While visiting a friend Katy in San Diego we discovered that one of her roommates had recently taken part in one month RV exucursion. The goal was to document people who make the conscious choice to live simply in order to pursue their outdoor passions. I think this trailer gives a good glimpse into the mobile life style.

23 Feet Trailer from Allie Bombach on Vimeo.

They are getting ready to start showing the film at film festivals this Spring and you can learn more about the trials and tribulations at their blog 23feet.org.

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Even though Maria persistently states that she is not a Chiefs fan we thought it would be fun to hit up a Chiefs game while we are on the West Coast. A month prior, we had considered going to a game when they were playing in Oakland, but the timing didn’t work out and Raider fans have a certain reputation we didn’t want to validate in person.

Turns out we already had plans to head San Diego the weekend that the Chargers were playing KC. Maria found an RV parking pass on Craigslist and we were set. We always like to share to joy, so we assembled a crew of Kansans and headed out to stadium bright and early at 7:45 am.

While I have been to several Chiefs games I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed the RV section at Arrowhead, but Qualcomm stadium definitely had a large section set aside for recreational vehicles.

Some pregame activities included:

Observing the passionate fans

RV Alley Beer Pong

Checked out the VIP Limo at the end of our row. Maybe next year.

Reppin' the Red in enemy territory.

The game itself was a disappointing showing as Kansas City’s starting quarterback was out because of an emergency appendecomy, and his back-up looked utterly clueless. The Charger’s scored first, last and everything in between as the Chiefs were shut out 31-0.

But the party doesn’t end when the game does. The RV section continues until about 4 hours after the teams have left. We couldn’t have left earlier if wanted too, as Stanley was pretty snuggly fit in between our neighbors. So we broke out the washers game and observed more fans like this one…

Charger bolts on elbows and name in Chargers font tattooed on back. Check.

All in all it was beautiful day for football and friends.

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Ahhh Vegas, what better place to watch some non-conference Jayhawk basketball action. The Las Vegas Invitational is an odd-ball event in that there were eight teams, but competing for two separate tournaments. Kansas was scheduled to play Ohio and Arizona regardless of the outcome of the other games, so we knew there would be at least one good game.

Friday’s game against Ohio found us parking Stanley in an external construction lot at the Orleans where we had some pregame food and drinks before we headed into the Arena. Along with Maria and myself were our friends Mike, Andie, Carlos, Jenn and Jimbo.

The first thing that struck me entering the arena was the pure number of Jayhawk fans that were rolling in. For some reason I thought KU would have this small section section in the corner. I was way off as Kansas blue filled the arena, and I would say it was 95% Jayhawk fans to 5% for Ohio. The crowd definitely made the team feel at home as they got out to an early lead and never looked back.

The second game against Arizona was easily the more anticipated match-up as the last several meetings a between these two programs have created thrilling games that go down to the wire. The great match-up ensured that it would be shown on ESPN and Maria was determined to get on TV. So we put together some “clever” signs and headed in to the arena.

This time the crowd had about a 9 to 1 ratio of Kansas to Arizona fans, which became apparent as any chant the Wildcats tried to start was quickly overcome by an arena shaking KU cheer. The Jayhawks fed off the crowd energy and took an early lead. Arizona wouldn’t go away and kept it interesting in to the final 4 four minutes when two things happened:

The first being Maria’s sign toting efforts were finally paid off and she got some air time

The second being a nervous tension in the crowd as all the fans who bet on the games 9 point spread were jerked back in forth as the the point difference teetered between 8 and 10. Ultimately an uncontested lay-up by Arizona put the difference at 8 causing many Hawks to lose (sorry Mike).

The Orleans was able to keep a lot of the Jayhawk fans at their resort by handing out free drink coupons and the bar tenders even went the extra mile and were all wearing KU gear. After the free drinks were exhausted, Maria corralled a group of friends and convinced them to pile in Stanley and head over to the RIO. This was easily the most people we have had in Stanley. Luckily the Rio was only a mile away.

Overall it was a great way to spend Thanksgiving weekend, and I couldn’t be more Thankful for the opportunities this trip has brought and the good friends that were able to share this experience with us.

