Eastward through the Wild West.

Spokane is the first place thus far where we find a host via Couchsurfing — a young married couple that invites us into their home and shares a tasty BBQ dinner with us. We play bocce ball with them and chat over strawberry rhubarb cobbler. It’s interesting to talk to Joe and Sarah about home because the two of them are actually from the same town in Wyoming and have some differing experiences with their hometown and with making Spokane a home, plus they’re about to sell their house and embark on an adventure together teaching English in France for a year. The next day after a delicious breakfast and coffee routine with our wonderful hosts, we each explore Spokane in our own ways and find it to be quite a friendly place.

Next, we head to the Idaho Panhandle, to go see Kelsey’s stepmom’s aunt Donna (whew, what a title!) Donna lives down a rural gravel driveway with one of her daughters, who has her grandchildren, two adorable little girls about 5 and 10 years of age, visiting. By dinnertime, there’s a full house, 9 of us sitting down to eat together. It’s definitely a different lifestyle, but everyone is incredibly kind and hospitable. After dinner, we watch a sheep get sheared and show the girls our van. They speculate on various ways to stowaway and travel with us.

The next day we head to Coeur D’Alene and spend some time sitting in a grassy park, working on a little crafts projects together before visiting a farmers market and getting some tasty snap peas for the road.

It’s getting dark as we cross the Montana border and cruise through more and more rural stretches of highway, glimpsing snatches of water and mountainous shapes in the darkness. The next day is gloomy and rainy. We drive to Whitefish, a cute little town near Glacier National Park. We have a bit of the rainy day blues, so we spend some time sitting in a cute café, sipping mochas and working on plans, before driving to the park.

Due to what we’ll call an “accidental scenic detour,” we arrive at Glacier a bit later than intended, so we get a camping site and spend some time cleaning and organizing the van before having a cozy dinner and conking out. In the morning, the gloom is beginning to burn off a bit, so we take a hike along McDonald Creek, which is awfully big and fast moving for a creek. The scenery is beautiful, the water is this icy blue green, rushing past and dark craggy mountains loom up ahead, shrouded in theatrical mist. We get drizzled on a bit, but don’t mind much in our raincoats. We even come across this gorgeous and nonchalant buck, zigzagging his way lazily across the trail and nibbling at the lush moss. He paws at it with one hoof and looks at us warily for a moment before bending to his knees to resume his vigorous snacking.

After this hike we still feel like we’ve got a little energy left, so we decide to hit one more little mile loop nearby, but after walking a half a mile or so, it begins POURING, and I mean POURING. Our legs are soaked through and we’re worried about the contents of our backpacks, so we decide to turn back and promptly get lost-ish and end up wandering around in the rain for longer than we’d like.

Our next stop is Missoula, a town that’s come highly recommended to us and where Weyaka, a family friend and basically Tressa's fairy Godmother, lives. The weather is still weird and gloomy, so we’re glad to have a cozy place where we feel incredibly at home to hang out and pet three quirky kitties.  In Missoula we visit a farmers market, spend some time shopping with Weyaka, her man, and his daughter at an adorable boutique, do our usual wandering, coffee shop and jogging routine, check out the space where Weyaka is setting up her own fabulous bohemian boutique and chat with her about what’s it’s like to be a Californian creative living in Montana for love. We feel like our batteries have been recharged when we leave Missoula on Monday, headed for Billings.

Billings is the biggest “city” in Montana, but it’s hazy, small and kind of meth-y We see a band called Geographer play at a cool little venue that has some alternative looking people in it and really enjoy the music. It’s fun to go out and try and pretend we’re real youths and not just old ladies in disguise. In the morning, we have breakfast at McCormick’s Café, “where locals eat” and walk around a bit. It’s kind of a weird place, and we wonder if there’s a better part of town we should be in. We make the mistake of trying to get Mexican food in Montana, the first place where someone responds to Tressa's request for a vegetarian burrito by saying, “What?” They concede to give her a burrito with everything but the meat and somehow she ends up eating "an $8 bean and cheese burrito that tastes like bitter, bitter disappointment."

Anyway, instead of heading to North Dakota, we’ve decided to dip down into Wyoming first before heading further East. Wish us luck seeing some dope wildlife.

Tressa & Kelsey

Check out our space!

