A Look Back at Our Years of Fulltime RVing and Worldschooling {A collection of our 'Year in Review' posts}

 Some of my favorite posts to read are the annual reviews. I decided to make it easy and put all of them here for quick reference. While living in the RV for the first five years, I wrote a recap of the previous year on our nomadiversary in April, but I later switched to calendar year. Click on the year to read.

2014: Began Fulltime RVing. 22 States, 33 state & national parks 

2015: 12 states, Hawaii, Japan, 22 national parks, Began birding, work-camping at a National Wildlife Refuge 

2016: Drive to Alaska for the summer. camp hosting. 6 new states and 3 provinces of Canada (Yukon, British Columbia, Alberta). 13 national parks 

2017: East Coast plus New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Downsized from 37ft to 16ft RV! 13 new states, 37 national park sites, first birding festival. Birding the Everglades.

2018: 2 new states, Established a home base, Road trip to Vegas, hosted exchange students, training trip to Kenya with ITEC, Uganda to visit friends, Birding Colombia 

2019: Five months in Ecuador, visit with Waodani in the Amazon Jungle, Birding Ecuador. Colombia, Trip to Ohio, Tennessee 

2020: The good, bad and ugly year. The Keys

2021: Florida Keys. Charleston, South Carolina. Ohio

2022: Four month RV roadtrip out West. Our 50th state together! North Dakota. Minnesota

2023: Three months in South America: Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Tunisia. 

2024: Southeast Asia: A month in Thailand and a month exploring Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan.  Turning Teenagers and flying airplanes.

2025: Two months living in a small town in the Colombian Andes (Vélez). Paragliding, caving, discovering new hobbies: playing the Tiple (a traditional Colombian instrument with 12 strings), and smelting coins. 

Birding Texas {South Llano River SP}

I met a friend of Nicole's at the Biggest Week in 2017 and have been following her on Facebook ever since. She posts amazing photos of birds with great information attached. I was surprised to see she posted from High Island just days before we arrived. Unfortunately we would just miss her. THEN she posted about her visit to a Texas state park with birding blinds. I looked it up and it happened to be right along our path! Amazingly there was a campsite available so I booked it and we headed to South Llano River State Park in Hill Country. 

We arrived with only an hour of light left. As I was helping Daddy back into the campsite, a Painted Bunting (above) was calling from the tree next to me! Wow! Journey grabbed her borrowed camera, (Thanks Alice!) and the three of us walked to the blind that was closest to us (a 5 minute walk). A blind is like an open room with no door and one side made of glass. This allows you to quietly sit and watch birds, and even photograph them without disturbing them. Food and water are on the other side of the glass to draw the birds in. 

The kids were SO EXCITED to see the birds this close! Hummingbirds were all around and White-winged Doves posed nicely. Asher wanted so badly to take photos, so he borrowed my camera. There was so much excitement in the kids' voices as they would call out, "Hummingbird on the feeder! The Titmouse is on the water feature! Sparrow on the rocks!" My heart was overjoyed!

 

Black-crested Titmouse after a bath.

Summer Tanager

Black-chinned Hummingbird

As the light was fading we went to check out a different area where Asher could fish and saw four armadillos out looking for dinner! They were not shy either!

He caught a nice-sized gar!

We heard some Lark Sparrows in these trees. Journey was able to snap a few photos.

The next morning I woke early to hit the trails and all four blinds. The Golden-cheeked Warbler nests in this area, and only travels between here and Mexico, so this was my best chance of seeing one. After watching from the Agarita Blind for a bit, I started up aptly-named the Golden-cheeked Warbler trail, where I did, in fact, find not one, but two! I also found a rare Golden-winged Warbler which was very exciting. Such a striking bird, but sadly, no photos. It was a longer hike than I had expected. When we left the park at noon, I had walked nearly 9 miles! 

I was delighted to get a photo of this gorgeous Golden-fronted Woodpecker at the blind!

Blue Grosbeak (above)        Black-throated Sparrow (below)

After my hike, I went to find my family at the river where Asher was fishing. The kids were eager to go visit the birding blinds again, so that's where we went. We briefly visited the two closest to the campground, then I took them to the Agarita blind where I had seen the biggest variety and lots of buntings. They were most amused with the cardinal who was molting his head feathers.

Indigo Bunting (above)         Northern Cardinal in molt (below)

 

Yellow-breasted Chat (above)   Woodhouse's Scrub Jay (below)

On our way out of the park, we made a five minute stop to the fourth blind. We didn't see anything new, but glad we had a chance to see it. The birding blinds definitely make this park extra special. We'll definitely return!

