Tag: @okienomads

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Housesitting 101

What is Housesitting?

Thousands of people around the world have purchased homes and at some point they find that they don’t want to live in their home but they aren’t quite ready to sell it and either aren’t able to rent it or don’t want to rent it. Some are retirees that spend six months of the year visiting warmer climates in an RV and the rest of their time is at their “home”. Most folks would rather have someone living in their home than board it up. Others have a home on the market to be sold and know that it has a much better chance of selling if someone is actively living in it and keeping up with the house.

Off grid Mexico estate
Our housesitting gig in early 2019: Off-Grid Ranch in Baja, Mexico

How Do I Find Housesitting Gigs?

Build Your Housesitting Portfolio

If you are serious about housesitting, the first step should be to build your portfolio of references from people that you have housesitted for in the past. Most strangers on the street aren’t going to let someone they don’t know into their home for any period of time. However, if you had a list of credible references, your chances of being selected to house sit increase tremendously.

Offer to housesit for family or close friends when they go on vacation. Do an excellent job, let them know that you would love to housesit for them again, and ask if you can use them as a reference for future housesitting gigs. Now you can maintain a “resume” of your housesitting experience and use it as a bargaining chip with potential clients.

Create an Online Presence

The next step is likely the most important, creating an online presence. This can be different depending on the part of the world you wish to housesit in, but at minimum you should create a profile on a housesitting websites such as Trusted House Sitters and/or Luxury House Sitting.

Similar to filling out a job application, create a profile that is inviting and appealing to the particular type of assignment that you are interested in. Your profile photo should be high-quality, up to date, and accurate to your appearance as well as inviting. Don’t use a mug-shot as your profile photo on a housesitting website. Have someone proofread your profile for grammatical errors and try to be as professional as possible.

Remember that in a digital age, your online footprint means as much as your reputation did in 1950’s small town America. As soon as a potential client sees your name as an interested house-sitter, they will likely scour your social media and web presence to help determine if you are a credible applicant. The obvious solution to this predicament is to maintain social media as a decent human being and don’t post hateful, rude, racist, or overly political content. A less obvious way to avoid missing out on houses because of your meme addiction is to set your social media accounts to private.

Insider Tip Perform a “web audit” of yourself every 6 months or so to insure that you have a spotless web identity. If you do find something negative or defamatory, make steps to have it removed. 

Provide a Quality Service

Like any industry, it doesn’t matter if you land the biggest client of your life if you can’t deliver a high-quality product. Once you get a housesitting gig, no matter the size, do the best job possible. Oftentimes going above and beyond your responsibilities as a house-sitter can yield glowing reviews online and excellent recommendations when someone calls. Similar to the rest of life, being excellent at what you do will net rewards continually over time.

Standard Duties of a House-sitter

The duties required in your housesitting agreement (yes, you need to sign a housesitting agreement) can vary depending on the geographic location of the house, the style of property (ranch, condo, apartment, etc.) and the reason that the owner requires a house-sitter. If the owner needs a house-sitter to make the home look inhabited, it’s probably best if you know how many hours per day you should be around the house.

In our 2019 housesitting agreement we signed on to live at an off-grid ranch in the remote mountains of Baja Norte, Mexico. We were interested in this assignment because it’s in Baja and because we are extremely interested in living off-grid someday and this was a perfect way to try that lifestyle without a huge commitment. Our duties at the ranch included the following:

  • Cleaning the main house and income property and preparing the income property with linens, supplies and a warm welcome if someone were staying.
  • Tending to the flower beds, gardens, and fruit trees on the property.
  • Feeding the dog, Pepita!
  • Monitoring the off-grid systems like satellite internet, solar power, and water.

Your responsibilities at a house might be very different and may include things like walking a dog or washing windows or dusting furniture. There is no right or wrong set of responsibilities as long as you are getting as much value out of the arrangement as the home owner. If you are staying in a 10’ x 10’ room with no windows and the owner of the house has you painting the exterior, reflooring the living room, and building on a garage, you have made a mistake. Remember that the home owner is seeking a housesitter for reason. 


