We hope you enjoy The Journey into nature. Fair Winds and Happy Travels!
.V.. (Peace) & Love,
GVR
Hippie Van Travels
Book Reviews — Monday… Super-Fun Day
Sharing the latest reviews of my debut children’s book Monday… Super-Fun Day. On Sale Now at various online book sellers such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Lybrary.com (ebook). Pick up your copy today, and help your young reader learn the days of the week with fun and adventure!
Cheers!
https://pennyespinoza.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/reviews-of-monday-super-fun-day/
Reaching That Fork in the Road
Home on the Beach — Galveston Island
Today, I’m thoroughly enjoying the first Saturday Nico has had off in about a year or so. Yes…we’ve somehow fallen back into a life of being ‘wage slaves’! –Not what we had planned when we moved to the island. Somewhere, we took a wrong turn, and…here we are. Stuck in the mud…again!
So we’re once again standing at a fork in the road that will lead us to ‘the rest of our lives’. –I rewind to 2010; back when we sold everything (save a few personal items that went to storage), bought our 71 VW Camper Van ‘Peniki’, and stepped out of the rat race.
Those were the times we cherish, to this day! We wonder how did we get burdened down again, with bills, too much stuff. Even though we no longer keep a storage, and live in less than 200 sq.ft of space. I know we live small by most folks’ need for ‘necessities’. I still feel we are ‘trapped’ in an endless…useless cycle of monotony.
On one hand, we have to earn a living. The earnings from which go to endless expenses that get us nowhere. The time I spend throughout the day is for Baby, teaching her…guiding her, cooking breakfast…lunch…dinner, cleaning, and a ton of piddle-y things that seemingly go unnoticed…for the most part. Time with Baby and Hubby, is the best part of my day. Though it isn’t always time well-enough spent.
My meaning of this, you ask? Well, often times we’ll be side by side with someone, in the same room, the same dwelling, but we are not engaged with them. We are all doing our own thing. –Like right now…this very moment: I sit writing, Baby is watching cartoons, and Nico is putting his time-in piddling around outside. We are not together, but we are still so close.
Which brings me back to our vagabond days in Peniki. We were so close in many ways–watching the world passing by at 55 mph, as we sat gazing (holding hands…Nico and I)…talking about everything we wanted to do and the things we had already done, the miles we’d covered. I’d look back at our babyyounger then, and she’d be sleeping or looking around at everything that needed to be discovered. –And, all was right with where we were, where we were headed.
Back then, if anyone had asked if I’d like to be anywhere else, I’d have truthfully, and quickly, answered “No. This is where I’ve always wanted to be! –On the road to discovery, bumping down the highway from place to place, seeing new faces, and experiencing new adventures. My family by my side.”
These days, if someone were to ask the same question, I would undoubtedly have my answer as-to which fork in the road we should take. Getting there, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. The secret of life is that one thing, something different for everyone (from City Slickers). It’s so simple, yet…it is so very difficult (to paraphrase a passage in Caroline Myss’ Anatomy of the Spirit). The fork we should choose in our road, I know, will be a very bumpy one. The journey begins today.
Many Blessings & .V..
GVR
Going Inland
So…we went inland for the Easter holiday, to see family in La Porte. Funny how we’ve blended into the weave of fellow IBC’s (Islanders by Choice) here on our Gulf Coastal Island home. Even still, we long for the water, the rocking back and forth of our sailboat, the clinking of the masts in the wind. We visited with a local marina the day after Easter, after we got back to the island from a second trip to La Porte in two days because Nico left his phone at his Mom’s the day before. I have to admit, that day was a good one: lunching with Nico’s dad (the baby’s only living Grandpa), the lolly-gag-of-a-drive back to the island, the visit to the marina…and the smell of the water…down along the slips.
My wanderlust is really getting to me these days, and I miss our sailboat more and more. If not this year, since we just can’t bring ourselves to sell our old girl, I think next year we’ll certainly be bringing our boat to her new island home. For now, Nico and I are still working on new tunes for Gypsy Vin Rose, and getting ready to start touring…again. Gigs…? Well, that’s another story. If only we could get around the little problem of ‘no sitter’ and no room for another passenger (Grandma) in the Peniki van, we’d be good to go.