Yesterday we took a second before take off to film a little video tour of our renovated van space. Things got a little weird but that's to be expected, right? Check it out here:



Our Trevolta campaign has officially ended, and we wanted to thank Camlow Cellars, Aaron & Cheri Fessenden, Farra Ferrere, and Sandi Bowen for our last donations! A few people have mentioned still wanting to donate although the Trevolta funding expired, so maybe we'll look into setting up a Paypal donation button and just keep track of the rewards ourselves, but that's a project for another day.

Writing to you all from Ashland, Oregon and considering checking out Crater Lake today and possibly staying there or heading up to Eugene before hitting Portland.

Smooches!

Tressa & Kelsey

Pieces of home.

It's interesting being on the very cusp of this grand adventure, holding in our minds the questions of home through all our preparations, and being in some ways aware of the things that seem important to have in our mobile dwelling during the the duration of the journey. Do these things signal to us what the ingredients for a new home are for us? Not the obvious things — clothing, food, toiletries — but the little things we could have left but didn't. A small succulent plant, bright new handmade curtains, a few novels, a dream book, a ball of yarn and a pair of circular needles, face paint, a polar bear hat, scented candles...

In spite of our desire to be minimal and functional, to pare down to the bare necessities, we held onto these things, found places for them in our tiny living space. In some ways these comforts seem necessary. They are markers of identity, particulars that make us feel human and individual, and they will make our rusty '91 Chevy feel like home.

Pet Portraits & Progress

Yesterday we met up with Tressa's aunt Sis, who donated to our trip and chose the custom reward option in order to get some portraits of her cat, Lunita AKA Little One. Since we were going to spending some time hanging out with her and Lunita at her home, we thought we'd use the opportunity to talk to her about home to give us some practice asking questions and having the conversations we're setting out to have. We've been thinking about some questions to ask people, but we also don't want our conversations to feel like interviews, so that's going to take some work to get the hang of. Luckily Lunita is goofy and adorable and Sis was gracious about answering our awkwardly phrased questions candidly and openly.

 We are forever grateful to Evan, who has been spending most of his life under our van looking over every last detail we definitely would have missed. We've made a ton of progress but still have to bleed the brake system, fix our cigarette lighter, change the oil, flush the radiator, try and find and install a door panel, finish building our bed frame, finish resurfacing our counter top, fix two of our cabinets, get our cooler, an extra gas jug, a water jug, make a sunroof cover and sew some cute curtains as a finishing touch. All that in four days!



Huge thank yous to Anne & Craig Campbell, Wendy Shelton and Sishawna Fessenden for donating! Thank you to Abbey Carpet of SF for the carpet remnant, thank you to Twin Palms Ranch for letting us park our van while we work on it and to Tressa's dad for lending us a billion tools, and thank you to our boys for all their help!


Four days until takeoff!

Kelsey & Tressa

To-Do Lists & Tinkering

As time goes on, our to-do list keeps on growing, but so does our excitement! Today, Tressa and her pops spent some time poking around in the van to make a more comprehensive list of what needs to get done to make our vehicle a cozy and safe home. We're planning on resurfacing the counter top and bed, changing the bracing on the bed to make storing things underneath it more accessible, building some new shelves, looking for a new front door panel, getting a tool box set up, making a new curtain... We'll have to get a mattress, camp stove, propane, a sturdy cooler, water tank, storage containers, solar chargers... The list goes on!

These iPhone photos are definitely not Kelsey-approved but give you an idea of the interior.

Most of the preparations will get started in earnest in late May when Kelsey comes back to Sonoma County from school, but we have also been spending some time thinking about the questions we're exploring on our journey, doing a little pre-writing and thinking about what how to approach documenting what we discuss with people along the way.

We're thinking it'd be fun to test the waters at home before we head out, so let us know if you'd be open to showing us what home means to you and being our guinea pig in late May or early June!

Finally, thanks SO MUCH to everyone who has contributed to our travel fund! Huge thank yous to Ted Judah, Ralitza Benzzo, Dan Boyle, Jaw Blake, Gary Lek and Robyn Hunter! Please continue to help support us by sharing our project or donating to our Trevolta trip — we'll be sending our backers some fun incentives and you're always welcome to get creative and think up your own.


Hugs!

Tressa & Kelsey