A House-sitter signs a Housesitting Agreement

A written document agreed upon between the owner or manager of the home and the house-sitter is vital to a mutually beneficial arrangement. This document should be signed and dated by both parties and outline the term of the arrangement, responsibilities of the house-sitter, any compensation involved, and how to handle expenses paid out of pocket by the house-sitter. 
Final Tips for Housesitting
To sum up our experiences looking for housesitting jobs and apply for many, the golden rule applies as much to housesitting as it does to the rest of our lives. Treat other people’s homes how you would want someone to treat your home and be the applicant that you would hire if you were looking for a housesitter. Happy hunting and let us know if any of our tips helped you land a gig!

A written document agreed upon between the owner or manager of the home and the house-sitter is vital to a mutually beneficial arrangement. This document should be signed and dated by both parties and outline the term of the arrangement, responsibilities of the house-sitter, any compensation involved, and how to handle expenses paid out of pocket by the house-sitter. 

Final Tips for Housesitting

To sum up our experiences looking for housesitting jobs and apply for many, the golden rule applies as much to housesitting as it does to the rest of our lives. Treat other people’s homes how you would want someone to treat your home and be the applicant that you would hire if you were looking for a housesitter. Happy hunting and let us know if any of our tips helped you land a gig!

As always, thank you for reading along on our travels and adventures. Hopefully you were entertained, enlightened, or otherwise felt like the last few minutes reading this post was a worthwhile investment of your time. If you enjoyed our content, there are a few ways that you can help promote what we do and keep us on the road a little longer:

  • Follow us on social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. The more viewers, subscribers, likes and comments, the better our pages rank. 
  • Share this article or our website with others that you think might enjoy it. 
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Fresh Paint…Maintenance Monday on YouTube

We painted our bus in a hurry and ended up with a really good looking paintjob thanks to help from my grandparents, parents and Rachael’s parents. It was a team effort and it transformed the bus from a creepy former school bus to a shiny adventuremobile.

Before



After

Unfortunately, we left without finishing the paint job on the bus and left the front grill ugly and grey. We found a little time to repaint the grill and we posted a video showing you how we did it. This process will work for most plastics on cars, trucks, and RV’s.  Check out the video below!

If you enjoyed our video, please subscribe to our channel, it means a lot and the subscriptions help us stay on the road longer. Be on the lookout for more videos soon!

 

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Skoolie Overland Travel Part 2: Why a Skoolie-Conversion Makes a Great Travel Rig

I hope you have had a chance to read Part 1 of this article before reading this one. In the first article on this topic we cover some of the negative aspects of living in a Skoolie-conversion, a lot of which we did not expect before leaving for a period of extended travel across the United States.

Check it out here: Skoolie Overland Travel Part 1: Why a Skoolie-Conversion Makes a Bad Travel Rig

Everything AND the kitchen sink

Firstly, when living in a school bus conversion, there is enough room to bring anything you would need for an adventure. We have a very small bus and are still able to cram in a queen-sized bed, a big refrigerator, all of the camera equipment we could need, 4 bicycles, 2 kayaks, and more books than we will be able to read through the course of the summer.

Our school bus is around 75 square-feet of living space and that is A LOT compared to conversion vans and truck campers. We have friends that travel in off-road trucks with slide-ins or roof top tents and the first thing they comment on is the space. “There is so much room for activities!” All Will Ferrell quotes aside, when it rains, snows, or drops below freezing, we are warm and dry inside. Rachael’s yoga practice can still carry on even if there is a torrential downpour outside.

 

 

Custom cabinets that need bungees to stay shut

Another aspect of traveling in a Skoolie is that the design is 100% customizable! The builder can customize the design and layout however they see fit. Once the seats and the floor are yanked out, the bus can be built to include anything that you can fit in the space. Cruise the interwebs for a bit and you will find Skoolies with 2000+ watt solar systems, full-size bathtubs, mobile workstations, the opportunities inside are endless. The biggest challenge is making the decision on toilet vs. no toilet.

We built a simple interior using remedial carpentry skills and equipment, but it has served us really well so far. You can see the inside of our bus on our video tour below:

 

An aspect of Skoolie ownership that we did not expect is that Skoolies, especially short Skoolies, are surprisingly capable off-road. No, we are not seeking out off-road opportunities to test the flex of our suspension or drive through 4-foot deep mud holes, but to get to more remote campsites we have endured some off-camber and sketchy situations.

Smaller busses are built on similar chassis to full-size trucks, so in general, there shouldn’t be much difference between taking a Chevy 3500 Silverado and the Okienomad’s Skoolie down a Forest Service road. The motor in our bus is shared with the military Humvee and a lot of farm trucks and Suburban’s of the past 25 years, so it is no surprise that when geared right, out bus will climb up and over some stuff.

