A friend dropped by in his van though, and we spent the next month or so doing very little work, instead drinking around fire pits, exploring far off towns by way of mountain passes, jumping off of rocks into rivers, and skateboarding.

Our little community on Camp Wand’rly was growing, as we finally retrieved the Airstream from New Mexico in preparation for its restoration.

The Airstream Renovation

Friends of ours, who’d been living out of their own Airstreams for a few years, mostly parked in driveways as their business was to renovate their clients’ own Airstreams, were to come and renovate our Airstream for us. We paid them to do so. They did not. We’ve written all about that experience here, so I won’t rehash it all.

What I will say is, between these “friends” who essentially left us with a half-finished project, landscapers we’d spoken with back in May only now sending quotes (we’d done the work ourselves, weeks before) and the upcoming situation with a licensed septic installer, we realized that if we wanted to get things done, if we wanted to be satisfied with the work, and if we wanted to have any mistakes put on us, our responsibility to fix, we’d need to do everything we could on our own.

Gutting the Airstream was our responsibility, though, and we pulled together as a family, renting a large dumpster which sat just outside of it, and got to work.

Should you ever hear the name “The Modern Caravan,” though, and think their work looks pretty, you’d be right. If you’re considering hiring them, though, we encourage you to read the article linked above before you get into the mess. There are times when I wish we’d have continued taking the job from this gutted stage ourselves, and though I’ve since repaired most of their total disasters, such as leaving our plumbing to all completely freeze, full of water they put into it, and other major issues, it’s still an example of why doing it yourself is the best way to go.

Building the Shed: Part 2

Before The Modern Caravan arrived, we made friends with some neighbors, the husband of which was a carpenter, but really a jack of all trades-construction related. He offered to help with pouring the concrete floor of the visitor center. He helped ensure that my molds were correct, help erect the poles in the remaining corners of the shed, and turned out to be a wealth of knowledge. I probably wouldn’t have accomplished half as much as we did without his help.

Note above, where I placed 4″ PVC pipe around the wiring and pipes that would come from the well’s pump and water supply up through the concrete.

I would have significantly screwed this part up without our neighbor’s help. Instead, thanks to relying on his past experience, we had what I considered a perfect floor by the end of it all. If half of all contractors and tradesman had this man’s dedication to getting the job done right, the world would be a significantly sturdier, more beautiful place.

Both his and our family, kids and all, stamped our hands into the concrete, a testament forever as to who all contributed to this project.

A couple of days later, the concrete was fully dry. We built the walls, leaving the proper openings for the large door by which the Bus would enter, a side door for easier human entry, and a single window opposite those doors for additional light.

You can see how plans don’t always come together here. The post closest to the camera in this photo was still a bit short. The walls came together though, and we accommodated for it all in the end. Note that the openings, above where the doors go, get additional support in atop since they can’t have studs going all the way to the floor (you know, since that would not make a doorway.)

While we theoretically had a well, with a pump, and lines running to the RV pad and the shed, the water wasn’t working just yet.

The pump needed to be connected to the electrical box attached to the back of the visitors center. This required the concrete and walls to be in place, and a compression tank (the blue thing in the background of the next photo.) This builds water pressure, and the grey box is a switch telling the pump to turn on and off.

With the compression tank and pump switch in place, we finally, actually had running water. Just in time for the Airstream renovators to show up and take over the RV pad. We were still living out of the van, relying on body heat at night and our usual outdoor living during the day.

The Trusses

Aside from drywall, the trusses were the hardest thing to do, and do right. I never did get the drywall part right, actually.

Hanging trusses, without a crane, meant two people dangling precariously from the tops of walls, or ladders, hammers and nails at the ready, but both arms available as another person hoisted one end up.

For the first truss, you nail boards sturdily to the outside of the wall. This allows you to somewhat lean your first truss against those boards, giving you a little more wiggle room to get it safely installed, and then the next one, to which you can connect the first, beginning the process of securing them all. And there were a lot.

Above, if you look closely, you can see where we’ve nailed 2x4s from one truss to the next. This keeps them secure as you move on down the line. A little wind, or just one of them feeling off balance, and people could be crushed, the trusses destroyed, the project highjacked. I hated doing the trusses.

They were quite pretty actually, when finished, and the relief I felt was beyond measure. Too bad they’d eventually be covered completely. When we build our cabin, I’ll find a way to have them more exposed, I think.