For now, I continue to write songs, and work on getting my voice back after a long battle with the crud. Honing my mandolin skills, while continuing to remodel our old Gypsy Caravan and Island home Mermaid Mansion is the way I’ve been spending my days lately. That…and going to the beach almost every day, if we’re not biking to Nixi’s favorite play park, has become our Island way-of-life. I can’t complain, though I sure do miss the smell of our boat, and the cold spray of water splashing up onto the deck as we cut through the waves…sailing into the sunset.
I guess you could say I’m kind of ‘sea sick’, though in an entirely different way. I miss the water, instead of being sick from it. : ) So for now, I’ll just remember-when, and continue to work on decorating Mermaid Mansion. This week…I’m sewing new couch cushions. And I must admit, I am so very proud of the way our old caravan is ‘coming about’! Next up…sewing a custom quilt for Nixi. I have the kewlest Hippie Van fabric I bought from Ebay, which I’ll pair with a flower child sort-of print. I can hardly wait to see how it turns out! I’ll post pics for anyone who wants to see how it all comes together.
For now, I think I’ll get back to my stitch-witchery, and making my vintage trailer a comfortable island home. Cheers to all who read my scribblings, and Blessings to those of you who comment. : ) And…Fair Winds to all you salty Sailors and deep-sea Pirates out there. May you find true happiness…just over the horizon.
.V..
Cap’n Nico
Nixi Down Below in the Galley
Getting Underway
Relaxing Down Below With Some Cartoons
Sunset Sails
Me at the Helm = Bliss!
Hippie Van Travels: Camping on St. George Island
Remembering a wonderful stop along our Hippie Van Road Trip — St. George Island in the Florida panhandle!
Click on Pic for more…
Ringing in the New Year…on the Sands of Time
Memories of one New Year, spent on the Sands of Time.
Birds Flying Backwards
Wow…! What a wind we’ve had overnight and this morning! It’s gotta be making all the birds fly backwards out there. Poor little seagulls! I feel for them while I’m sitting nice and cozy-warm by my faux fireplace…in our little caravan home.
I feel rather grateful today; thinking of the things we do have and not focusing on the things we are lacking. One of which would be money: broke as a joke…we are! But, I still feel really grateful, none-the-less. You see…? My husband has started a part-time job for a time-share resort, and to us…this means ‘finally’ a steady income. As much as we are attempting to live a simpler life, society just keeps reeling us back in. And living below one’s means shouldn’t include having to struggle so badly that your selling your stuff (things you might not want to sell) in-order to keep bills current.
I have to laugh at that one: keeping the bills current. Sometimes I just don’t know which way is up! We’re damned if we do (follow the 8 to 5 robotic flow of society) and we’re damned if we don’t (attempt to live below our means in a small dwelling, whilst the ‘uppety’ folks around us frown down their noses like we’re criminals?). But it has all taught me a very valuable lesson: you can’t please everyone…so you got to please yourself, as the song also goes.
So I’m rambling, which I tend to do. But I promise I really do have a point to all this. My point is, we are thankful for what we have, though we are longing for less even-still: less of the societal hooks in our sides, less bills, less crowds of people and traffic, less work and more life (I miss my husband when he isn’t here, and this place would fall apart without him), less complications all across the board, and less nosiness from the folks that think it’s better to send my daughter to ‘traditional school’ (homeschooling looks better everyday). I could go on and on…but I won’t bore you that much!
Either way, we will continue to work on our tiny house dwelling – caravan home, and I will continue to look for a small, but secluded, plot of land to homestead; something that we will own and I can have farm animals and make my own cheese, and gather eggs from our own chickens. And…we can still be free to go camping and travel a bit in Peniki. She needs an overhaul, so we are rather forced to stay put for now. Still, she needs to be turned out to greener pastures and times…just like us. Graze off the land, as we were meant to be allowed to do; this land was God’s gift to man, and man has dominated it to his own injury. My belief…entirely.
So, even though these birds are still flying backwards in life, we are making some progress with the remodeling of our travel trailer — caravan home (one in the same). Therefore, I felt in order to keep this blog from becoming such a ‘hodge-podge’ mess of subjects, I should go ahead and start a blog dedicated to the remodeling of our vintage trailer. I hope you will follow and see what we’re up to, the many mistakes we often make (so you won’t make them too), and the little innovations we are forced to come up with…due to lack of funds. I will be posting the link or reblogging right here…soon! I invite you to take a peek into our chaotic life. You might just be inspired, but you’re sure to have a laugh or two.
Blessings & .V..