Below is a photo of a campsite that we were rewarded with after an arduous climb up a rutted Forest Service road near Anza, CA. Worth it!

 

As mentioned in Part 1 of this article, one of our favorite and least favorite parts of Skoolie overland travel is that Skoolies are slow! How slow you ask? We got passed by a full-size pickup hauling a trailer that had to have been 12,000 pounds or more like we were standing still. I couldn’t even recognize the make of the truck it was moving so fast, or err, we were moving so slowly. The slow speed of the Skoolie up mountain passes, around turns, and over washboard roads makes it the perfect overlanding vehicle, you simply see more than if you were flying by at 75 miles per hour in a new sprinter van.

If we had to choose, we would travel slow every day of the year and not miss a minute of it.

 

One of my favorite aspects of bus travel is that Skoolie conversions do less damage to the environment. Keep in mind that traveling a ton of miles on a less-than-efficient diesel engine through beautiful forests and deserts is not exactly healthy for the environment, however, keeping a big hunk of metal out of a scrap yard and in use is a win for the environment when you consider the alternative of buying a newer vehicle such as an RV or full-size truck camper. We have recycled our bus from its previous life of shuttling kids to a new life of seeing beautiful things every day.

Once we are done with our travels in the bus we will likely park the bus somewhere nice and quiet and use it as a cabin in the woods or a suite for the visiting in-laws or parents. We will only need to add a composting toilet or outhouse and a small shower area to make the Skoolie 100% livable off-grid, reducing the need to use a ton of new material to build a new house someday.

 

A Skoolie for sale now!

Lastly in our list of reasons why a Skoolie is a great overlanding vehicle is that Skoolies are cheap! School districts, churches, and metropolitan transit companies are constantly shuttling out (pun intended) gently used, fleet-maintained vehicle for rock-bottom prices. Most of these vehicles have been maintained since day-one by competent mechanics and are usually on the auction block with less than 200,000 miles on them, a considerably small amount in regards to the life of a well-maintained diesel engine.

Our bus came to us with 107,000 miles on it and other than some neglected maintenance issues by the second owner of the bus, we have had 13,000+ trouble-free miles out of it.

Not only are skoolies cheap to buy, they are cheap to build. You don’t have to have an Insta-famous porcelain tub or a teak-wood deck on the roof of your bus. You can build a bus that is simple 2×4 and plywood construction, slap on a little paint and you are good to hit the road. Our bus was built with materials that are cheap and available at any hardware store with tools that most people already own.

 

If you are still hanging on through all of that negative, I hope you have had the chances to read Part 2 of this article, Skoolie Overland Travel Part 2: Why a Skoolie-Conversion Makes a Bad Travel Rig. We are really happy with our choice to hit the road in our Skoolie and we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

If you have enjoyed our article, please explore the blog some more as there are tons of stories, write-ups, and photos from our travels around the country. If you want a more streamlined media feed, check out our Instagram and Facebook pages, thanks for stopping by!

 

 

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How We Quit Our Jobs to Travel the Country Full Time

Updated February 2019

We orignially posted this while traveling full-time and living 99% off of savings. Some things have changed and we have updated this post with the changes. New information after nearly a year of travel will be in italics.


We did it! We quit our desk jobs and took off across the country in our converted school bus. A nomadic lifestyle has proven to be tricky and challenging in all sorts of ways and we have tried to document how we made the switch from full-time, white picket fence, 9-5’ers to full-time, skoolie living, nomads!

A Little Background

Rachael worked with the local university in the business office taking care of students that needed financial guidance to remain enrolled and in good standing with the university. She really thrives in an environment where she can help people every day and use her exceptional customer service skills.

I worked in a similar field, managing the accounting and compliance for a job training center that works with at risk youth. I never particularly cared for the work, but getting to interact with young people and trying to make a difference in their lives was meaningful enough to stay there for 4 years.

However, as of March 15th, 2018 we were unemployed and shortly thereafter, became houseless. See, a big component of this plan was to make sure that we could liquidate the assets or liabilities that were holding us in one place and the biggest asset that we owned as a couple was our home. I purchased a house several years ago and had always planned on upgrading it and flipping it or turning it into a rental property. Fast forward to now and the house is rented to a lovely couple and the rent amount more than covers the mortgage and repairs.

