RV Trippin'

Working from home was great, but working on the road is amazing! We're living the gypsy life, traveling in an RV, and turning this great nation into our ever-changing backyard.

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Next big move - Los Angeles!

We took a quick trip to LA recently to meet up with business associates and work on marketing. We soon realized that because a large majority of our business partners, clients, and opportunities are here, we made the big decision to move ourselves here to expand the business.

We’ve had a lot of fun traveling the country and enjoying the natural side of the USA. Now we’re off to another great adventure, living life in one of America’s greatest cities and going through a whole new cultural learning experience.

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Moab, UT & Southwest Colorado

We spent the final days of summer enjoying a lot of hiking and kayaking around Moab. We’ve enjoyed our last 2 years calling Mancos, CO our home, but now we’re moving to LA to expand the business. It’s been a great time!

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Watching for Wolves

Lamar Valley (Slough Creek), Yellowstone National Park

Up on that hillside is a wolfcub den for the Junction Valley wolf pack. Many other hobbyist wolf-watchers came with their high-powered telescopes and parked next to us as the day wore on. They told us how they saw 6 that morning and several other times earlier in the week, and where to watch for them. However, the most we got out of the evening in the way of wolves were their howling. No sightings tonight. 

However, we did have an entire herd of over 100 bison decide to walk right through our parked cars for our fill of wildlife. 

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“Maaa... I think the bears you warned about are here.”

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Targhee National Forest, Idaho

We did a little moving around, we decided we haven’t been viewing enough of Yellowstone National Park so we headed to an area where we can focus more on that area. We picked another national forest near West Yellowstone, Montana and doing some free camping in Idaho.  

Back at our campsite, there is a lot of wildlife brimming around us! We can’t walk anywhere without our bear spray, since this is the most concentrated grizzly bear area in the country (not counting Alaska). There’s a hiking trail behind our campsite and we found these trees scratched up by bears sharpening their claws. 

The photo on the bottom shows a moose and though you can’t see it well in this picture, her calf is laying on the ground to the right. We couldn’t stay long to get a better picture because moose-mommies are very aggressive and she started walking toward us to ensure that we weren’t there to bother her calf. We have been searching the entire summer for moose - we hadn’t been able to see them on any of our kayaking trips on the Snake River back in Jackson Hole, which is where the rangers tell us we’re supposed to have seen them. 

Another animal we saw in the wild here were a pack of mountain goats. This place is truly brimming with wildlife!

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Inspiration Point, Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park

My sister-in-law came to Jackson Hole since we had decided to make this area home base for the summer. There’s so much to do, fun rivers to kayak, pretty views to take in, good eating, shopping, and good people to enjoy that there’s no sense in leaving too quickly. It’s deservedly a great place to vacation so we enjoyed her company for a few days. One of the things we did was hike to Inspiration Point where she visited on her own honeymoon a couple years earlier. We packed a picnic lunch and this was our resting spot where we enjoyed the views as long as we could hang around, until the ground squirrels pestered us enough that we needed to pack our food away and head back down. I didn’t take enough shots, but it’s a gorgeous hike and you can see the back of some of the Tetons from here.

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Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park

A waterfall on the Inspiration Point trail behind Jenny Lake.

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The best view ever! Grand Tetons, Jackson Hole, Wyoming

I think that for these two weeks that we camped at our next site, we have possibly one of the most amazing scenic views in the world. The magnificent Grand Tetons were straight outside our window without another camper around to disrupt the peace and quiet we felt here. Well, other than a few “rough riders” on horseback from a nearby ranch enjoying trailrides through the national forest, but they would just wave hello from a distance and continue on with their tour. 

In the meantime, we continue to go kayaking every other day on the Snake River or in one of the lakes in the Grand Teton National Park.

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Our next campsite we stayed at in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. I’m standing on top of our RV for the sunset shot of the Grand Tetons! We left behind an improved fire pit and another log bench for future campers to enjoy using. 

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Responsible Camping

The National Forest rangers do not have the funds to maintain campsites in the back country, so it’s up to the public to do their part and camp responsibly in their forests. Since we’re not paying any fees for dispersed camping, we decided to instead make it our thing to leave our campsite better than when we first arrived. We will pick up any trash we find in the area and then leave something behind that improves the site to be enjoyed by the next people who visit. This site already had a good fire ring, which we still cleaned up and raked, but my husband found this log and carved out the “smartphone holder” and then wanted to leave our marks with the handprints. I realize now that anyone sitting on our bench will have remnants of our hands against their derrière. :)

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Jackson Lake, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming 

We love kayaking this summer! Jackson Hole has a plethora of bodies of water to enjoy kayaking, and amazing views of scenery and wildlife to boot!

