Working the dream life for 17+ years.
Rene
The last couple of days of driving on New Jersey roads has been some of the most intense driving we’ve ever done.
L.A. traffic has nothing on this place. It’s a lot of narrow roads, fast street-level freeways with cars pulling into and out of driveways, and the most aggressive drivers outside of Manhattan. Jim’s hauling the rig like a seasoned pro, but I just grip the seat and clench my jaw. At least yesterday we got our own escort to get us out of New York.
Our brother in law, Tim, is a tugboat engineer, and he’s currently living his own live/work dream. He spends half of his time in the engine hull of Tugboat Margot, running cargo up and down East Coast waterways. The other half of the time, he manages his company, NYS Marine Highway Transportation Company, from where he lives in nearby Troy, New York.
We got a tour of Tim’s latest addition to the fleet ? Tug Margot ? while we were visiting him and Jim’s sister Barb.
Down the road from Jim’s sister’s house in Troy, lies Forest Park Cemetery, one of the most haunted cemeteries in the U.S. With it being October and all, and us being the ghoul loving, dia de los muertos revelers that we are, we just had to see this place for ourselves.
There are lots of good reasons to own a home. You don’t have to worry about being kicked out of your place without warning. You don’t have to write a check to some fat cat landlord every month. And you can paint your walls whatever colors you damn well please.
But there are twice as many reasons why owning a home sucks. Property taxes. Insurance. Yard work. Wet basements. Ceilings that fall down without warning.
This week, Jim and I have been reminded about why we decided to cut the shackles of homeownership.
For the last few years, a discussion forum I visit almost daily, is Simple Living, an incredible resource for anyone contemplating ways in which they can simplify their lives.
A few months ago on SL, I read about Sara, Matt and their 3-year old daughter Bella, who were planning to travel around the country in a grease powered RV. It was great to see another young couple selling all their stuff, and hitting the road to teach others how to tread lightly on the planet!
Sara and I have been chatting back and forth as we each embarked on our respective journeys. We even crossed paths in Minnesota, but missed eachother by a day when we each went through Brainerd. Last week, we finally got to meet up in Albany over coffee. What a hoot!
The farmer of the Teleion Holon CSA organic farm in Vermont discusses the good and bad reality about running a Community Supported Agriculture farm.
Come September, scenes like this put a wide smile on campground owner’s faces.
We have often considered buying a campground when this trip is over. So whenever we can find an owner who has time to chat about what it’s like to run one, we love to listen and hear about what it’s really like. When we arrived at one resort in Maine, it was a quiet weekday, and the owner was happy to share some advice about the realities of running a campground.
Tips, Plans, Patterns, Resources and Video for building your own RV, Van, Camper or Fifth Wheel Travel Trailer.
When you’re roaming about the countryside, be careful who you tell your story to, or you could end up as a member of the latest Manson Clan.
Yesterday while shopping at one of the last Farmer’s Markets of the season here in Vermont, we stopped to admire some homemade bread being sold by vendors who appeared to be typical Vermont farmers. We sampled the breads they had, and they were so good. They were ?heavenly.? Even though bread looked as dense as bricks, each sample we tasted was light and tasty. So we were blown away when the farmer told us that the breads were wheat free, and made with spelt flour. Spelt?
Isn’t spelt some some earthy, nasty ingredient that hippies bake with to snake out their colons or something? Ick! Now we’d eaten it!
When we picked out our Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck, one of our requirements was that it had to have a diesel engine, so that we could run biodiesel or straight veggie oil (SVO) in it. We wanted to offset our footprint by buying such a large vehicle. So we took a class on Making Your Own Biodiesel, learned the ins and outs of producing and buying it, and set off on this trip with the hope that we would find it in lots of places. Eventually, we’ll make our own, but for now, we have to rely on Biodiesel.org to tell us who’s selling it and where.
People often ask us, “What do you do without a TV?” Well, sometimes, the best entertainment is just people watching in the campground.
For instance, last week at Acadia National Park in Maine, we watched in shock as our neighbor tried to get his 35′ fifth wheel out of the campground. This was a very tall rig. Nothing wrong with that, but as many of you know, many government campgrounds aren’t often designed for today’s RVs.
Ideas, tips and worksheet for creating a road trip budget forecast plan.
RV Life Magazine features profile on young professionals of Live Work Dream and their RV road trip sabbatical.
People often ask us if we miss our “stuff.” Well, the only thing I miss are my scrapbooking and card making supplies. I hated to put them in storage, and thought I’d have to say goodbye to my favorite creative outlet for a while.
But recently, I was introduced to Digital Scrapbooking, and fell in love with it. The digital way of preserving family memories is so much less expensive, more flexible — and saves a ton of space, because everything is done on my computer.
I’m enjoying it so much, that now I’m teaching others about it. Even people who don’t consider themselves “creative” are finding that they can design crafty “coffee table” style, archival quality photo books.
With a wag of his tail, our dog Jerry always seems to bring us such good fortune. On Saturday, we took him to “Bark Harbor,” an upscale pet boutique in Bar Harbor’s downtown area. As we walked in, we noticed a flyer that advertised the business as being for sale, along with the building which has an upstairs apartment, and a separate home away from downtown. Woah!
We’ve often said that our next business would be some kind of dog-oriented operation, and the opportunity to start one was right in front of us, in one of the most beautiful locations we have been to yet.