Traveling on

Our list of community cafes did increase while we were still in Denver. We finally made it in to GraceFull Cafe in Littleton. I am embarrassed to admit that we hadn’t made it down there before. Our meal was amazing and we happened to be there for a Saturday Community Meal.

We also added many breweries to our list while home. Brad acquired a Pub Pass that had special deals for 2018 with tons of breweries that we hadn’t tried. Each brewery offered a free beer and then you got your passport stamped. We thought we’d make it to all 25 breweries in the passport before we hit the road again but failed. That just means we have something to look forward to on our return to Denver.

We did get to do some traveling while home in Denver. The trip to San Diego was a highlight. This is one of our favorite places on earth, partially because some of our favorite people live there but also because it’s beautiful.

Yesterday we drove from Hays, KS to Platte City, KS. Doug and Jamie opened their home to us for the first time in 16 years. On our move out to Denver in 2002, we stopped at their house with our moving van packed full. This time our moving van was a bit smaller.

We enjoyed some backyard time and an amazing dinner with them while we visited. And, although we haven’t been to their house in 16 years, we have had that chance to visit with them since then. Doug and his daughter Lane have visited CO on a couple of occasions and we have run in to them at various events over the years. It was fantastic to catch up and give the dogs some outside time.

St. Louis was our next destination. Aly and Parker were great hosts and we got to have dinner with our friends Rob and Katie. Urban Chestnut brewery was added our list.

Waking up at 6:00 a.m. wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be. We had to hit the road for Shelbyville. Our van had an appointment to get the driver side door fixed. It hasn’t been locking so we were using a ratchet strap to keep it locked. This would also give us plenty of time to help with graduation party prep.

Joey’s graduation was long but good. The principal asked families to remain quiet when their graduate walked across the stage. This family could not do that – we had to hoot and holler and my mom had to whistle. We are so proud of this guy! What a fun couple of days of celebrating so far!

On the road again!

We haven’t been blogging for a while now partially because we have been in Denver and just taking care of some things that weren’t very exciting and we didn’t really feel footloose. We didn’t think you’d want to read about us painting the interior of our house twice because I didn’t like the first color or about all the yard work that we had to do. These last few months have been a lot of visiting with friends (which was awesome to catch up with people), doing projects around the house and thinking about our next gig. While we are no closer to our next adventure, we did take some steps that will help put some ideas in motion. We put our house on the market and it sold in record time! This Denver housing market is crazy! We also did a lot of hiking and enjoying the outdoors. When we weren’t outside, we were organizing and purging of a lot of the stuff that we have been collecting over the years so that we could move out. None of these things were that exciting but they did keep us busy.

Some of the exciting things that happened while we were back in Denver were we attended the SAME Cafe Gala, which was a huge success! We celebrated Brad’s sister’s wedding, too! We welcomed Poppy, the newest addition to our friend family. We also said good-bye to our teardrop camper and upgraded to a house on wheels.

After three months on the road in the tiny camper, we realized we needed an upgrade. There are a few amenities that the teardrop was missing that we really wanted in a road trip vehicle. Knowing that we were eventually hitting the open road again, we wanted to make a few adjustments to our traveling equipment. So we upgraded to a cargo van that we named Mo. The name came to us one day when someone was asking for the 1,000 time; What are you going to do next? Where are you going to live? Our new answer is, “in the moment”- hence Mo!

With the help of Libby’s mom, we plan on renovating the inside of Mo to be a camper. We started some of the work already. The flooring is almost finished! We’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos trying to plan and organize the interior of the van. Thanks to our brother-in-law Mark for helping us find this beauty!

The second half of our epic road trip officially started again yesterday. We packed up the van, moved all of the remaining items to storage, closed on our house and hit the road. We are heading first to KY to celebrate our nephews’s high school graduation. We are taking our time getting across the country so our first day was about six hours of driving to Hays, KS. We found our favorite parking/sleeping spot (Walmart) and climbed in the back. Our van is packed full with everything we thought we’d need to renovate our van plus all the items we’d want in it when it was finished. Our bed takes up most of the space so it is literally climbing into bed. It will feel a lot better when the renovations are complete and it feels more like an RV than a cargo van packed like a moving truck.

We woke bright and early because we didn’t think of installing curtains yet – good thing there was a store nearby😉. We headed out to find a coffee shop. Brad found a couple local places that were on the way to a green space where we could go for a walk. After a detour due to construction, we pulled up in front of one of the coffee shops we found on the map. We were both curious about the sign in the window that said, “Community Meal 2nd and 4th Sunday”. Hmmm…this sounds like our kind of place. Upon venturing inside, and ordering our drinks, we asked for suggestions of places we could go for a hike. The barista introduced us to a woman having coffee who just happened to work for the tourism office. She went out to her car and got us a brochure on all things Hays and gave us lots of suggestions. We started talking to the barista about their community meals and discovered that Breath Coffee House is a non-profit focused on building community. When we heard that – we thought – you have got to be kidding me?!? How absolutely amazing that the universe had us stop at this coffee shop.

We think epic road trip part two is off to a pretty amazing start! After a good long walk and a visit to the dog park, we are heading to Kansas City tonight.