Once upon a time in Salida…
Well, exactly a month ago today - the Sunday of the first weekend in July, I was sitting right here. Well, maybe not exactly in the specific chair I’m in, but same location - In the heart of Cap Hill in Downtown Denver at our good friends Payton and Sarabeth’s house. But on this day a month ago was when we first “set sail” in Santiago to begin our Vanlife. (I like referring to Van things in nautical terms as if Santiago was a ship. And he definitely feels like that at times.)
With no previous knowledge on how to “do” vanlife, outside of the 2 days we spent in Moab back in March in the van, we left to start the life we’ve been manifesting and dreaming of for years.
And now, exactly a month later - we are back in Cap Hill, Denver.
What happened to Vanlyf you say? Well, nothing. Santiago is parked right down the alley from us. He’s still here. We had a wedding scheduled in Lafayette, Colorado this weekend. So we decided to come back in to the city for a few days - shoot the wedding, pick up all the packages we had shipped in over the last few weeks, and get some body maintenance done on Santiago.
So I sit here having an extreme case of deja vu, and asking myself if the experiences of the last month actually happened?? or did I somehow just stumble upon an open worm hole that’s looped and connected me back to before the start of the month??
Hard to say.
But not really, because my mind, my heart, (and my hard drive) is full of beautiful pictures, memories, new friends, and incredible experiences that happened over the last month, as well as a few extreme moments of doubt and stress - like our one-night trip back from Moab. But I wont’t talk about that here, you can listen to that story on our podcast.
When I look back on this first month I will remember it by the few different location areas we’ve lived in. We’ve spent the majority of July in and around the towns of Twin Lakes and Buena Vista with a short stint down in Salida, Colorado. (and another very, very short stint in Moab, but like I said, I’m not gonna talk about that here. LISTEN :)
But damn, did Salida impress. Those 3 or 4 days spent on some BLM land outside the city were memorable to say the least - at least in terms of the sunsets and views:
Salida provides the beautiful views of being surrounded by magnificent mountains on all sides. With summer afternoon storms always rolling in over the vast expanse of the Rockies, and the sun casting ethereal rays of light through the cracks and crevices of the cloudy ceilings above us, the views never seem to end and only progressively seemed to increase as the day waned on.
We spent the days doing yoga on the roof, watching the clouds roll over, dancing to Tame Impala in our van, climbing back up on the roof to watch the sunset views, listening to Beach House with the backdoors open as twilight came upon us, and climbing back up on the roof of the van to lay down and watch the stars. We felt like we lived a lifetime together in these moments we spent outside Salida. A life time that will never be forgotten.
The whole reason we we were in Salida in the first place instead of our usual Twin Lakes or BV homesteads was because we were figuring out what best to do with Santiago. You see, on that one-night Moab stint we actually ripped a hole through our lower turbo to intercooler hose while going over Monarch Pass (sidenote: don’t take me typing the phrase “lower turbo to intercooler hose” as knowledge that i know anything about cars. I have learned about 300% more than I knew before Vanlyf, but as Albert Einstein said, “the more you learn, the less you know.” and that definitely feels like he said it in direct reference to my car knowledge.) Salida just happened to be the city that we could coast down out of when we came down from the pass.
Unfortunately, we struck out in Salida with places that could help us in a timely manner. This was before we knew what exactly was wrong with Santiago. We just knew we couldn’t go more than 20mph uphill and we needed to be able to get to Denver in the next week and a half. But once again, Buena Vista came to the rescue in the form of Ron’s Diesel Dawg. While we had already found every other essential resource available for Vanlyf in BV, finding Ron and his diesel shop might be the best of them all. He took us in immediately and diagnosed the problem- a problem that would require us ordering a part which he so graciously let us ship to his shop since, ya know, no real address here. He also gave us a temporary fix to help us drive off the lot that consisted of silicon tape, a seat belt, more silicon tape and 3 different car clamps over the hose.
So we had to stay close to the area with Santiago’s limitations in hopes our part would arrive in time to change it out and head back to Denver for the wedding. I guess at this part in the story, you already know the ending - we got that part in time, got Santiago fixed and made it back in to Denver in plenty of time to shoot the wedding - which was a beautiful and sweet backyard affair in the parents of the bride’s backyard.
so yeah, Ron’s awesome.Let’s get back to that. and Buena Vista in general has been awesome. But more to come on that in another blog.
And staying around Twin Lakes, Colorado is absolutely amazing as well. Most of the first month of nights have been spent parked on the the sandy/rocky shorelines of the Eastern Lake of the Twin Lakes. Besides having beautiful views, great weather (most of the time) Twin Lakes is also home to the Interlaken Trail, part of the famous Colorado Trail - a trail built in 1987, that stretches 486 miles from southwest Denver to Durango, Co. Thanks Wikipedia.
We hiked parts of it with the dogs on the daily, as well as went foraging off of it, walked down to the coast and still have plans to explore it more.
We’ve even stayed here enough to meet and become friends with some of our fellow living travelers who enjoy the spot.
It’s been a full first month in Vanlyf. Even now as I sit typing trying to recap it all, my brain feels overrun with stories, memories, and people we’ve made and met.
Where do I begin to tell them all? How do I even begin to remember them all?
I’m not sure. But I know I couldn’t be where I am now, without having been where I was then. In those moments. And while I may not remember every detail of the spruce trees on the trails, or people we’ve come across, and met (like the one girl with a pet raccoon) or beautiful sunset we’ve seen (see above photos), I know that those moments are etched and woven into the fabric of my being forever and that’s all I need for now.
oh, and all the gigabites or raw photos, drone footage, and phone images that are taking up all my disc space. I have those too ;)
