Camping in a Van

The omnipresent permeating smell of wood smoke, bug spray and sunscreen....the smell of summer!

We just concluded our second camping trip of the summer, at a tiny lake in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In case you were wondering, the van makes an excellent camper.

On our first trip, we slept in our 3-man tent, but this time we slept in the van, which, with the foam topper on the bed, is infinitely more comfortable than being shoved off the Thermarest by a wiggly child and a blanket-hog of a terrier in the tent.

As I may have mentioned, totes are the savior of van-living. Keeping grocery items in bags on the floor is the pits. Items I reached for a lot (salt, oil, sunscreen, bugspray) I now keep in two little totes for easy access. The duffel bag stayed crammed under the bed as usual, keeping our living space open for changing clothes and other activities.

We camped at Mowe lake for three nights in late May and caught a break in the warm weather so we spent most of the time in sweaters. But it was great, the wind kept the bugs away and we spent a lot of time out fishing.

Speaking of which, Mr. Go bought a 14' john boat with an 8hp motor and a trolling motor and, after stocking up on all the accoutrements, spent literally more time in that boat than he did at the campsite. He brought me back an 18" largemouth bass and a mes of bluegill though.

Last week we camped at Steuben Lake for three nights and had gorgeous weather. Halfway through, the heavenly breeze quit, and the black flies tore us up. Poor Babs got the worst of it. She's covered in red itchy, swollen bumps.

Actually, I take that back. Finley got the worst of it. Let me tell you about Finley. Many years ago, Finley was bit in the hindquarters by a horsefly and ever since he has been paranoid about bugs. He spent the entire trip whipping around to check that there wasn't anything getting after his butt. He was in a chair (yes, we brought a chair just for Finley), under the van, trying desperately to get in my lap until finally I just let him in the van where he spent the last two days getting our pillows filthy, but at least his butt was safe.

Mr. Go, as with any skill he sets his mind to, has become quite the angler. He hauled up 5 pounds of fish fillets from Steuben. Pike, walleye, sunfish and Babs snagged a 15" bass. She's come a long way from not wanting to get near a worm. She's touched worms and petted fish and absolutely loves fishing.

My camp cooking has been stellar, no surprise there. I used the round cast iron dutch oven for everything, I don't even know why I bothered to bring any other pans. It has a lid, which is key for softening veggies and fluffing rice. (Fresh off the Grid has some amazing campfire recipes--cornbread chili and campfire paella are now staples.) I love cooking over the fire; I'd love to do more of it and rely less on the propane campstove. Sizzling bacon with a little bit of ash and smoke, like the cowboys used to do, is satisfying in a deep, primal sort of way.

We purchased an RTIC 45qt cooler for camping purposes, hoping it will also solve our road trip food-cooling issues (See Last Post). It's pretty big, so it has its pros and cons for road tripping but for camping it's been stellar. It holds an ice block like a monster and is sturdy enough to double as a seat/table.

We go out camping again this week, then it's a 10-day trip for Mr. Go and I to Washington state. It's already mid July...where has this year gone??

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Traveling in a Van with a Child + 2 Dogs

Mr. Go finally did it. He bought a conversion van to fulfill his dream of living in a van down by the river. But, like, not in a creepy way.

The 2000 Ford monstrosity gets a whopping 16 mpg, 20 if you draft a semi on the highway.

We took 'Speed', as Babs dubbed the big blue boat, for a test trip in January, to try getting OUT of the cold. But alas, it was the coldest week on record in the South, the cold front dipping daytime temperatures to the mid 30s in FLORIDA. But at least the snow didn't tower outside our doors.

As many free campsites and even paid campgrounds were closed in the Midwest in the midst of winter, we spent a few nights in Walmart parking lots until we could get on a main highway and find some rest areas. A couple nights were spent at a friend's in Georgia, so Babs could play with their two kids. We brought the tent, thinking we'd camp further south, but we slept in the van the whole time.

