Hello you gorgeous human being!
I truly hope that life is treating you well.
Collective sigh, right?
The last couple years have been crazy, hard, beautiful, and confusing. There are times when I play the struggles of our world over and over in my mind, and feel like my head is going to pop.
In times of trauma, like what our world has been through recently, sometimes you have to pick and choose where you put your energy, so that you can conserve the energy that you do have for the main priorities. I focused my energy on family, along with my business students and clients. I put very little energy toward outreach and creating new education, classes, and offerings through this website. This was necessary for me and my family, but I also miss you, and hope to connect more now.
If you also had to budget your own time, or close yourself up a bit to preserve your mental health, please know that it’s completely okay. Our world is massively different now, and we’re all figuring out how we fit into it again.
I’m a cup half full kind of person, and I do try to acknowledge that there were some beautiful moments in these past couple years.
My own hiding spot from the pandemic was a lake town in Eastern Washington State, where people dress in linen clothes, or bathing suits if they intend to spend the day swimming in the lake, or balancing on stand-up paddle boards. I was high up in the mountains through dirt roads, so just one trip to the grocery store made my car the dustiest car in town. In 2020, we planted a new garden on the property, grew sunflowers, vegetables, and watermelon. I traveled more in 2021, so wasn’t able to grow much in the garden, but I resolved to “let the wild plants feed me” instead, which they did. I studied etiquette, weekly meal prep, budgeting, Human Design, and the wild edible plants of Eastern Washington.
It was also a sad time…. I’d like to take a moment to honor the 4 people who we lost (not Covid-related) recently: D, D, SP, J.
It was a loss of more people than I’ve ever experienced before.
And I’d like to honor the millions of people around the world who are no longer with us.
If you have lost humans (and animals), I extend a hand to your heart.
I’m sorry this world has been so hard, and I’m sorry that you are grieving.
I want to tell you more about what else has changed in this time.
Since 2019, I’ve been traveling all over the United States by RV, living and working mostly off-grid. It all started with a 2-month road trip in a roof top tent on top of a truck in mid-2019, and has expanded to a bus-sized diesel RV. (I’ll tell you more in a moment).
I also got married.
I walked down the aisle (well, it was technically a nature trail by the beach) to the song, “Movement,” by Hozier.
The Alocasia leaves in my bouquet are ones I grew from plants that were given to me by some of the horticulture team at the Amazon Spheres building in downtown Seattle (I was working on a project there for about a year in 2018). It stormed so hard the morning of the wedding that I taped the plates to the tables to keep them from blowing away! (They were made of biodegradable palm leaf, so they were very lightweight.) My Mom made cake and pie, we realized later that there was a bulldozer in the background of some of the photos of the ceremony, and I had to pull a tree out of the road while driving to get my hair done.
Photo by Lovejoy Images. (Highly recommended if you need photos in Washington State soon!)
My husband, Dylan, comes from a family who has been in the car business for decades, and he first suggested that we take a short road trip in his truck a few months before the wedding.
After that road trip, we just kept going, and at this point, we’ve been on a 2+ year honeymoon. I’m grateful that Dylan’s tech abilities allow us to have internet even far out in natural settings. He also keeps the vehicles maintained. (My job is to tend to the “interior” of whatever we are driving.)
Between our regular work, my husband and I have a fun side project over at boondachshunds.com (a play on the words, “boondocking,” and “dachshunds,” because we do have 2 of those little barkers). He has written more about the details and logistics of working remotely in RVs, along with generating solar power and internet wherever you go.
Right after the wedding, one of our first longer journeys was in our travel trailer, which we drove all the way from Washington State, out to Florida, and then back to Washington.
CONTACT was my absolute favorite movie when I was a younger. The Very Large Array that was featured in the movie was one of our first stops in New Mexico.
We had a chance to spend the day with family members from my Texas side, and I’m grateful for that, as one of them passed away only a few months after.
We toted our girl dachshund, Melon, through the French Quarter in New Orleans. Taking a high-needs dachshund like Melon on the road means that we have to be with her pretty much all the time, which is why she’s in almost all of our photos. She came to Cafe du Monde, was welcomed into a restaurant for lunch in her dog travel crate (huge thanks to them for being understanding!), and did a decently good job in the city.
In Florida, we walked through bamboo forests on New Years eve.
On January 1st, 2020, we got a second dachshund. He came pre-installed with the name, “Boomer,” and he’s a massive sweetheart.
I dug for quartz crystals and diamonds in Arkansas in mid-January. It wasn’t exactly the ideal temperature to dig, but this had been a personal dream for many years, so I did it anyway, and got pretty messy in the orange mud. The bath houses in Hot Springs, Arkansas (soak + massage) were a perfect way to balance out the cold.
This photo was taken toward the end of that first long journey in the travel trailer, and it was also right before the pandemic expanded in the United States. We could feel it coming and had already stocked up on a lot of essential items and food. I had also just taken a call from our truck in the middle of the desert south of Tucson, AZ, and was offered a spot on a TEDx stage. This had been one of my professional goals for many years, but due to the pandemic, that event never took place.
Our last day in Tucson before driving back to Washington State was full of laundry, and shopping at stores which had been picked clean of groceries. This is a photo of Trader Joe’s with nearly empty shelves, except for the groceries I commonly buy. I suppose it’s because I eat what many people think is “weird food” – things like gluten-free noodles and organic asparagus, which were still plentiful in the store.
Here are a few photos from our time retreating in the mountains in Washington State. The area is known for apple orchards and vineyards. We didn’t get to boat quite as much as we had hoped, but we took a small craft out with the dogs and their puppy life vests.
Both of the dogs enjoy boating!
As the world began to emerge again, we took multi-month journeys in our travel trailer. It was my first time visiting Jackson, Wyoming (which I would absolutely come back to for the Thai food!). We also made our way down to Las Vegas for a week, after camping close to Zion.
At the Farmers Market in Jackson, WY
The Hurricane Cliffs not far from Zion are a favorite boondocking spot.
Last spring, we decided to make a big upgrade from our travel trailer to a diesel RV. The RV we fell in love with just happened to be in Phoenix, so we drove and camped for days from Washington State down through Utah and into Arizona. The salesman was kind enough to help me find the one (!) patch of plant life in the concrete RV lot for the dogs to go to the bathroom. Once we purchased the RV, we spent a week working from it in the desert, then drove back to Washington to do all the solar upgrades. At this point, we’ve traveled in our “mansion on wheels” all over Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona. I was so sure about purchasing this RV that we put a deposit on it before seeing it in real life.
So, what are our next plans?
We’re not stopping. It’s the middle of winter, and whenever I wake up to the bird noises and cacti in Southern Arizona, I feel such gratitude for this life. I’m learning which cactus fruits are edible, and how to live in desert climates. Dylan and I hope to create many more recordings about everything we’ve learned while working from the RV, and to keep sharing stories from the road.
I hope you have some gorgeous spots to travel and work from soon, and that you enjoy our new set of classes!
It’s good to be back with you,
Copyright 2022 Ava Waits International, LLC