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Hello everyone! Thanks for checking back on the blog. Lots has happened since our last post, but I guess that is what happens when you don’t post all the time!!

After San Francisco we headed down the CA coast through Santa Cruz, Monterey down through Big Sur. What a drive!! Everything from the Redwoods to the winding road on steep cliffs. 17 Mile drive was definitely worth the $10 toll. It winds its way through Monterey and Caramel. We saw Pebble Beach and many more just as incredible golf courses and even got to take the dogs on a walk on the beach. We watched 12 or so surfers cutting it up on a somewhat chilly breezy day. A “storm” was supposed to be moving in that weekend, so we made our way down the coast in 1 day to avoid driving in the rain.

From there we basically cut across CA to get to Las Vegas. We arrived 5 days earlier than we really needed to but casino parking is free and Brian and I wanted to get some poker time in before our fun filled Jayhawk weekend. Brian is going to post more about that and I am sure he will be sure to mention my 2 seconds of fame with 1:32 left in the KU Arizona game.

1 Month in I did a reflective post of our time on the road so I thought it would only be right to do another 4 months in. Not much has changed in the way of our opinion of this trip, which is still “Best Idea Ever”. Other than sleeping in too much I am very happy with all our decisions on this trip. Sure there are many, many places I wanted to see but missed, and certain decisions I’ve made on where we should drive and when that could have been better, but you learn and I just tell myself, we will hit it the next time around. It’s nice to know that I have a whole life ahead of me where I will continue to travel and explore and see all of this planet’s amazing sights.

So 4 months in what more have we learned?

1. I might have mentioned it before but we use Mint.com now to track all our expenses. It is super helpful to create budgets and categorize your spending such as Gas, RV Parks, Groceries, Restaurants and of course, Breweries. We started using it in Oct and now have 2 months to look back and realize we spend A LOT on food.

2. Continuing along the lines of Mint.com we have been spending a lot more time boondocking (parking while we aren’t hooked up) versus paying to park at a RV Park. Typically, we will expect to pay anywhere from $30-$40 to pay to park which will allow us to plug in for electricity, dump the black tank, fill up our water tank and get cable TV. It always seems more convenient to be hooked up in a park when we are trying to work from the road. If we aren’t plugged in we can use the lights off battery power and use our 2 outlet inverter to charge all our electronics. I think we stayed in RV parks probably 20/30 days the first month, I think last month we stayed 6 or 7 days. That is a big cost difference.

3. I don’t understand how California is struggling so much economically when everything is SO taxed!! The most expensive we paid for gas was $3.69, we would be lucky to find it around $3.26. Now that we are in AZ its $2.56 right around the corner.

4. People are still asking us, what’s next and I am happy to say I still don’t know! I think uncertainty scares a lot of people but not me. I can tell you for certain that we want to continue this trek for at least 1 more year. Circle back to spend time with family and friends in Kansas and Nebraska once it gets warm again and then go back through Colorado, over to Oregon and back to Cali sometime next October. But in order to continue that long we will have to start making more money from the road. We need at least $3000/month to live comfortably, but could definitely do it cheaper if we had to (which i think we might).

5. Now that we are familiar with our new lifestyle we have been able to spend more time focusing on our own projects. This includes researching the home brew process and working on our new t-shirt store which will hopefully be launching this week. Brian is working on a custom-made sweater company and continues to contract for Popstar.

6. Brian, what have you learned?: “Um, home is where your heart is”. haha! I love catching him off guard. A simple man says so much without many words.

7. My favorite places so far have been: visiting my cousins in Denver and Nevada City, Hood River, OR, Fort Collins, CO, Portland OR, and Pacific City, OR.

8. Places we missed so far that we are hitting next time around: Whistler, Canada, Glacier National Park, and Crater Lake, OR.

9. Best beer for me: The Hub, 7 Grain Stout, Portland, OR – Brian’s Pick: Coopersmith, Green Chili Ale, Fort Collins, CO

10. Ernie says: “(cue whining sound)” and Buddha says: “if I focus on “walking” at a dog park I generally don’t need to bully other dogs around and get in fights”. Buddha still hasn’t learned to NOT drink the salt water even after puking each time he does it.