We laid a 1/2" old eggshell foam piece over the electric lay-down bed, which proved wicked uncomfortable. Leading me to...

UPDATE 1: Foam mattress.
Sleep might be the most important component of having a good trip, so this was well worth it. Since we seldom use it as a seat on long-term trips anyway, we mostly leave the bed down. And if we need to, this short queen mattress topper lifts easily and we just haul it out.

The bed provided good storage underneath, but there were some things that needed to go in the "living room." Such as the potty. It was mostly for Babs but it came in real handy on cold nights in Walmart parking lots when you just don't want to have to walk across the lot to use the potty. Yeah I peed in a bucket, if you lived in a van you'd understand.

Keeping your living room tidy is also vitally important on long trips. You need room to move around. Thus:

UPDATE 2: Storage in Totes.
Since we didn't go all out and build in cabinets or anything, we needed somewhere to put our stuff. We brought our climbing gear, camp cooking equipment, cold weather AND warm weather clothing and other comfort accoutrements.

One tote in the back housed things we didn't need to get at very often, such as first aid kit, climbing gear, tools, etc. The other we stored cooking equipment and the like, which we were always getting at, and came inside with us when we stayed nights in friends houses.

As coffee-lovers, we had a small tote dedicated to coffee equipment, so first thing in the morning all we had to do was pull out this little tote instead of rifling around in the bigger one through pans and baby monitors to get our caffeine.

We also had a separate tote for "important things" which mostly housed our toiletry bags, passports and kindles. The idea being: the van is on fire, we can only take one thing, grab the 'toiletry tote'.

For things I needed to access while the van was in motion, such as snacks, we got a dishwashing bin from Dollar General. But I just do my dishes in the pan I cooked in anyway, so its use has morphed. It seems to accrue other things as well, such as sunscreen, extra mayonnaise packets swiped from Subway and Mr. Go's headband, but it's a great easy-access catch-all.

WATER

This is important, as most free campsites and even many pay sites (especially in off-season) do not have water pumps. Our 5 gallon, hard-shell water jug sits on the running board just inside the side door (at the far left of the above picture) so we can fill up our bottles at pit stops. And of course, I never pass up an opportunity to refill my Nalgene from a water fountain or at any restaurants we chance to stop at.

GOAL ZERO

To charge our devices (phones, Kindles, cooler, etc) we were using an AC adapter plugged into the van cigarette lighter but the ports were limited and it slid around on the dash. The Goal Zero has two USB and two AC ports so we can stay charged on the fly.

ICELESS COOLER

We have a love/hate relationship with this Igloo cooler. It's great to not have to buy ice, but unless it's plugged in, it's pretty poor at keeping things cold. While the van is on, our snacks stay chilled, but at night it drains the Goal Zero pretty quickly, leaving us without charge for other devices unless we turn the van on again.

Trip #2

In April, we took Speed to Colorado to test our improvements, with great success. On the way out, we slept at rest areas, which are actually very comfortable. Most of them allow 24-hour parking, but select ones will have signs posted otherwise. Do some research if you can beforehand, check Google Maps for reviews, photos of the place or even the state transportation website might have some info on overnight parking.

You can't throw down your chairs and cook breakfast in the morning, but it's infinitely more comfortable to go in and brush your teeth or use the potty late at night instead of having to go inside a WalMart (more on sleeping at Wally World here).

On the homeward journey we stayed at real campsites, and even paid for them, just to see what that was like. Usually we use FreeCampsites.Net to scope out free places to stay. We've found some great spots, many with vault toilets, picnic tables and fire rings. Some are just a grassy spot on the side of the road in BLM lands (Bureau of Land Management.) FreshOffTheGrid has some good info on free camping here.

During the trip we camped free at Red Canyon Park near Shelf Road one night, where Speed ran over a rattlesnake--and it lived. The Park was beautiful, though the dirt road was wicked bumpy and would not be friendly for a trailer, and there seemed to be some homeless camping there too.