So how have we transitioned from a house full of stuff and a driveway full of cars and projects, to a couple that can fit most everything that they own in a short bus and a shed? How we did it is outlined below:

Sell Everything

START WITH THE SMALL STUFF

This is dramatic and over-simplified, but seriously, sell everything. We found so much stuff that we don’t use and that doesn’t bring us any kind of joy. Did  I really need six (yes, 6) fishing poles? I fished once in 2017. I sold all but two rods and they will be going in the bus with us. We had several garage sales and facebook posts that sold everything from duplicate things that we both had when we got married to things that simply sat on a shelf and never got used. Start analyzing what clothes you enjoy wearing and which clothes sit in your closet and never get worn. Start making a pile of clothes you don’t want and put them up for sale. SMALL STUFF– ~$2000

MAKE A PLAN TO SELL THE BIG STUFF

After you have sold a lot of the little things that you don’t enjoy, move on the big stuff. In 2015, I purchased a two year old Honda Accord that was cleaner, faster, and nicer than anything I had ever owned. I loved that car. I loved the efficiency and status that came with having a nice car. However, I quickly realized that the price tag was not worth the comfort. We sold the car and Rachael’s pickup truck and are now a one vehicle family, a bus! Not having a car payment and having dirt cheap insurance is one of the most freeing feelings that I have ever felt.

Another big ticket item that needed to go was my project 4×4. This was the first car that I purchased outright after completing college and there was a ton of sentimental value attached to it. It had been on many adventures and hauled most of the gear that I owned to the trailhead or the riverside. It had issues however, and cost several thousand dollars to get it running after the head gasket blew a couple of years back. Once repaired, we sold it and cut our losses. Keep in mind that you will rarely make back the amount of money invested in a project car.

ACCORD SAVINGS- $385/mo

4X4- $3750

Make a Budget and Stick to It

One of the most difficult things for us to do is to stick to a budget and most of that revolves around food and fuel. We have opted to maintain a simple budget and track our expenses as we travel. We encourage anyone trying to live this lifestyle to keep detailed records and copies of receipts for potential tax purposes. Below is the outline of our weekly budget:

Food 125
Gas 125
Gear 20
Supplies 20
Laundry 10
Fun 50
Misc 50
Weekly Total 400
Monthly 1600

As expected, we have overshot our fuel budget significantly while traveling through California and Oregon. We have seen diesel prices exceed $5.00/gal. Below is a more accurate budget breakdown for our travels after four months on the road:

Food 150
Gas 175
Gear 10
Repairs 50
Laundry 5
Fun 25
Misc 25
Weekly

 

Total

 440
Monthly 1760

 

COUNT ON NEEDING A FEW REPAIRS

Our bus is a 2000 Chevy that had 107,000 miles on it when we started the build process, which would lead one to expect a relatively trouble free 20,000 miles or so traveling around the country. Well in four months we have had to replace the brake pads on the front and rear as well as the rear axle oil seal ($700), replaced the Pump Manual Drive ($300), and replaced a broken bike rack ($500) and a bent DIY trailer hitch ($250). 

Since then, we have spent another couple of hundred dollars on miscellaneous parts such as fuel filters, fuel pump, and a serpentine belt. All are regular maintenance items that would come up during the regular course of ownership.

If you are planning to travel the country and rack up hard miles on your school bus or van, consider having a pot set aside for repairs and new parts. It helps to be able to replace parts and do some of the work yourself, but count on having to pay a shop to do more of the heavy duty jobs.

 

LIVE YOUR CONVERSION BUDGET BEFORE YOU MOVE IN

If you are still working on your bus, start using your “full-time” budget as soon as possible even if you are living in the driveway. Accustom yourself to not getting the $5 cup of coffee and start conditioning yourself to ride your bike to work when your weekly fuel budget is spent.

We have continued to use this philosophy as we find housesitting gigs around North America. We use the time to recharge, save some more money, and see a new area more intimately. Likewise, we still live like we are in the bus even though we are in a big house in a beautiful location. This keeps costs relatively stable and sometimes it’s much cheaper.

SAVE, SAVE, SAVE

The only way that a full-time nomadic lifestyle was possible for us was through savings. We began early in our relationship with a fair amount saved up already and once we were married we were able to reduce our expenses and save a lot of our expendable cash for travel.

