Starting Our Canadian Departure

Arias sat in the backseat of our car crying yesterday. We waved goodbye to our Golden family and hit the road towards our next adventure.

We’ve gotten pretty used to having to say goodbye to family and friends every few months, but that never makes it any easier. Especially for the girls. They love, and they love hard. Each goodbye brings tears to their eyes. Thankfully they are young; their attention spans are short, and as soon as we start discussing the next step, their sadness is swept away by excitement.

Our Time In Golden

We had a super busy time in Golden this summer. It felt like the months just flew by, except for the weeks we were swarmed by mosquitos. Those felt like they lasted forever!

We got a lot of worked done on our home property. Remembering that we started with just the excavated land, it is impressive to see the logs where they stand now. We laid concrete, knocked down those trees, peeled them, and put them up. Then we created the bicycle spoke structure and built a systems room. We would’ve loved to get a little further, but the reality is that without our own mill, buying all the wood would have cost us a fortune. So instead we bought a mill.

While we waited for that piece of equipment to arrive, Eben and his dad built a shelter for our travel trailer. Our trailer has water damage in the one corner. With the new shelter over it we no longer have to worry about snow sitting on the roof and water making its way in.

Then those two attacked their next project. Assembling the mill and building a shelter for it. Pretty much everything requires a shelter out there. They’re expecting 10-12ft of snow this winter! While they did that I packed up our trailer and we moved everything into our shipping container to stay safely stored over winter. I feel like I was just unpacking, and now I am packing again!

Four major projects in two and a half months, pretty amazing! The rest of our home will have to wait until next summer to get built.

With big squeezes and blowing lots of kisses we said goodbye to our land folks and headed east on highway 1. Starting our Canadian departure.

Next Adventure

First St. Thomas, USVI

Sitting in our hotel room bed I am scrolling through Facebook seeing predictions of a hurricane that is forecasted to hit St Thomas, USVI. Eben is leaving us tonight and flying that way. He’s going to do some work there. Hopefully his next adventure doesn’t involve hurricane Irma.

This hotel has become our second home. Every time we fly in and out of Canada we do it via Calgary, and the Hampton Inn/Homewood Suites are the first place we stay in when we arrive, and the last Canadian place we stay in before leaving. From our hotel room we can see the airport. Tonight there will be three ladies (us) standing in the window watching as Eben’s airplane takes off. Then we will most likely all crawl into bed together and drown our sorrows with some cable tv!

Another heart breaking goodbye. But only for two weeks!

We will go stay with our friends in Beaumont for two weeks, and then the girls and I will turn around and drive back to Calgary for our flight out. Again, staying a night in our hotel! (We’ll take every opportunity we can to swim in the pool and have continental breakfast!)

We will be flying in to St. Thomas and joining Eben for a few weeks. I will be working with the Department of Tourism during our stay, promoting some of the fun island activities there.

The second biggest highlight of this trip, outside of being with Eben of course, will be seeing our island family again. We said goodbye to them in April and we have been missing them terribly. So me getting this work with the department of tourism was a very welcomed surprise twist to our “plans”.

But we can’t stay forever. Even our time there will come to an end, and before even getting there I am already trying to mentally prep for having to say goodbye to them again.

Then Todos Santos, Mexico.

Our family of four will take our bags, and the four huge bins of our boat life that we had left in St Thomas, and fly to Mexico. We will be fully loaded! Coming with an entire life in luggage. We’ll make our way to Todos Santos and start looking for a place to live.

The girls will start local school, I will homeschool in the afternoon, and we will get the ball rolling on this business of ours. With our friends we are building a three unit boutique hotel. If all goes well, fingers crossed, then we can build more. We’re hoping this turns into a thriving business, giving us a perpetual income, allowing for even more travelling!

Until the business blows up and turns into the Best Place To Stay In Todos Santos…we will enjoy living the Mexican life.

A Perk To Our Goodbyes

Although the goodbyes are heartbreaking, this nomadic life has given us friends from all around the world. And funny enough, apparently everyone wants to come and visit us in Baja! We already have friends booking their flights, and have MANY others waiting to know their vacation dates so that they can come down too.

So even though there were tears yesterday when we left Golden, and there will be tears tonight when Eben leaves…and tears again when we leave Beaumont…and more tears when we leave the USVI…LOTS OF TEARS…I think Mexico is lining up to be the location where we get the most visitors yet!

We may have to find ourselves a four bedroom house to rent to house all these visitors!