But paid campsites have their advantages. Such as: running water (sometimes). We took a shower at the Dakota Campground in Mitchell, South Dakota and it was actually very comfortable. Another perk: Being around other people. Sometimes I'm just creeped out by being alone in the middle of nowhere. Some campgrounds will also have play equipment, a huge perk for a cooped up 4-year-old and her weary parents.

Sometimes, paying for camping is not worth it. The village of Wilton, WI has a campground that is probably very nice if the weather was better, but it was rainy, soggy and cold when we stayed and $7 per adult and $4 per child was way too much for what we got. C'est la vie.

The Elk Mountain Campground in the Wind Cave National Park was very pretty. We hit off season pricing at $9/night and they provided firewood (for a donation) and had water spigots, though their indoor bathrooms were closed and there was 1 vault toilet for the campground to share (and it was quite busy too).

Many pay sites charge like this: Posted on the board with the rules and such, there will be a box of envelopes. You fill out the info, tear off the slip, put money in the envelope and put the envelope in the drop box. The slip you clip to a post at your chosen site or put on the dash of your vehicle. The village of Wilton had a person who just drove in and knocked on your door to take your cash. Dakota Campground just had a box for you to put cash in and no slip to prove you had already paid.

Other Suggestions:

Carbon Monoxide Detector - You're sleeping in a small, enclosed space. You've cracked some windows, but just to be safe, get a battery CO2 detector so no one wakes up dead.
Hanging Light - Headlamps are the bare minimum but either a fancy battery lantern or some sort of light bungeed up somewhere improves the ambiance of your home on wheels.
Audiobooks for our 4-year-old were the savior of the trip. We had some long days driving and she got bored of coloring and scribbling pretty quickly. The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau was a winner.

Van updates aside, during our trip, two of our friends were moving, so I packed up a couple of kitchens and Mr. Go hauled a lot of boxes in exchange for a place to stay and a dinner. Babs visited all her Colorado friends, acquired and used a climbing harness and helmet.

We traversed the front range, bopping in and out to visit with all of our friends. Another Update: I need to consolidate my necessary overnight items for easier in/out. Things tend to get spread out over the course of van living and I was forever making trips back out to the van for something I forgot to bring in.

It was not a typical trip, in that we did a lot of in/out of the van for visiting friends. I'd have liked to have done more camping, more staying put in one spot for longer lengths. It would have cut down on the stress of constant motion but it was an excellent trip regardless.

Next time we take Speed out, we'll be camping at home in Michigan, then we've got several more road trips on the dockett. But we're enjoying the down time at home between trips, too. With gardening, garage sales and family all around us, it's always an adventure.

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One Pot Gluten Free Beef Casserole

I'm terrible at naming recipes. Mr. Go asked me what I was making and I said, "Everything and rice mashed in a pot" but that doesn't sound very appetizing as a blog post title.

But it's easy, delicious, a little carb-y with the rice and the Mexican-style spices really hit the spot on a cold winter day. Treat it like chili, throw on some corn chips and cheese if you're into that kind of thing.

One-Pot Gluten Free Rice Casserole

Serves 9 | Serving size = 1 cup | 330 calories/serving

Ingredients

Scant TB coconut oil
1/2 onion diced (I used red but whatever you've got is good)
4 carrots, peeled & diced
3-4 ribs celery, diced
1 lb ground beef
1 1/2 cups broth (I used chicken, but again, raid your cupboards)
1 cup white rice
8 oz can tomato sauce
15 oz can black beans
15 oz can diced tomatoes
2 TB Taco Seasoning (I use Whole New Mom's recipe, with some modifications)

1. In a medium sized pot, melt the oil and cook the onions for a couple minutes, until translucent. 
2. Add the ground beef and diced vegetables. 
3. When the beef is almost browned, add the taco seasoning, broth, rice, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes. 
4. Drain the excess liquid from the beans (you don't need to rinse them, just get some/most of the liquid out and call 'er good) and add to the pot. Stir it all up. 
5. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender.