SAVE FOR THE “END GAME”

What happens when you run out of money? What if your freelance gigs dry up? What do you do if your company doesn’t want to pay you to work remotely any more? Be smart and have a pot of money sitting aside, ideally in a fluid investment (think high-yield savings account), and be prepared to settle down somewhere for a while until you have enough money saved up to have another go at it. At minimum you will need some money to park your rig and job hunt in a new area. Don’t be caught off-guard by not being prepared.

PLAN FOR FUTURE TRAVEL

Where do you want to go on your next adventure? Knowing where you are going will make plans much easier while you travel. For example, we want to eventually travel the Baja Peninsula, so we are making plans to brush up on our Spanish and reach out to businesses that hire ex-pats in the Baja area for work over the winter. Most organizations and businesses don’t look for last minute employees. Reach out and make connections before they are needed.

If you are making income while traveling, consider setting aside $25-$50/month to your “Baja Fund” and keep it separate from your other savings. This will allow you to save toward a goal and have a good chunk of cash to start from when you are ready to make the jump again.

Live Simply

The longer you spend working on this lifestyle, the quicker you will learn what you need or don’t need in a given week. For example, we have found that we can wear a shirt a few times before it starts to smell (and that’s why we do laundry right?). We have also found that if we aren’t working up a sweat, we can skip a shower for a couple of days. Our camp shower gets used regularly for “rinse offs”.

One of the most obvious ways that we have embraced the “bus life” is through using objects for more than one purpose. Recently we bought a huge tray of strawberries at the market and after we were finished, turned the container into a box for our granola bars in the cabinet. For more ideas on reducing your environmental impact while living a nomadic life or a normal 9-5 life, check out our article HERE!

5 STEPS TO SAVE THE PLANET EVERY DAY

Pick Up a Side Hustle

While we traveled the U.S. in 2018, we tried to pick up odd-jobs along the way that could supplement our budget a bit and allow us to experience new things. From working as parking attendants for a massive music festival to shooting residential drone footage in Idaho, there are options out there to make a little side money to keep going. 

A lot of folks that we have met on the road have a side hustle like selling essential oils or making handcrafted goods that they sell online. Other folks that we have met maintain real jobs from their vehicles. One of our friends works for a non-profit full-time from his sprinter conversion which allows his wife to pursue her dreams of becoming a nutrition expert.

In September, we reached out to a group that we had volunteered with earlier in the year about volunteering with them again. When we chatted with them, we were suprised that they offered us part time jobs working remotely. We are able to set our own hours within reason, collaborate with people on our team all across the U.S. and save up for more travel. Can you say Alaska 2020?

Are you living life on the road as a nomad? If so, how did you do it? We would love to hear from anyone that has found other ways to make it on the road and avoid the 9-5 at all costs!

As always, thank you for reading along on our travels and adventures. Hopefully you were entertained, enlightened, or otherwise felt like the last few minutes reading this post was a worthwhile investment of your time. If you enjoyed our content, there are a few ways that you can help promote what we do and keep us on the road a little longer:

  • Follow us on social media platforms likeYouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. The more viewers, subscribers, likes and comments, the better our pages rank. 
  • Share this article or our website with others that you think might enjoy it. 
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FREE Camping in Southern California

We were pleasantly surprised to find more than enough FREE camping SoCal and we didn’t have to camp in a Wal-Mart parking lot! Below are some of our favorite sites from our time in Southern California.

Laguna Mountain

Julian, CA

GPS: 32.977978, -116.524818

We end up in trailhead parking lots a lot of the time because they are well-traveled, have access to trails, and normally have toilets. This spot was simple, had a great view of Anza Borrego in the distance, and was right on the Pacific Crest Trail.

There are quite a few level spots here and a vault toilet is available. Take a walk on the nearby Sunset Trail for beautiful views at the foot of the Sierras.

San Diego River Preserve

San Diego, CA

GPS: 32.76000856, -117.2250726

This site is a pull-out along the San Diego River in the heart of SD. There is bound to be a fair bit of traffic noise and potential conversations with homeless people living nearby, but you can’t beat the location for a quick night’s sleep and 5-minute drives to Sea World, Ocean Beach, and much more.

This can be an intimidating place to park, but we left our rig here for 4-5 hours at night and rode our bikes to Ocean Beach to have dinner and drinks and enjoy the ocean. There are plenty of runners and cyclists that use this abandoned road day and night, so we never felt unsafe here.

