The Start of Something New

As Cameron and I cross the two month mark living our new albeit pretty crazy life, I feel it's the perfect time to launch this blog. The last two months have been a whirlwind. So much fun and so many adventures have been had already, and we have only scratched the surface. Last week we officially made it down to Texas, Bastrop to be exact! Two months after our expected arrival date, but better late than never! So many times over the last few months we have looked at each other asking "are we insane" and the answer to that is yes, most definitely. So how did we get here?

THE FIRST LITTLE SPARKS

Well, it definitely was not an impulsive decision. I guess it all started back in grade school. I grew up watching an arguably unhealthy amount of HGTV for a teenage girl and "Tiny House Hunters" was always my favorite. I loved this different way people found to live such adventurous lives. Everything from the creative storage solutions to the customized floorplans and freedom that came with having a home on wheels was enchanting to me. As I starting watching more YouTube, when I wasn't watching Jenna Marbles, I found the "Van Life" side of YouTube and again I was hooked. For all the same reasons as before, I found myself consuming hours of content watching people live a nomadic lifestyle.

Fast forward to when Cam and I were friends, before we started dating (circa 2021) he mentioned he would love to build tiny houses someday. I still remember the lil spark of excitement I felt when he said that. We had both recently gone through breakups and were definitely recovering socially and emotionally from those relationships. Honestly, we were both desperately craving an escape from the town we grew up in. My dad was living in Utah and loving it and when I visited him I could see why he fell in love with it. Utah is breathtakingly beautiful, and it the best part, I knew one whole person in the state which was very attractive to me. Being in Utah felt like taking a deep breath of fresh air after being suffocated by the toxic air of my last relationship for way too long. After visiting my dad late in 2021 I was planning to move to Utah on my own. Not long after that, we started officially dating in February 2022 and 3 months later we were moving all of our belongings into a Penske truck making the road trip down to Utah to start our lives together in a ~600 sq ft studio apartment. To say this was an impulsive decision is an understatement.

Technically, this was the first time we left everything behind to start a new life. But this was the first time in our lives that either of us had lived without roommates, and it was pretty magical... at first.

Starting over... the first time

Making friends proved to be much more difficult than we thought it would be. We were both pretty social back in CO, constantly surrounded by roommates and a pretty fun group of homies. Cam is a social butterfly and can chat up pretty much anyone so we expected making friends would be a walk in the park, especially after we adopted our two fur babies. We thought we would for sure meet some cool people our age that wanted to hangout with us and our dogs and go on camping trips occasionally. But, we soon came to find that despite living in a college town filled with people our age, the town was 93% mormon meaning that most people our age were only interested in finding a husband/wife and going to church -LAME! Our only occasional social interactions outside of visits from friends and family from Colorado were with a very eccentric gay man named Greg at the center of a very bizarre group of people living in our complex. We'd spend the occasional evening with them at the pool or up on the roof and our time with them was filled with laughter. Because we were severely lacking in the social department, we spent a lot of time playing chess & scrabble, watching tv, exploring the mountains, and even giving each other tattoos with a kit bought off amazon (NO RAGRETS... well maybe a couple).

Together we watched a lot of travel content, mostly of "skoolie" conversions, Vanlifers and the like when we weren't watching Game of Thrones or Peaky Blinders. At some point we convinced ourselves that by the time our lease was up at our place we would have a converted skoolie and be living in it. I have no idea how we thought we were going to pull that off when we were barely making any money. But I believed we'd make it happen, I even donated HUGE amounts of my clothes in preparation for downsizing into a home on wheels. (although now that I think about it, this may have just been Cam's way to motivate me to clean out my closet.)

Our First Adventure: Utah

Starting over... AGain

Unfortunately, that dream did not come true as we hoped. We ended up breaking our lease and leaving Utah very abruptly for a variety safety reasons, and with the help of Cam's family we got settled into a dingey apartment in Fort Collins- the town we both grew up in. The town we thought we had just escaped. After a few painful months in that apartment battling indoor floods, dead snakes, and spider infestations, (all with some very stompy neighbors above us) we started exploring the idea of buying a house of our own. We were tired of paying outrageous rent prices and I was getting more into interior design and we wanted something we could really call our own. We submitted applications with lenders and were met with disappointing results. Neither of us were making enough money to qualify so we tried to make the most of our time there. Cam reconnected with a few friends from high school, one of which we found was living in the building across the street from us, and another that found out he was going to be a dad in a few short months. Those friendships quickly developed and and we finally had a very healthy social circle again.

While our social life was finally in a good place, Cam was really struggling with his job which was unfortunately working overnights in the local Hospital. After months of suffering in this position, he accepted a really great job offer from the company he is with now. This job came with a brand new truck, pay raise, and the promise of overtime which was awesome. After a couple of months, they sent him to help on jobs in other states like New Mexico and Texas. He'd be gone for weeks at a time and it was really hard for us both. His first year with his company he was gone travelling for nearly three months in total. The second year, he was thankfully not sent out as much. But the worry of being told to pack up at leave at a moments notice always lingered in the background. On top of that, the overtime became a bit of a problem when he was required to work nearly every weekend and was clearing between 65-96 hours each week. Missing events, dinners, and special occasions he was drained. But the overtime meant we weren't struggling financially anymore, and we finally had some disposable income.

more Fun together

Cam is without a doubt my very best friend and we actually love spending time together. One of our favorite things to do together is travel. So much so that in 2023 I spent my entire tax return on a trip to New York City to surprise Cam for our first anniversary. He definitely got me back when he surprised me with a trip to Mexico in 2024 where he ended proposing. But when we're not doing crazy, semi-extravagant trips like that you can find us camping, hiking, and even just taking long drives with no destination in mind pretty much any chance we get. We definitely love a good micro-adventure together.