It's easy and it lends well to modifying. Last time I made it I added a can of corn instead of beans. I didn't drain the corn either, because I was low on broth and made up for it with the corn liquid.

I love Whole New Mom's Taco Seasoning mix recipe. I didn't add red pepper flakes and went a little lighter on the cumin, because I'm cooking for a 4-year-old. *Cough* pre-made seasoning mixes are a scam don't buy them at the store they're full of added sugar just make your own *Cough*

Split the broth with some coconut milk for a creamy, rich dinner. This turned out pretty dry, like a casserole, so add some more liquid if you want it more stew-ish.

And, since I went through the trouble of calculating calories and serving size, here it is, along with my rudimentary breakdown. Of course, your brand of canned veggies might have different cals, so calculate accordingly.

600 1 cup rice
70 8 oz can tomato sauce
105 15 oz can diced tomatoes
1500 1 lb beef
15 - 1.5 cups broth
390 1 can black beans
20 3-4 ribs celery
100 4 carrots
40 half a red onion
100 scant TB coconut oil
2940/all
330 cals/cup

Enjoy!

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How to Render Beef Tallow (and make French Fries)

Welcome to my blog, where you get Princess bedtime stories and learn how to render suet into tallow like a homesteader. There's something for everyone!

Tallow (which is essentially lard except from a cow instead of a pig) is great for high-heat cooking (read: deep frying).

Tallow is an excellent source of niacin, vitamins B6, B12, K2, selenium, iron, phosphorus, potassium and riboflavin. Grassfed beef tallow contains high ratio of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) which is a cancer-resistant agent. Contrary to the popular conception, tallow is good for health as tallow fat is similar to the fat/muscles in the heart. Recent studies have shown that human beings need at least 50% of saturated fats like tallow and lard to keep the heart pumping hard and healthy. Tallow from pasture-raised cows also contains a small amount of Vitamin D, similar to lard.

Source: Beeftallow.com

Beef suet (fat) is cheap and can probably be found at the grocery store or butcher. We bought a bunch to grind into our venison and wound up using a fraction of it, so we decided to render it into tallow for cooking. We had saved some fat trimmings from steaks and added that in as well. Fat from grass-fed cows is preferable.

Some blogs say to run it through the food processor to grind it nice and fine but that sounded like it'd be nasty to clean up so I just chopped it into roughly 1/4" cubes. (The finer the chop the faster the render.) Cut off any meat or blood that's hanging around. I didn't fuss with it too much.

You can throw some water in to prevent burning, but it's not necessary. Just keep your crock pot on low.

Throw it in the slow cooker for 8-10 hours and that's basically it. If your chunks are bigger, you'll be more on the 10-hour side. Give it a stir two or three times throughout. You'll know it's done when the fat chunks have shriveled up into brown, almost-crispy bits. These, my friends, are called cracklings (because of the crackling sound they make when hot. It's a delightful, almost cheery sound, like a hundred tiny bits of fat are giving you a round of applause.)

Scoop out the big chunks first, then strain through a cheesecloth and store at room temp, in the fridge (will keep longer) or in the freezer (will keep even longer).

My 6 quart crockpot was full of 5 lbs of suet and rendered two 16 oz jars and one 32 oz jar of tallow.

How to Make French Fries

Melt tallow into a high-walled pot at medium-high to high heat. The smaller the base, the less tallow you'll need to use. Ensure there's at least 2" of pot above the tallow to cut down on splatter.

Peel and cut potatoes into matchsticks (the larger the sticks the longer the cook). Optional: soak in cold water for an hour. Why? I'm still not exactly sure but a lot of blogs said to do it. If you do this, be sure to pat them dry before adding them to the tallow. I skipped that step because I'm lazy and everything turned out just fine.

If you have a thermometer, check that your oil is up to 375-ish. When you carefully lay the fries in, it'll bring the temp down to a perfect 350. If you don't have a thermometer, dip in a wooden spoon. If it bubbles, you're hot enough. On my stove, the perfect burner heat is 6.