Law Street Beach

San Diego, CA

GPS: 32.8025916, -117.2595628

This section of curbside next to Pacific Beach is one of the best FREE camping spots we have ever had. The view of the Ocean is magnificent and the amount of active people around was very refreshing. There is not a lot of solitude here, but there is plenty of ocean to share.

This site had bathrooms and showers nearby and one only had to make sure not to park here during street sweeping, one day per week.

Thomas Mountain

Anza, CA

GPS: 33.5792566, -116.6241575

There are loads of pull outs and campsites along this OHV trail/road near Anza, CA. The road can be a bit rough and steep, so we stopped short of the top and had a great view of the valley below.

Vehicle with low-clearance should really try somewhere else, this road is rutted and rocky in places and could be hard to navigate in a rig larger than 24 feet.

North Joshua Tree BLM

Joshua Tree, CA

GPS: 34.172932, -116.224663

If you are looking for a peaceful escape from the modern world, this is not it. This is a dry creek bed that is used heavily for off-roading, dirt biking, and any other loud vehicle driving that you can think of. The lake bed is beautiful and very flat, but don’t plan on going to sleep until dark.

This is a perfect overnight spot before entering Joshua Tree National Park. The West Entrance is just minutes away and has a bathroom and brochure station for the park.

Sawtooth Canyon (New Jack City)

Barstow, CA

GPS: 34.670395, -116.98423

We recently (March 2020) added this campsite as we traveled to LA for work and this made a perfect stopover from Northern Arizona.

This campground is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is very busy in the climbing season (October-March). There is a ton of climbing available in this area and something can be found for climbers of all skill levels. This site has toilets but they were full when we visited, there was also zero occupancy when we arrived on a Wednesday night in March-arrive early. All in all, it wasn’t a bad place to stopover on the way to LA. Be sure and hike to the top of the ridge and check out the views looking toward Big Bear.

We had some of our most unique campsites of our whole summer in So Cal and we think you will enjoy them too! Did we miss any spots along our route? E-mail us and let us know!

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New Travel VLOG Series Episode: Utah or Bust

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that we have begun our year of full-time living on the road and exploring this great country.We are going to document our travels and adventures with you through a new series on our YouTube channel. We have made it to Utah and we want to share the first leg of the journey with you. Check it out!

If you like our content and want to be updated when we post to YouTube, please SUBSCRIBE!

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FREE Camping: Wapta Falls Recreation Site-Field, British Columbia

If you haven’t noticed yet, we don’t like paying for camping. We especially don’t like paying for camping when we are traveling through beautiful Western Canada and every dollar means we can stay on the road a little longer and see more of this beautiful country. Many thanks to the British Columbia Recreation Department for having so many awesome, free campsites and trails for public use. This one was located just down the road from Wapta Falls and offered amazing views of the falls and the mountains beyond.

How to Get There- (GPS: 51.109397, -116.500873)

Once you visit Jasper National Park, travel back down the Icefields Parkway and turn West on HWY 1 toward Field turn onto Beaverfoot Rd. Stay on Beaverfoot Rd for nearly 8 miles of rough logging road and turn left at the sign for Wapta Falls Recreation Site. The dirt road to the campsites is rutted and could be difficult to navigate in wet weather. We managed fine through a few puddles in a 19 ft. Class C RV. Getting out was a little tricky, but with some careful driving we made it out with no problem.

We pulled in at night and didn’t really understand how good of a FREE camping spot we had stumbled upon. Rachael started working on a delicious meal of red beans and rice and I took a walk outside to see what I could see, and hear. The sound of Wapta Falls 2000 feet below was LOUD! And if the stars could make noise they would have drown out the falls. This was by far the best night for night photography on our trip, but it didn’t last long. By the time Rachael got done with dinner, most of the stars had hidden themselves behind cloud cover.

We rested easy knowing that the parking brake was on and that we would awake to the sound of a mountain waterfall and what was sure to be a beautiful view. We slept in the next morning and awoke to great conditions and undoubtedly one of the best views of the trip. Chancellor Peak and Mt. Vaux dominate the horizon and Wapta Falls, massive in its own right, is dwarfed by the peaks above. It is crazy to think that only a day before we were hiking to the abandoned campground and the hoodoos at the base of Chancellor Peak and now we were viewing the same peak from a great distance.