Thanks for following once again. I am starting to upload videos now to YouTube so subscribe to my channel here. We are spending the next few days in Lake Havasu and plan to head towards San Diego for the weekend, hopefully catching the Chiefs Chargers game on Sunday, to tailgate with a few friends. Hope you all are keeping warm. Stay in touch we love to read comments from our friends!

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And also Happy Meat and Beerfest to all those that are fortunate enough to be in attendance. We are certainly thankful for all our family and friends who have been so supportive on our path in life. Now get some turkey in yo belly!

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After spending  a week and a half with Wendy, Mathew, and Tyler we left Nevada City, CA and headed to San Francisco (“SF” to those in the know). This was one of the places Maria was really looking forward to seeing and it did not disappoint. Our friend Carlos had moved there a year prior and did a great job showing us around.

We stayed in an RV park the first two nights in Marin a town just North of SF, before taking Stanley into the city. We knew this was not as simple as most towns with SF’s narrow roads and 45 degree hills. Smartly we stayed to the outer edge of the city where it was flatter and less congested.

Parking  in SF turned out to be more complicated than most cities as there are not a whole lot of long curb sides, because of complex system of under building garages. After spending one night boondocked on some random curb, we were able to find a spot behind Carlos’ apartment. This worked out perfectly as it was Friday and over the weekend it is not a two hour limit spot.

We haven’t been very touristy in our travels thus far, but we branched out and visited some of the standard stops such as the Fisherman’s Wharf, “the world’s crookedest street”, and the Haight Ashbury district. We also got our culture on at the SF MOMA, but were a bit disappointed in the diversity of work as it seemed like 90% of the exhibits were photographs.

The next day we met up with Carlos, Jenn, and our fellow rubber tramp Brendan to hit up the Exploratorium, which is essentially a giant hanger filled with little science projects and interactive stations that run the gamut from physics to how the mind works. It was a bit overwhelming, but after about 4 hours in there I felt I was able to see about three quarters of the exhibits.

Exploratorium - spectra shadows

Exploratorium - mirror room

Saturday we relaxed at Dolores park with dogs and spent Sunday fixing the bike rack on Stanley and getting ready to head Monday.

Great time in SF and it definitely made the list of top 5 cities been to thus far. Thanks to Carlos and Jenn for the being great hosts.

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Depending on the day, week or time of day that Brian is intently starring at his phone for minutes on end, I go back and forth with my feelings on Facebook. On one hand, it has been a great way for me to stay in touch with people from college (KU was one of the first Universities allowed on Facebook when it first launched) and has generally kept me in the loop with what babies are doing what and the occasional link to a good KU article or design resource. On the other hand, I find myself checking up on it way too much, I read news posts from people I haven’t talked to or thought about in years and I’d say about half of my really good friends don’t even really use it. Back in the day when Twitter first started people would say “why the hell do I care if you are going to get coffee” or “i could care less to hear about the fluxes in your bowel movements” but this was before Facebook had the status updates and news feed wall we are oh so familiar with today. Now I find that Facebook is more like what people thought Twitter would be and Twitter is actually more of a valuable resource for news and interesting links.

All this blabbing is really for nothing though, i just thought I would post my mobile uploads album from Facebook for all of those who don’t get my daily “this is the beer I am drinking today” pictures. Not that I drink beer everyday, of course. In fact, since leaving Oregon our brewery visits have been slim to none. We are 3 months in now, trying to get more of a grip on our expenses, as reality will soon sink in that I am finally tapping into savings and it may or may not last long, depending on how many sushi restaurants I feel the need to visit. Anyhoo, I do like using Facebook for photo uploads and this oh-so-convenient plug-in makes including the photos somewhat a snap (setup is a little tricky, but once you have your FB ID figured out it gets easier). So without further ado, here are all the mobile uploads from my iPhone to FB.

Thanks for following!!