Lay small batches of fries in the pot, making sure they're all submerged. Fry for 3-5 minutes or until a nice golden brown. It depends on the thickness of your cuts and how many fries are in the batch.

My first batches got soggy once they cooled down, so I threw them back in for another 2-3 minutes and they turned out perfectly crispy and brown even after cooling. Double-frying is the key!

Sweet potato fries take less time to cook, about 3 minutes for the first fry and 2 for the second.

Sprinkle with salt and enjoy immediately; just let them cool enough so you don't burn your tongue!

Here are some more posts about tallow's benefits and other uses:
Oh Lardy
Happy Money Saver
The Prairie Homestead

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Harry Potter Font Happy Birthday Banner +Free Downloads

Babs just turned 4 years old. And she's suuuuuuper into Harry Potter. I can't tell you how many times a day she instructs me to pretend that I'm Ron Weasley taking a polyjuice potion then turning into Crabbe or Goyle or a cat then battling a basilisk.

I won't complain (too much), it could be way worse.

So anyway, I made her a Happy Birthday banner using Harry Potter font. There are a number of font generators that you can plug in whatever words you want and print them out, but to make the banner super special like I did, I saved each letter individually, printed them and cut them out to paste onto colored paper. Red and gold because Babs is a Gryffindor, obviously.

I had to cut the double letters out of black construction paper because I'm cheap and didn't want to use ink printing them again. The letters are so blown up the edges needed coloring with a black marker and I had to color over the construction paper with black marker too to make the blacks match but hey, I made it work.

Cut construction paper into quarters and glue the letters on. Print some Hogwarts House crests too. Tape onto a string and voila! Instant happy child.

Download the H, A, PY, BI, RT, D and Hogwarts House crests.

Taking a Toddler to Spain

Doing anything with a 3-year-old has its ups and downs. They always want something, but they bring new light and laughter to every situation. Getting the grumps in public (or worse, on an airplane) is a constant looming threat, but they break the ice with strangers in a foreign country.

Despite the valleys of the rollercoaster ride, I'd always rather have Babs with us. And with some forethought and planning, you can mitigate the valleys into gentle curves.

In November, Mr. Go and I toted Babs on a 2-week trip through France and Spain.

TIP: PREPARE THE KIDDO 

Be real with them. Set the expectation that this travel might be tough but it's going to be SO MUCH FUN when we get there (but only if they're good!). 

There can hardly be a more stressful travel event than taking a young child on a long airplane ride. The plane from Toronto, Canada to Reykjavic Iceland was Babs' very first. We opted to drive from Michigan to Toronto and take WOW Airlines, a budget line we were unfamiliar with.

TIP: MAKE SURE YOU'RE BOOKING ON THE U.S. SITE
Or whatever country you're from, obviously. Otherwise, depending on your credit card, you may be hit with a foreign transaction fee.

We were worried about a myriad of things so we got to the airport many hours early, which left us to entertain Babs and wear ourselves out before even boarding the first leg of our journey... But! She made friends with everyone in a 20 foot radius. Try to balance arriving at the airport early enough but not TOO early.

TIP: ALWAYS HAVE MORE SNACKS THAN YOU THINK YOU NEED 

Airport food is overpriced and so are the snacks on a budget airline (you must pre-order if you want an actual meal). Bring snacks from home for the journey to your destination, then go to a grocery store.

The 5-ish hour flight boarded at 6pm, so all of us were able to sleep to some extent. In Reykjavic, the airport is dinky. They like to stamp your passport and they have checkpoints between different areas of the terminal. On the way back we had to go from our incoming C gate to our outgoing D gate and had to go through a passport stamp terminal and had a real tight connection. Keep that in mind.

Also, there are no water fountains. If you want to fill up your water bottle (AND YOU SHOULD) you have to use the bathroom sinks. It's fine, everyone's doing it.

