Hello From Our Forest Home!

Storms, trees, cool lichens and thoughts on our first month of full time travel.

Hello, hello! This week we stayed put in our beautiful spot in Lincoln National Forest in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. It’s been really nice to stay in one place for a while. We’re going to stay here one more week and take full advantage of the two week limit.

It’s so peaceful here in the evenings as we wait for the stars to come out. One unexpected surprise is that there are no crickets — so the nights are almost totally silent, broken now and then by coyotes singing.

I still can’t believe that this beautiful spot is free, y’all! Texas doesn’t have much public land — in fact, 95% of Texas is privately owned — so this is a whole new experience for us.

An Unexpected Thunderstorm (with Bonus Hail!)

We’ve been getting little daily afternoon showers but we don’t mind — they make the pines and firs smell so good! After checking the weather, and packing art supplies and a lunch we set off on an early morning hike…

…and about 2 miles in an unexpected thunderstorm blew in!

Here’s a little taste of the pea-sized hail!

The thunder rolled around the mountains and the lightening was way too close for comfort!

I wracked my brain thinking of what we were supposed to do since we haven’t done much hiking at 9,500 feet — we sheltered under a shorter, young pine for a bit trying to decide whether to turn back or keep going. Pretty soon we were completely soaked and cold. Temps dropped from the 70s to the 50s in a flash! We decided we better head back to camp, and hiked back as fast as we safely could.

Of course when we got back to camp it had barely rained there — that’s how it goes, right? We both had goose bumps and were super cold! We warmed up with a stew that I had made earlier and tea — felt so good to be in our cozy van.

Here are some scenes from the hike, clockwise from the top left:

• Two soaked, shivering, but happy hikers after we made it back to camp.

• A different species of paintbrush from what we’re used to in Texas — does anyone know this one?

• A catchfly glowing orange — we think it’s Cardinal Catchfly (Silene laciniata)

• The forest before the storm.

• A new-to-me lichen — love the little cups!

• A fossil that I spied on the way back — it was in the middle of the trail, but I didn’t notice it until the the rain had wet the rock.

Drying out our gear after the rain — and topping off the battery with the portable solar panels!

We had more rain that afternoon and into the evening, so we had wet clothes hanging all around the van — we were glad we weren’t backpacking or in a tent! The next day the rain stopped long enough to dry our gear under the awning and put out the portable solar panel to top off the the house battery. Whew!

One thing’s for sure — we’re not going hiking again while we’re here without bringing a rain jacket — even if rain’s not in the forecast!

Art Goals: Painting New Mexico!

I’m learning more and more about New Mexico and loving every minute of it — New Mexico really is The Land of Enchantment. I’ve been filling up my nature journal and this week I dove into learning about Capulin Volcano:

Capulin Volcano on Arches rough watercolor paper.

I can’t wait to get there and see the shortgrass prairie in person.

A penstemon study in my perpetual journal.

I did a study of Rocky Mountain Penstemon while it rained (click to watch) — penstemons are my faves!

I also took an online class with Rosalie Haizlett on watercolor pencils — can’t wait to experiment with those more. It still amazes me that we can get internet access from out in the middle of nowhere!

A bit of bad luck: Jason was adjusting the Starlink dish on the back of the van to try and get better reception for the class and he accidentally bumped our rear camera (that goes to the rearview mirror) and it completely snapped off. DOH. He already has a plan to fix it.

My next goal is to try to learn the trees in the forest around us — there are so many pines, firs and spruces!

Send me your questions!

I thought I’d start a new section of the newsletter taking questions from YOU! So drop me a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer!

This week I had several friends ask what we eat/how we cook in the van, so here goes!

Full disclosure: we’re both vegan and try to eat whole foods/plant based, which was so much harder to do while tent camping! Now that we have the van it’s so much easier — it’s almost the same as when we had a house.

Here’s a taste of what we ate this week: oatmeal, black beans and rice, my induction cooktop setup, curry, falafel wrap and a stuffed waffle! Yum.

Our van build is all-solar (no propane) by design, and I have 4 main ways of cooking (Amazon affiliate links below):

• an Instant Pot - I use this almost every day. It’s great for making beans, rice, lentils — the list goes on! I love that we can set the timer and go hiking and dinner is all ready when we come back!

• an induction cooktop - I can use the inner pot from the Instant Pot, a tea kettle (that I store in the microwave lol!) and a skillet on it

• a small microwave — so handy for heating up leftovers!

• and a waffle maker — I have this one called The Stuffler and while I don’t use it all that often it’s super fun! It makes super yummy stuffed waffles — the one above had bananas and chocolate chips and I topped it with blueberries, pecans, cinnamon and more bananas! I’ve also used it to make paninis, warm peanut butter and jelly, and I make cornbread batter and stuff it with black beans and fajita veggies.

We also have a pretty big fridge/freezer and I can fit enough food in it to go off-grid for 2 weeks. We usually run out of fresh stuff before the 2 weeks is up but I’ve found that red cabbage and carrots are my friends — they seem to last forever :)

Breakfasts are usually hot oatmeal or muesli, lunches are sandwiches/wraps or leftovers, and dinners are curries, black beans and rice, meal bowls or soups. Yum.

One Month of Full Time Travel

Our forest home!

I can’t believe that Wednesday marked one month since we sold our house to travel full time — how did that happen?! It seems like time has been flying by — our days are filled to the brim. But on the other hand it almost seems like it’s been longer that that. A true time dichotomy!

We’re both learning to savor every moment of our one wild and precious lives.