From Mobile Uploads, posted by Maria Scarpello on 10/11/2010 (100 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

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Well it’s finally time for us to head to San Francisco after a much needed relaxing stay in the woods with my cousin Wendy in Nevada City, CA. We’ve been here for about a week and a half and had the opportunity to hop a flight back to Kansas to surprise my sister at her Delta Gamma sorority initiation. Now, not only are we half sisters, but we are sorority sisters to boot. Awwe, how cute, i know. Well, our trip back also meant we got to hang with our good ol’ buddies in Lawrence for Halloween. You know, we’ve been to a lot of places in our lifetime and I can honestly tell you nothing compares to Lawrence, especially when it comes to basketball season. Brian is going to do a post on our halloween antics, and as for me, well I’m going to back, back, back it up and update you on our past few weeks.

Here is our path since the last post:

After the volcano pass drive we found ourselves in Bend, Oregon. A beautiful little mountain town with some very nice breweries. We only visited 2, Bend Brewing Company and 10 Barrel Brewing Company. Both were worth the visit with great specials on Monday/Tuesday night. 10 Barrel Brewing has a great patio with a fireplace to enjoy your brew outside. After Bend we made a whacky path through the “Painted Hills” John Day Fossil area of Central Oregon. With a little help from my friend Wiki: “Painted Hills is one of the three units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, located in Wheeler County, Oregon. It totals 3,132 acres and is located 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Mitchell, Oregon and 75 miles east of Bend. Painted Hills is named after the colorful layers of its hills corresponding to various geological eras, formed when the area was an ancient river floodplain.”

Buddha's face matches the landscape in Painted Hills, OR

The black soil is lignite that was vegetative matter that grew along the floodplain. The grey coloring is mudstone, siltstone, and shale. The red coloring is laterite soil that formed by floodplain deposits when the area was warm and humid.
An abundance of fossil remains of early horses, camels, and rhinoceroses in the Painted Hills unit makes the area particularly important to vertebrate paleontologists.

The Google image search has MUCH nicer pics than I was able to take

But here were a few of my Fav’s I was able to snap:

After our drive through the hills we found ourselves in Hood River, about an hour east of Portland, for the KU – K-State game, luckily on a Thursday and on ESPN. Unfortunately the game wasn’t much to look forward to but the brewery we found, Full Sail, was quite the delight. Tasty food and many, many beers to sample. Not sure if I’ve said this before but everyone in Oregon is a HUGE hop fan and quite understandably so, as they grow them up here and have some of the freshest hop brews in the country. Hood River definitely found a place in our hearts, the city is sooo pretty bordered by the Columbia river, you can find many outdoor activities including their most famous, kitesurfing. The weather was perfect while we were there and this is definitely a place we would like to return to if we can manage a round 2 next fall.

We would have liked to stay a few more days in Hood River, however we had to be on our way back to Portland to catch M.I.A. concert which pretty much rocked my world. She is an incredible politically charged, funky, future-forward, British visual music artist. I met her briefly in 2008 when she came through Lawrence and performed at Liberty Hall, I snuck backstage and was thrown out just about as quick, but NOT before I could tell her what an incredible show she put on and how she rocked my night. She was really short.

After Portland, we made our merry little way down the Oregon coast. Definitely something everyone should see in their lifetime. Incredible cliff views and huge boulders, just like you see at the end of Goonies. We also managed to make our way to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for a tour and taste. I went through the sample line 3x, it was tasty! We headed as far south as Florence and then made our way over to Eugene to tailgate with the Oregon Ducks vs. UCLA. Brian also has a post about our times there.

After Eugene we were forced to drive south inland, rather along the coast like I would have preferred because of a mighty storm and 50 MPH winds on the coast. We spent the second part of Oct. staying at quite a few casinos for the free parking and subsequent poker if it was in the cards for us 😉 One night found ourselves in the middle of a Live UFC fight night, full of Ed Hardy and Affliction wearing tough guys, a town which seemed to be a population of 200, got all decked out for this night. I played in a poker tourney that night and busted out on the bubble. For the non-poker jargon peeps that means if I waited for one more person to go out I would have won money, but instead I went home with none :(… NEXT time!!