Once you find your gate at Keflavik airport, stay close. As our boarding time approached everyone stood up and started forming a line. The board changed from Waiting to Boarding without so much fanfare as an announcement, and boarding began. No one spoke a word to us. If you are not at your gate, you will not hear a boarding announcement.

We arrived in Paris at 11 a.m. We were all able to sleep on both planes on and off, so we weren't completely wrecked. It was a grey day in Paris and we took the RER B train from the Charles de Gaulle airport into Paris at the Chatelet Les Halles station.

The train system is really great in Paris. Going across as many zones as we did from the airport was almost 10 Euro for each adult (children are free but I never was clear as to the age cutoff), but if you're not going far it's more like 2 euro per ride.

We walked from the station right through downtown Paris, by the Louvre on a Saturday morning. It was terrible. The streets were packed with tourists. It was like New York City, just with older architecture.

We stopped for lunch at Mimosa and screwed up our very first foreign order. I just wanted an enormous coffee and the waiter brought two tiny cups of what I would come to realize are cafe solos, basically a shot of espresso, aka manna from heaven.

We walked a bit further, but were carrying all our luggage and got real tuckered out, so we stopped for another espresso and some desserts, then hopped in a taxi at a convenient Taxi Pickup Spot.

We had pre-booked tickets on a bus going to Beauvais airport and arrived at the station 1.5 hours early for the bus. It was raining so we hung out under their canopy. Babs fell asleep in Mr. Go's arms and we definitely looked like dirty American dirtbags at this point.

Babs fell asleep again on the bus (she loves napping in moving vehicles) before our adventure in the Beauvais airport, easily the worst of Paris' three airports. The tiny terminals are more like warehouses. You walk out onto the tarmac to board the plane.

Our flight to Alicante was short and we arrived just after midnight. I had booked us a room at Hostel Pensimar and we took a quick taxi there. Between the front desk man's passable English and my passable Spanish from a fatigued brain, we were checked in. Zack bought dos cervezas from our Spanish friend and we finally got our first real rest. It was almost 2 am by the time we got settled, yet we did not feel as tired as we should have, since it was only about 9 pm home time.

They served some food in the hostel cafeteria so we ate and chatted with the morning front desk lady, who gave us directions on how to take a bus to Alicante proper, then hop on a train that would take us to Calpe, our main destination. But she gave us the weekday bus schedule and it was a Sunday, so we waited an hour at the bus stop before figuring this out. So we had some lunch at a nearby restaurant, where our waitress spoke no English. We did a lot of miming and pointing. This is also where I realized liver is a regular thing on menus.

At the train station we were early for the train so we had a quick beer then got on the light rail. Babs napped again (glory glory hallelujah). She was such a champ about napping on the go. Also she was exhausted.

We walked from the station in Calpe to our villa we had rented with 4 friends. Babs was reunited with her dear friend C, whom she'd met on our Mexican adventure.

In Calpe we rock climbed, went to the beach and ate some fantastic food. Hands down the best paella (and indeed the best food of the trip) was at L'Era in Parcent, a tiny town 30 minutes or so from Calpe.

Calpe is obviously a tourist town and not many of the places were open in the off season. But the winding streets and dense, high-walled downtown with its terraced apartments above shops and restaurants was all I wanted from Spain.

One day Mr. Go and I walked with Babs to downtown and had a drink at a cafe and it was so chill and beautiful I wanted to do it every day.

But one week in Calpe was over, and we took an ill-advised bus 3 hours north to Valencia, the third largest city in Spain. The bus was hot and whipped around the tiny roundabouts that were made for golf-cart sized eurocars, not greyhound-sized buses. There's certainly no bathroom, either. We should have taken a bus back to Alicante, where the main train station is, and the nice smooth light rail would have taken us to Valencia but c'est la vie.

TL;DR DON'T TAKE A 3 HOUR BUS RIDE

We are not big city people. After a week in sleepy Calpe, Valencia was a bustling metropolis. But we found, after a LOT of walking (11 miles in one day), the charming, narrow cobblestone streets and high-walled terraced apartments in central Valencia. The architecture is beautiful, especially the churches.