You could say that there were facilities here. There were a couple of fire pit areas and a couple of picnic tables that seemed to be pretty well maintained. There was also a pit toilet between the campsites that seemed to be in okay shape. We would definitely poop here again.

Activities in the Area–

  • Wapta Falls Hike-The most obvious activity in the immediate area is to hike to Wapta Falls. The falls are beautiful and huge. There are two options to hike to the falls from this campsite. One is to drive Beaverfoot Rd back to HWY 1 and turn West until you see the sign for Wapta Falls on your right. The second option (we suggest this one) is to hike down and bushwhack your way from the campsite to the falls. It is a lot of elevation to climb back up, but we think the views will more than make up for it.
  • Golden, BC- This quiet little town was one of our favorites from the trip mostly because of the quaint size and the amenities that abounded for such a small town. Our favorite stop in Golden was Bacchus Books. This bookstore doubles as a cafe and coffee shop. The selection of books was impressive considering the whole place couldn’t have been 2000 square feet on both floors. We enjoyed the baked goods and reading in a coffee shop that wasn’t packed full of people.

It really was a shame that we had to leave this campsite so soon, but we had more to see in Yoho and time was starting to run out on our Canadian adventure. We hope that you enjoyed our review of this campsite and hope that you continue to follow our adventures on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook as @okienomads.

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Rachael Doesn’t Have to Ride in a Lawn Chair Anymore!

Okienomads VLOG Episode 10 is live on YouTube!

In this episode we :

✔️Grab conversion van chairs from a junkyard

✔️Take out the old crusty seat

✔️Install the new (to us) seats

Thank you for checking it out and let us know what you think!

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Free Camping: San Jon City Park(NM)

Everyone has the feeling on a road trip where your eyes start getting heavy, your Red Bull is wearing off and you can only sing “Don’t Stop Believing” so many times before it fails to keep you attentive. You might even venture to explore the rumble strips on the side of the expressway. This is a no-judgement-zone, we have all been there.  This is one of those times.

Over the years I have developed this extremely low level of “give a crap” when it comes to camping. Once I am done driving, hiking, or generally doing anything, my next move is to find somewhere to sleep. My poor friends are looking for flat campsites or their girlfriends are looking for a cheap Air BnB or hotel room and I am over here trying to fold down the seats in the car and somehow fit my 6’3″ frame in a 6′ trunk. I guess I have accepted the inevitability of discomfort that comes with camping and backpacking. Your back aches from using a 1/2″ thick blow-up sleeping pad that has a slow leak and your neck is sore because your stuff sack filled with your rancid clothes doesn’t feel quite the same as your pillow at home. This is why God created fly-over towns. In most of these tiny dots on the map you can get by with laying your feet out of the window of the car and catching a few hours of shut-eye behind the truck stop or near a church parking lot.

Sometimes you get lucky and find a town that knows what you are shopping for and delivers! Enter San Jon, NM.

San Jon (pronounced “San Jone”) is a village in Northeast New Mexico that has a city park specifically designated for camping and overnight parking. The city’s population is around 300 as of 2000 and since I40 bypassed the town, most every business has died off and left town. However, dirtbag camping is alive and well in San Jon.

We arrived around midnight on the Friday night of Memorial Day Weekend and were greeted by an 80’s Class A motorhome on the South side of the park and the rest of the place to ourselves. We found the bathrooms to be nearly spotless and they had running hot water, score! We freshened up a little and setup the tent for a short stay. Due to the wind, we staked our backpacking tent down and enjoyed a mostly uninterrupted sleep. Another vehicle showed up in the middle of the night with an a-frame bumper-pull in tow and we were none the wiser. We awoke to light that only really happens in the desert and we were packed up in a matter of minutes.

While walking around, you could tell that this town used to be something. It seemed like we were walking the streets of a town from a “Cars” movie where the entire town had lost it’s identity when the interstate came through. I half expected to see a rusted dump truck parked on the corner of town. Instead there are vacant service stations, boats on blocks, and one lonely hotel that somehow stays in business.

Our time in San Jon was short, but memorable. I recommend a visit to this town if you are passing through, especially if you are needing a place to crash for the night on I40 between Oklahoma and Arizona. A huge thanks goes out to the town of San Jon for looking out for us budget campers that would rather spend our money on gas and food for the next adventure than on camping. Your facilities are great and I can’t wait to stop in your town again soon!

GPS COORDINATES: 35.107665, -103.331169

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