Beach Bum Scribblings
A Place To Call Home
Cozumel Caravan
Sometimes we take the smallest things for granted in life, including ‘life’ itself. But in the end, if a lesson has been learned, we find that the simpleness of living is priceless. This is what I’ve come to find since we up-rooted from my hometown of Fort Worth, and relocated to Gulf-Coastal Texas. It has been a long road to plow (as my dear Mother used to put it), but I find now that our ‘garden’ (the garden that is life) is beginning to come-in quite nicely.
It all began the day we pulled out of Jamaica Beach RV Resort; happy to be leaving the paved-but-posh confines of the best RV park on Galveston Island. (Our opinions…and we’re sticking to it!) I have to admit, our past experiences with campgrounds has left us with a bitter taste for such surroundings. JBRV would have to be an exception…if you ask me.
Either way, and even though we would miss the hot tub, laundromat, pool…playground, and the charming little Seven Seas Grocery just across the road, we remained hopeful that we’d be well-on-our-way to actually gaining a semi-permanent address on Galveston Island. The Blessings we’ve been met with since that day have been abundant. We have been at our island home ever since; being lucky to have a very understanding landlord who knows what it means to start from the bottom and work your way up. He has become somewhat of a friend since we’ve gotten to know him better. He has also taken Nico under his wing by teaching him a trade that my husband had never-before learned. It brings to mind a saying I hold close to my thoughts: We never stop learning until we are no more.
So there we were– we had a place…but not entirely. Our very understanding landlord had taken a chance on us–renting us a lot, even though I know we appeared a rogue bunch. We had made a deal that if we could rent the place ‘temporarily’, and set up Camp Peniki, we’d be hard-at-it to find a better-suited living quarters…to keep up appearances mostly, since we’d live in our old Campervan full-time if society allowed. Had it just been us (Nico and I), we would still be out there…giving in to Wanderlust. But most vandwelling souls with little n’s find out the hard way–like we have–that we really aren’t free after all when it comes to the way we are ‘allowed’ to live or be.
So…we had a limited time to find a larger place to put on our really great lot…with a priceless view of the sunset…out over the bayou. I set to work searching and combing the internet, selling everything we didn’t need in storage to raise the money for our new home. Two weeks later, with half of our belongings sold and our storage half empty, we were on our way to get our new/old place: a vintage caravan in major need of some love. Perhaps it was the way I had called and called the man to see if our ‘home’ was still there (I had already claimed it in my mind). Maybe it was the desperation in my voice (I’ve never been very subtle with my emotions). I guess I’ll never truly know. All I do know is that he (the seller) took pity on us and ended up knocking $200 bucks off the price when we showed up with cash-in-hand. It’s a very good thing too, cause without that extra money…we wouldn’t have made it back to Galveston with our new place.
I know I’m just one of the numerous folks who believes that Blessings often come in disquise. This was so true for us when it came to getting our caravan-home…home. More than 24 hours later we finally pulled into our lot with what would become a full-time remodeling job. As that day before had gone, we’d suffered a major blow out in Liberty, Texas…right in front of a church, where the pastor had just arrived, on Memorial Day weekend. Due to the holiday and the late hour, no tire shops were open anywhere near the small town. The nice preacher man Blessed us with the offering of allowing us to park our travel trailer there…safely in the church parking lot for the evening. We all headed back to my Mother-in-law’s to stay the night, with hopes that we’d find a place to buy some spare trailer tires on a holiday Sunday. It’s great to know people when you are in a desperate state to do business when everyone else is on vacation or just off work.
Thank God we have good family to help us pull heavy things our old VW Van can’t; nice folks who know Nico’s family back in his home town; nice sellers on C List who don’t mind taking less and giving more to a family who was in need of a place to call home. And even though it has been a steady stream of remodeling our badly damaged and neglected caravan, I can honestly say…”It sure is a great feeling to actually ‘own’ our home. Bought and paid for; it may be small and not so pretty to some, but to us…it’s perfect!
It’s all in how you look at things. From where I’m sitting, this place is really coming around. I’ll gladly be sharing photos of our remod when the time is right. I hope it inspires some family…somewhere, to step off the crazy train of keeping up with the Jones’s, and live within (or below) their means. We are so-very glad we made that leap!
Blessings your way, from our Vagabond family to yours!
.V.. (Peace),
GVR
G Town — Week 1 In Photos
Writing & Wanderlust 