We visited the Valencia Cathedral, purported to hold the Holy Grail. Unless you're a religious buff it's not worth the 7 euros to tour, though in the museum you can go down the stairs to the old graveyard under the church and see some old bones. Make sure you climb the 207 steps up the bell tower (another 2 euro but the view of the city from the top is amazing).

There's a cool park called Gulliver Park (Parc Gulliver) where there's a sculpture of Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels lying on the ground. He's got slides and cool stuff built into him. It's neat.

The old riverbed was turned into a big long park you can walk through, with intermittent playgrounds, that takes you by the cool modernist buildings. There's also an aquarium down there.

During our walking tour one evening we discovered a strip of Chinese grocery stores, pharmacies and restaurants so we returned the next night for Chinese dinner.

That was one important thing to us on this trip: to never have expectations. We figured out the night before one (1) thing we wanted to do the next day. Only ONE. And we'd try to do it. But if we didn't get to it we would not be upset. All we wanted to do was see these places, eat the food, see how these people lived and take it slow.

TIP: Pack Your Daypack For Success 

You do not want to be unprepared then have to go find a pharmacy and buy something overpriced that you're not going to be able to bring back to the states with you, ESPECIALLY when you already have a bottle at the apartment but you forgot to pack it. Ask me how I know. 

Sunscreen
Tons of snacks
Charging devices
Sweaters/rainjackets
Extra kid's clothes

After lots of eating great food and drinking wicked cheap wine, we took a train to the airport and jetted over to Paris for another two nights of fun. Our Airbnb was very close to the Louvre, which we never entered, though we did walk through the courtyard.

Paris is far larger than Valencia, more like New York City size, and the Go family feels no need to return to the city. It is beautiful, undoubtedly, but quite expensive and very busy. On our walking tour we discovered many beautiful parks, such as the St. Jacques Square, which houses a beautiful tower and some small playground equipment. These made great stops for Babs to get off Dad's shoulders and burn up some energy.

On a recommendation we had a fancy dinner at La Poule au Pot (Chicken in a Pot). The atmosphere is lovely but the food was underwhelming, except for the amazing creme broulee. After coming from Spain, where everything is hella cheap, I nearly passed out at the price of everything. But we'd had similarly priced dinners in Denver, it truly wasn't all that outrageous. I was just used to 1 euro bottles of Spanish wine and enormous 3-course 12 euro dinners.

Our Airbnb in Paris was right above a grocery store so we bought cheese and crackers and wine and had several meals in our apartment. We had some rainy days and we were tired of going out to eat so it suited us perfectly. Honestly, going to the grocery store in a foreign country is enough of an adventure sometimes. We even did Thanksgiving dinner from the grocery store. A pre-cooked chicken, a wheel of cheese and some wine. Making memories.

Traveling back was a little tough; we were tired and just wanted to get home. It wasn't a nighttime flight though our bodies said it should be and we were more thrown off than on the journey there.

TIP: To Combat Jet Lag Drink A Ton of Water

Also, going through customs in Canada is terrible. You wait in an enormous line to use one of the customs machines that scan your passport and take your picture, THEN go to an actual customs agent who looks at your passports AGAIN. Don't expect that to be a quick process, although perhaps we just hit the post-Thanksgiving traffic or something.

We drove for an hour then got a hotel room. It was 5pm but we went to bed because it was actually like 11pm for our bodies. So naturally we woke up at 3am and had to wake up the front desk lady sleeping in the lobby to ask for some breakfast.

For next time:
Make more stops at parks for the kiddo
We walked around a lot, which was super fun for Mr. Go and I but Babs was riding on shoulders and was less interested in architecture and people-watching. Her favorite part of the trip was probably Parc Gulliver where she could run around and say hola to Spanish kids.

