Dehydrating Ground Beef

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If you can’t tell by my recent posts, I’m getting ready for summer camping and road tripping. 🙂 We have several dietary restrictions in our family so being away from the safety of our kitchen can be a challenge. Last summer, in an attempt to control food costs and not having to grocery shop, I took meat for an entire weeks work of meals. Our cooler plan failed us and the meat thawed almost immediately. We ended up throwing away some food, which is such a waste. I am determined to figure out the food thing so for Christmas I asked for a dehydrator. While we are not backpackers, dehydrated food is a great way to control costs and safely keep food for longer periods of time. Read more

A Cooler Test – Coleman vs. Ozark Trail vs. YETI

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And the winner is – YETI! Are you surprised? Me neither. We ended up purchasing a YETI but let me tell you how we got there. We really tried to buy a cheaper cooler but the universe wanted us to buy a YETI. Remember last summer when we spent over $100 on ice for our two week trip to Montana? If you would like to read about how not to pack a cooler click here to read about it. $100+ on ice alone. Plus all the food that we were continually throwing away. It’s such a waste on so many levels. Read more

Lessons Learned from Two Weeks on the Road

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Over the summer we spent two weeks on the road traveling from Southern Arizona to Northwestern Montana. If you’d like to read about our trip you can check out these posts – Great Basin National Park, Glacier National Park, & Route of the Hiawatha Mountain Bike Trail.

We had a lot of firsts on this trip. This was the first time we camped for two weeks straight, the first time we lived out of a cooler for two weeks, the first time we spent three days driving to a destination, and the first time we decided to drive to a remote destination over a holiday weekend without reservations. Overall we consider this trip a success but we did learn a few things. Read more

Cooler Fail: How Not to Pack a Cooler

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This summer we spent two weeks on the road, which is not uncommon for us, but we camped for the entire two weeks. And that means we lived out of a cooler for two weeks. I had a great food plan for our trip. Unfortunately, our cooler did not like my plan. Read more

A Beginners Thoughts on Mountain Biking

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If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you may have noticed my fairly recent love affair with mountain biking. If you are new to mountain biking or are interested in trying it out this post is for you. By no means am I an expert but I will share what I’ve learned over the past year. Last summer, I bought a mountain bike so that I could ride around the neighborhood with my kids. I never expected to love riding as much as I do. Truth be told, I have always been scared of bikes. The thought of getting on something that I could easily fall off of seemed like a terrible idea. The good news is that I no longer feel this way. In fact, I feel the opposite! Read more

Lessons From Our First Backpacking Trip

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We embarked on our first backpacking trip recently and chose White Sands National Monument as the location. One of the reasons we selected White Sands for this trip is because the backcountry sites are only 3/4 – 1 mile from the parking lot. You are walking through sand dunes but overall it is not a hard or long hike. We learned so much from this trip and I thought I would share our lessons learned in case backpacking is of interest or in case you would like to laugh at some of our silly mistakes. Read more

My Favorite Things: Summer Edition

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We just spent a week with all of our camping gear and there were several things I kept saying I loved so I thought I would make a list. These are in no particular order. Read more

Top 5 Car Travel Tips

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Last year we put 6,000 miles on our car just from travel.  The majority of those miles were from our epic road trip last summer.  As I reflected on our travels and the time we spent in the car, I came up with a list of my top car travel tips. Read more

Traveling With Dietary Restrictions

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You may or may not know that I have several dietary restrictions.  A couple years ago I was diagnosed with several food allergies, the most common being dairy, gluten and eggs.  This makes traveling complicated.  If I am being honest, it makes eating in general complicated but being away from my kitchen for any extended period of time is tough.  I have made huge strides and am determined to figure out how to travel without having a food melt down.
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Tips for planning a road trip

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I do a fair amount of research when planning a road trip.  I often drive The Husband crazy until I have all the details figured out.  I become consumed in learning all that I can about the places we are going so that I can design the perfect itinerary.  Lets call it vacation planning OCD. Read more