Living in a house with a garage while still getting a great deal on rent meant Cam was able to use his disposable income to invest in some really fun toys that would not only make our micro-adventures more fun, but also much easier to have frequently. Last spring he found some jet skis on marketplace and we had a new micro-adventure unlocked. We named the jet skis John & Yoko and took every chance we had to spend a few hours on the lake. They have been such a great addition to our lives. In between Cam's insane work schedule and a few lake days here and there, we managed to squeeze in a camping trip or two up to Pingree Park last summer, which is when we decided to look into getting a camper (sleeping on the ground isn't as fun as it used to be). The first one we went to look at was a little Rockwood Mini Lite from the early 2000's but it was in great shape and we fell in love. Within the week Cam went back, paid cash and brought it home. On the way back from our first camping trip in it we were listening to the Beatles and of course we decided his name had to be Ringo.

So with Ringo now a part of our lives as well, we planned a trip to Moab, Utah in October with my sister (somewhat of an annual tradition). We spent four days and nights in Ringo and had the best time! He's not much, but he was everything we needed and perfect for our lil family. The 10+ hour round trip gave us a lot of time to talk about how tired we were of being apart so much with Cam constantly working and getting sent away for random jobs. We reflected on how much fun we had living in Ringo and I told Cam that I'd be willing to live in something like that if he decided he wanted to join the traveling team officially. We discussed the logistics of what we would need to comfortably live full time in a camper, and what that would mean for us. Getting home we were both pretty convinced that was in our future and spent the next two months doing a massive decluttering and shopping for our future home on wheels. The final spark had ignited the flame we needed to finally make this dream come true.

Preparing for takeoff

Sometime in December we found one that we both liked and in January Cam flew out to Indiana to sign the papers and make it official (the Colorado tax is a real thing). Costing us about $10,000 less than it would have been in Colorado plus we got a washer dryer installed the shipping was included we were very happy with our purchase. About 10 days later, a brand new keystone Passport was delivered and essentially dropped off at our front door. If you haven't guessed, we of course had to name it Paul.

We knew February would be our last month paying rent in our cushy builder grade suburban home in Loveland, CO. We knew we would be leaving near the end of February, and the initial plan was to go straight down to Bastrop. And then we got thrown our first wild curveball, Cam's employer sent him to South Dakota around the 9th of February. So we had to move up our annual Anniversary dinner a few days and then accept that I would be on my own and responsible for packing and moving the remaining ~30% of our belongings over the next couple of weeks. Luckily, Cam was able to come home on the weekends and help move the heavy furniture and boxes over to the storage unit. After a very hectic couple of weeks (and maybe a menty B or two) we were completely moved into the camper and out of the house we had called home for the last two and half years.

Our first night in the camper was spent sleeping in front of my Moms house. Leaving the house that night was definitely a very bitter sweet moment. We had both been so incredibly excited to move into our new tiny home on wheels, we had been dreaming of it for the last six months as we packed, sold, or donated all of the belongings that were not coming with us. The time had finally come and we were riding on the adrenaline and excitement of living in our new tiny home. But on the other side of that coin, was the bitterness of driving away from the life that we had built together over the last three years. We made lifelong friends, hosted holidays, parties, friends and family, and had more than a few evenings filled with laughter shared with our loved ones. Driving away from the empty house we had called home for so long for the last time really brought a surge of emotions that I never anticipated feeling so late in the game. I had already cried my tears after the Holiday party we hosted with all of our friends, and then again when I emptied my beloved office/studio/lair. I thought I had already done my grieving, but I did not get off that easy. And honestly, I feel very lucky to have so many reasons to make saying goodbye so hard. If you're one of those people that made it so difficult to leave, I love you and I'm very grateful for you. After a couple of nights outside my mom's and a few more difficult goodbyes, we left for Rapid City, South Dakota on February 26th.

Life In Colorado

What's Next?

Well, now that we're down in Texas for the next 8-10 months, I've got a lot of things in the works.

Getting to South Dakota with no idea of how long we would be there meant that I would not be able to get a job right away like I was planning on when we arrived in Texas. So I took the change in plans as an opportunity to start building my own business. I've had an LLC since 2023 because I convinced myself I was going to be an overnight sensation on YouTube and would need an LLC immediately, which I have yet to need for that reason. I started exploring the intersection between my skills and my passion and landed on a design service providing graphic and interior design for independent coffee shops. After exploring several local shops in Rapid City, and talking to a few owners, I signed my first client! I'll be showcasing the transformation and examples of the marketing materials I created on the "Projects" page here shortly.

If you don't already know, I have a YouTube channel! I know that a lot of my friends and family are not as in love with YouTube as I am. (If that's you, I forgive you.) I don't expect everyone I know to be a massive fan of my channel (but if you are, just know I love you extra). Since I have a lot of time on my hands now I finally get to dedicate a lot more time to growing the channel. Currently, I'm focused on editing footage that I filmed back in December and never got the time to sit down and edit (there was 5 hours of footage for 1 video). After that video is published, I have quite the collection of videos filmed and ready for editing including: a day in my kitchen vlog, a packing and moving vlog, shopping for the perfect travel trailer to call home, an empty camper tour, a weekend vlog in South Dakota: decorating, baking, and really living my best life. And lastly, I recently filmed my process of cleaning out my closet about a month into living in the camper. So I've got plenty to keep me busy with just YouTube alone, but of course I have so much more I'm working on. So keep an eye on the channel and catch up all the videos I have posted until the next video is published!

Next time I'll update you on what exactly we got up to during our time in South Dakota. Unexpectedly, we really enjoyed ourselves while we were there and were somewhat sad to leave. Our journey to Texas was full of adventures too, including a car accident that totaled my car! But that story will have to wait till next time...

xoxo,

Allii Tayy