Don't be afraid to talk to people. There's a universal language called miming. Even if you don't know the language, don't be afraid to sound like a dumb foreigner. Just try! It's fun, plus it gives you a human connection to this place you're visiting.

Pro Tip: on Google Fi, SMS messages were free with our plan, data is no more expensive than at home and free on wifi and voice calls were only .20 cents a minute. Our compatriots were all afraid to use their data or send text messages so if we had to take two cars they'd split Mr. Go and I so each car would have a phone to communicate with each other.

This little jaunt was pretty tame, but it has probably changed our lives, as you might argue everything does when we bounce like pinballs off one event, one hardship, one lucky break, in the course of our existence. Because now our feet are wet and we know we love Spain, and we know travelling with a 3-year-old is easy and is only going to be easier next time.




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Going Back/Going Home

Ten years ago, when Mr. Go and I left our hometown, a remote place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we never dreamed we would go back for anything longer than a vacation.

But we've Lived and Learned™ and our priorities have changed.

Were I a more spiteful person than I already am, I would have dug my heels in and refused to go back, knowing that some people will view it as a failure. As if our seven years in Colorado were for naught, just because we decided not to stay indefinitely.

But A) That is so untrue I almost can't even talk about it and B) I feel sad for the people who hold the narrow view that the destination is the point of the journey.

Colorado has felt like home. It's where my daughter was born. It's where I learned how to be me. I will always love Colorado, the people, the opportunities it offers and the experiences I've had here. There's nothing that says we won't move back in a year or two or 10. But right now, what's best for us is to relieve ourselves of the burden of a too-large home and put that equity to better use.

Mr. Go and I have talked about selling our home for many months, but I was not ready to leave CO. But the more I thought about the prospect of living near family the more appealing it became. Anyone who has raised a child without immediate family nearby knows: it's hard. Not only was having help appealing, but I missed my family too.

So we listed our house for sale with the aggressive timeline of leaving for Michigan two weeks later.

Rather than going the U-Haul route, we decided to downsize and only take what would fit in our cars. (It ended up being 3 car-fulls, as Mr. Go and I drove back labor day weekend for Phish @ Dicks.) We purged the house during the HOA's garage sale weekend and started selling off the large items that would not be making the trip back with us.

The house is now (finally) under contract. But here's the great part: buying a home in Michigan was not contingent on selling the home in Colorado. Houses in the U.P. are so cheap it's bananas.

It's been almost a month in our new home and the perks of a smaller-town living are pretty great. In no particular order:

1. Bike Everywhere
And less worry about being hit by a car!! We no longer live in the 'burbs, where everything is a 10-15 minute car ride across the highway and impossible by bike. We live in town, where I can bike on the quiet streets towing Babs in the Burley Minnow (which btw, is super awesome).

2. Family
I won't bother trying to express my full gratitude for having my family around me again, it'd only bore you and I'd wind up crying onto my keyboard. Suffice it to say, being able to drop Babs off with Grandma to go do something, or bike over to Mom's house for lunch is, at this moment, perfection.

3. Familiar Faces
This has the added benefit of actually making me feel safer. I no longer lock up my bike when I go into the store. My cousin teaches in Babs' pre-school building. I see an aunt at the grocery store at least once a week. This may become tiresome at some point, and of course there are some familiar faces that may not be so welcome but after living so long as a small fish in a big pond where you can go your whole day without making eye contact in public with anyone, let alone a meaningful connection, right now I find it pretty neat.

It takes a special mindset to go back to small-town living after living in a metropolis like the Front Range of Colorado. You have to want it. You have to be able to appreciate it or you'll probably hate it. Undoubtedly, there are downsides. (Fewer options for everything, everyone knows everyone, less to do to entertain yourself.)

But yesterday I dropped Babs with one grandma and spent the morning blackberry picking with the other. Never coulda done that before.

We haven't gone backward. I don't even consider it coming home. We've simply moved our mobile family again for another adventure, and wherever my family unit happens to be--that's home.

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