I continued to ask the Airstream renovators if they needed help. Only one of them was working on our project at this point. They declined help, ensuring me the project would be finished on time. It wasn’t.

In the meantime, we continued work on the shed.

Roofing the Shed

We chose a tin roof, and I liked the idea of red.

The first step to the roof, now that the trusses were in place, was to install ⅝” plywood. We rented scaffolding, not wanting to store it for the years it might be until we got started on the cabin. This was heavy, hard work, indeed, and a fear of falling was ever-present.

I put most of the tin on myself, with my lady or our teenager handing it up to me. I am, I discovered, deathly afraid of heights. This was a gratifying but stressful affair.

The Airstream renovators would have a break down. We needed some space and, with the shed finished and not being allowed to help with the Airstream, we went on a road trip. When we returned, as mentioned, the Airstream was broken. The bathroom had frozen to pieces. The plumbing was all useless. Several other components hadn’t been finished, such as the hot water heater’s electrical work. Paint was splattered across the windows. The brakes hadn’t been hooked up nor the aluminum skin beneath the trailer reattached. The wood stove was in the middle of the floor, making the kitchen nearly impassible. Most of what we’d agreed on hadn’t been done, but it was livable enough and fortunately I had a few weeks to do most of the repairs before winter really hit.

With the snow, work on the land was paused and we spent the months shoveling, traveling, snowboarding and playing Uno inside, near the wood stove.

Septic in the Spring

By April, the snow was melting. By May, it had dumped several times again on us, so we didn’t get back to work until mid-June. Mosquitos were everywhere. We had basically one primary goal, to finish installing our septic system.

The prior fall we had hired a company by the name of Waldo here in Durango to do this job. I asked, several times, which trees needed to come down and when they said none, I decided to use them. Instead, they wiped out a large swath of our aspen grove, simply because it was easier, I suppose.

I went and got my septic installers license and decided, again, to finish the job myself.

The work done to date, by Waldo, was essentially to blast away some of the granite bedrock where the septic field needed to be, and install a tank we were able to use as a holding tank the previous winter.

From there, we needed to dig out all of the rock, have it inspected by the septic designer (an engineer required for projects so close to a lake and with such difficult soil, which in our case was purely rock.)

The hole needed to be 5′ deep, but it also needed to drain, so in some places it had to go as deep as 7′. Digging a foot deep into granite feels impossible. Digging 7′ into it…

Even at 7′ deep, the water still didn’t want to drain through the solid, crack-free granite below. We then needed to install drainage through the wall where you can see my lady sitting, for perspective on how massive a project this was. We literally scrubbed the rock at the bottom, shoveling dirt into buckets and carrying it out by hand, trying to clear away any muck that might be preventing the water from draining through the cracks in the floor of the hole.

We rented the Bobcat E20 again. It couldn’t do the full job, so we had to get the next size up. The job was a major pain. Not as physically demanding as the trusses, but at times we wondered if it would ever be good enough to pass inspection.

And then one day, it was! We were given the all clear to fill it back in and complete the process.

If you’ve ever spent two months digging a hole, the feeling you get when chucking rocks and sand back into it, essentially undoing all the digging you’ve done, is quite strange.

This system works like so.

You use the sink, toilet or shower in the Airstream, this all runs into a holding tank.

When that tank gets full to a certain point, it reaches a pipe that drains the liquids into a pump tank. The pump tank has these things called “floats” which are designed to tell the pump when to turn on. “I’m 75% full, fire the pump!” The pump then pushes that water into PVC pipes at force. These PVC pipes have holes drilled into their bottoms, and the water goes out through those, into those black pads. “Elgin pads,” as they’re called, then filter much of the bacteria in the water before it seeps down into the sand, which is super fine, masonry grade they say, where the bacteria is filtered even more. The water is then theoretically safe enough to drive again, and it shuffles on downhill back to the lake or groundwater where it begins its long journey of renewal again.

From there, we needed to simply cover the sand with dirt, making sure the flow of spring’s water would divert from the field itself, and do any landscaping we had in mind.

Not that we got a chance to fully compete that before this happened.

From Here…

We still have plans to build a cabin. But, our teenager, largely the reason we did all of this, will graduate before the snow melts, and we’ll likely be off in our van again, traveling the world, until some future period where building a cabin sounds like more fun than exploring Australia or driving from Alaska to Argentina.

When that cabin comes around, we’ll be sure to update you here!