So along our casino crashing night we finally found a fellow RVer doing the same thing as us, or as he so eloquently puts it: “Quit Job. Buy RV. Kick North American Ass.” Brenden, our Canadian counterpart, had a surprising amount of similarities, working in the technology/web world, ignoring the predestined future and comments from everyone around us saying you should climb the corporate ladder and feel warm and comfy with “job security” and plans to RV around North America for the next 2 years, which has also turned out to be a brewery tour for himself as well!! We had a great night sharing travel stories, people we’ve met, sketchy places that we probably should have thought twice parking in and how we now have an incredible heightened sense tuning into any little sound we hear. Seriously, every time i hear a wonky sound nowadays I think, what the hell is that!?” He is pretty much on the same path as us heading south so I have no doubt our paths will cross again. His blog rocks BTW, he is a really good writer, much better than I am, you should check it out at www.blimpyb.com.

From there it was south through the Redwoods, where it was still pretty stormy, but we managed to get lucky and find a 2 hour gap in the rain to make the drive of the Avenue of the Giants. We found what was one of the tallest trees, Founders Tree, fallen in the 90s measuring over 300 ft. tall. Incredible, again, something to not miss!! After Redwoods we drove through wine country and finally visited a few wineries. I loved a couple of shots of the valley with my Hipstamatic iPhone app.

And the rest is history, hanging out with my cousin. Over the weekend she pointed us to the Yuba river where we took the dogs on a 3 mile hike on Hoyt’s Trail. The river has huge white boulders and geological landscapes unlike anything I’ve seen before. Buddha has a great time chasing rocks in the river, sticking his entire head underwater, trying to fetch rocks. This guy just cracks me up!!

Thanks again for following. I will keep you posted on our times in SF, heading south on 101 from there. Life is good! 🙂

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Halloween is one of the best holidays ever invented. It’s up there with St. Patrick’s Day. So what do you do for such a party when you are on the road? In our case we fly back to home of the last 10 years and get grimey with Lawrencians. We had decided a couple weeks prior to go back this weekend so Maria could surprise her sister at her sorority initiation.

We left Stanley and the dogs in the watchful care of Maria’s cousin Wendy in Nevada city, CA. An early Friday flight from Sacramento airport landed us in Kansas City with enough time to have an unpleasant run-in with the DMV and surprise my mom with on her doorstep with the line “We were in the neighborhood so, so we thought we’d drop by.”

On Saturday we were able to enjoy some Mass St. strolling before getting down the nitty gritty business of making our costumes. $47 was all we needed to make myself into a Mr. Potato head and Maria into her favorite MC Hammer lyric (can you guess which one). The rest of our holiday crew included Donkey Kong (Scott), A Piranha Flower (Anne), a Giant Shamrock (Mike), and his accompanying Leprechaun (Andie).

Without getting too detailed here are some highlights from the night:

Dancing Muppet crew

Mike’s costume getting in everyone’s way

Scott’s amazing resemblance to my my costume.

Maria’s ability to get “Hammer Time” to the top of every jukebox playlist.

The impromptu drum/dance party on Mass street after the bars closed.

The 40-minute drive-thru line at McDonald’s (no picture)

It was great to celebrate such a ridiculous holiday with great friends in a great town. We might have to try a destination Halloween next where Stanley can participate as well (I’m thinking he would make a great Elvis).

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We had tried earlier in the trip to go to a Washington University football game while we were in Seattle, but plans fell through and we had to find another local school to support. So when we got into Orgeon it was natural to find a Ducks game to go. We rode into Eugene on Thursday for the Oregon vs. UCLA game.

After about a half hour of maneuvering Stanley through traffic round the stadium we realized we would have to park elsewhere and ride our bikes to tailgate. We did find a parking lot full of RVs but it cost $200 for the weekend!! And seeing as we didn’t have 20 of our best friends to help chip in for that spot, we decided to keep driving. We have become accustomed to street parking but you never know exactly what kind of street you’re going to end up on. Luckily, Eugene seemed nice enough and our street parking spots worked out perfectly.

We didn’t actually go to the game, but we sure had a good time meeting other Oregon fans. I picked up an Oregon t-shirt and Maria got a hoodie and some athletic shorts. Now that we are on the west coast we get a lot more “Go Ducks” in our new apparel than we do “Go Hawks” when we are in our KU gear. Here are a few photos from our day. Thanks for following!!

From Oregon Ducks tailgate, posted by Brian Devine on 10/27/2010 (9 items)

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