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Jackson Hole, Wyoming (Bridger-Teton National Forest)

We made it to our next destination that we wanted to explore for the summer. For the first time, I decided to try dispersed camping in the US National Forests, which in case you didn’t know is free of charge! As long as you’re not within a mile of a developed campground and stay within 100 yds of the public roads, and stay for no longer than a max of 16 days, you’re free to go camping wherever you want in the national forests (though they don’t like you making new campsites, use the preexisting ones). Just be sure to camp responsibly such as building a safe firepit and putting out your fires cold, locking up food and trash from the bears, and keep your site clean.

I looked on Google Maps at the satellite view of this particular road and noticed some dispersed campsites and drove straight there with our 5th-wheel RV. The climb up the hill proved to be quite an adventure (deep ruts, large rocks, unmaintained dirt road) and many of the campsites were already taken. We climbed to the last site an hour later at the very top and fortunately it was empty. Two minutes later, another RV trailer pulls by looking at our site to see if there’s another campsite beyond ours, and learned that they followed us up thinking we knew where we were going. Feeling responsible, we invited them to share our site as it was roomy enough and already getting dark. Fortunately, everyone became fast friends over the weekend. [Shout out to Michelle, Jeff, Bruce (AKA “Crush”), and Kristen!]

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Bear Lake, Garden City, Utah

Made a short stop at Bear Lake on the Utah-Idaho border. Very touristy lake because of the Mediterranean-blue clear waters here. The town itself is very sparse however, there’s only one grocery store and they only have 4 short aisles of shelves so bring your own stuff if you book a vacation here. The views however are quite worth it and most of the rental homes are cute mountain cabins.

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Rajah’s 1st Geocache

While on the road to our next destination, we stopped at a wildlife viewing area to stretch our legs. We brought Rajah, our bengal cat, outside to give him a little walk too. He led us 40 yards away from the RV, and walked up on an ammo can hiding under a bush. As soon as we noticed what he was looking at, we had a strong suspicion of what it was - a geocache!

I pulled the app open on my phone to check and surely it was right there on the map. We opened it up to view the contents, and there were a bunch of beanie baby animals! For Rajah’s first geocache, I couldn’t have imagined a better find. How lucky for him!

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Colorado River, south of Moab

18 miles of gentle river flows between the Moab Boat Ramp and the Potash Boat Ramp. 

[Shout out to Dave!] - the extra guy on the paddle board. We met him earlier on the river when he tried to get in upstream where it’s faster and has some rapids - he couldn’t get back to the boat ramp so just rode the river until he got to the next one to figure out how to get back to his car. We offered to give him a lift back to his car, so he took us out for burgers as a thank you later, and invited us to try this calmer section of the river with him (after doing more research this time).

If anyone tries this section after reading my post, be forewarned that the last ½ mile after the potash plant to the boat ramp is mosquito hell!!!! We were attacked by swarms and paddled furiously back to grab the bug spray we had left in the truck.

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Arches National Park, Utah

This park is only 2 miles from the town of Moab. There is also a primitive campground within the park, but you’d want to make reservations as early as their booking window allows. We went hiking on the difficult Primitive Trail, which was over 7 miles long. It was even more difficult with the 100*F temps. But it was so memorable, the views and the hiking over slick rock will be infused into my brain more than the heat.

There are more than 2,000 arches within the park, containing the world’s greatest density of natural arches. An arch is any opening measuring at least 3-feet in diameter. This area was once under a sea that left a salt bed behind when it evaporated, which is what accounts for all the cracks and holes in the sandstone. 

FYI, pictures are labeled with captions.

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The Canyonlands - Moab, UT

Our campground is managed by BLM, even though there is an abundance of commercial RV parks in Moab. We prefer BLM or public campgrounds because they are more spacious and part of nature, rather than cramped between two other RVs like sardines in a parking lot. We got a spot right next to the Colorado River, so we were able to put our kayaks in upstream and then get back out at our campsite. The temperatures were reaching triple-digits *F so the water was quite refreshing. There were a few whitewater rapids that we also got to splash around in with our kayaks, and fortunately proved to be stable enough for us to navigate through them. We found this hidden alcove along the river where we left our mark on the canyon wall. We loved our campground because by 4:30pm, the sun moves behind the canyon cliffs so we were back in the shade pretty early and the evenings cool down to 50′s-60′s *F for a very comfortable evening.  What a great start for our summer tour!