Roadtrip 2022: Heading West {Sea Rim State Park}

This trip was originally planned for Spring 2020 in our overlanding trailer, but of course all travel plans were cancelled, our Jeep was totaled and our overlanding trailer was off on its own adventures. Finally, two years later, on April 16, we loaded up our 30ft Grand Design Imagine travel trailer and hit the road for the summer. Our main destinations are Yosemite National Park, Las Vegas, and our last two states: Minnesota and North Dakota. First stop: Tallahassee. We arrived just before Easter and enjoyed a delicious dinner with family. Next was an overnight stop at a Boondockers Welcome a few blocks from the beach in Mississippi. A perfect location for an evening walk to the beach so Asher could fish in a new state while I looked for birds. 

 

We went back in the morning for another try at it, before pressing west. Asher has become quite the fisherman. He won a fishing contest last fall for which he was awarded the $200 rod and reel that he now uses. He had expressed an interest in fishing in each state along our path. We had not planned to stop in Louisiana, but to honor his challenge, I scouted out locations along our route and found Lake Charles. Asher fished and I birded while Journey soaked up some rays. 

 

That evening we arrived at our campsite in Texas, where not only could he fish from our campsite, but he delighted in the fact that he had just fished THREE states in ONE day! 

Sea Rim State Park is in the southeast edge of Texas along the Gulf of Mexico. I love watching him fish from the comfort of our couch! You can see the Gulf in the distance from our campsite.

While he didn't catch any fish, he did catch a large, beautiful Blue Crab! That's when we found out crabbing is a huge sport at Sea Rim State Park. Not only is it allowed, but the rangers will gladly lend you supplies (string and a net- just add chicken) and teach you how to catch them! 

Asher found this Banded Watersnake, while crabbing. He came to get me so I could take photos.

Asher spent the next day catching dinner for the family. At high tide the crabs will come from the ocean into the smaller pools to catch their own dinner, some would instead become ours. To keep them they must be at least 5 inches "horn to horn" and not bearing eggs.

Journey found actual quicksand, and I found myself warning, "Don't play in the quicksand, unless one of us is right by you!" Ahhh, words we never thought we'd say....

Dinner is served: spaghetti with Blue Crabs.

This is a great location for birding! While the boardwalk trail over the marsh was lost to hurricanes, birds congregate on the ruins in huge numbers. I found many birds including a KING RAIL in our campsite, quite a few nighthawks, plus a Whimbrel (lifer) flew in while we were crabbing! I will explain more in the next post.

Boondockers Welcome

 

When we aren't traveling, we enjoy hosting other travelers. It's a great chance to meet new people from all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs while giving them a great place to safely park for the night, week, month or more. We are members of Boondockers Welcome which is a platform that matches people who need a place to stay overnight in their RV with people who have appropriate space on their property. It's definitely a nice alternative to sleeping in Walmart or Cracker Barrel parking lots on long hauls and some hosts let you stay long enough to check out the area. Members can stay from 1-5 nights free. It may be just a safe place to park or they may offer full hookups. When you host, you earn membership rewards. After just one year of hosting, we've already earned a lifetime membership plus other goodies like certificates and t-shirts. We've used it to stay with people in Connecticut, Mississippi, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota and California. We've recently upgraded our membership to include Harvest Hosts, which are farms and businesses that allow self-contained RVs to park on their property in exchange for a purchase. 

Our lives have been enriched by the guests we've had stay with us. Twice we've had people come for a few days and end up staying for 5-6 weeks! Many become friends and some even feel like part of the family.

Hosting is great for homeschooling. It's an opportunity for them to introduce themselves and talk to people of all ages. My children learn so much from our guests. So far they've learned to play guitar, do acrobatics on arial silk, they've learned other languages like Hebrew, Spanish, German and in return they now give shows on the silk, teach others ukelele or participate in jam sessions with other musicians passing thru. I've showed many of them how to use the Merlin App to identify birds as they travel and eBird to keep track of what they've seen. We pick up tips on must-see destinations and share our own favorites in return. It's really a great way to connect with people and learn more about their lives. And it feels like we're on vacation when we light a campfire and spend an evening together chatting about travel and life.

When covid first hit, this wonderful couple, Natalia and Stefen, spent six months with us! 

We miss our Sunday discussions over pancakes and guitar lessons!

Journey gave this guest lessons in arial acrobatics and drawing after their yoga session. 

Journey has begun providing pet sitting for some of our guests.

This family from Israel stayed with us for 6 weeks while their truck was in the shop. It gave the girls plenty of time to bond over learning new skills. We were super sad when it came time for them to go.

aMaverick stayed for six weeks and became family. 💜

A jam session with two travelers. They let Journey try their mandolin and fiddle.