A big “What’s up m’nerds!” from the red rocks and mystical vortexes of the Arizona desert aka Sedona. We’ve been here just shy of a week now and are really digging the epic vibes here man. Solid.

Seriously though, Sedona is magnificent and beautiful and I’ll share some pics and stuff from our trip here from Santa Fe in a second. But our biggest highlight first…

Since starting our adventure/journey/alternative lifestyle/mobile living/homeless crusade… call it what you will. Since embarking on Operation Tally-Ho we’ve been loving discovering and reading other “RV blogs” (no not everyone has an RV per se but you get the point). It’s a bit like the Matrix or one of those movies where you realize there’s this whole other reality of civilization out there living among “us”. Ok so it’s really not that sinister or anything but there is this segment of folk that have picked up their roots and taken to a life on the road.

We initially thought that most RV’ers and such were typically going to be older retired people that had worked their entire lives so they could spend their golden years travelling. Not so not so. I mean of course there are the retiree set (and they’re awesome) but there’s also other groups.

I’m not talking about the people you see living under a bridge in complete squalor in rigs that probably would fall apart if they moved, no, I speak of a group of not retired, not mega rich, not on vacation, modern day nomads that have chosen a different design of lifestyle than what would be considered “normal”. So back to the point.

We love reading blogs about other nomads adventures, travels, thoughts, technical dabblings, rig setups, storage ideas, cool gadget installs… you name it. It’s a cool community of people doing something a bit untraditional and it’s fun following along and being a part of it and hopefully contributing something to the conversation ourselves. So anyways, a young couple who write a blog we follow and have exchanged comments with over the months just happened to be in Sedona when we came into town. Rad.

They already had a boondocking spot lined up just out of town on one of the many national forest service roads around Sedona (actually from the recommendation of yet another fulltimer/blogger who we’d end up meeting also). They suggested we meet them there which of course we agreed to so it was set. We pulled in and realized our RV’s were almost identical size and style. Awwww, I feel a new romantic vehicle comedy in the making, “When Dolly met Arvie”. Someone call Billy Crystal.

Anyways. It was basically just super awesome getting to meet and hang out with them for a few days. Yair and Ayo are a super friendly, outgoing, fun couple living their own road adventure in their RV, Arvie, and also (of course) keeping a blog about it. We had such a great time getting to know them (pics and details coming in our next post about our stay here) and can’t wait to see them again and hopefully meet up with other blogger/nomads in the future.

We actually didn’t have to wait long to meet yet another fulltime RV’er and blogger as the very next day they introduced us to Diana (and her travel partner Phil). Diana had been the one to give them the info on our camping spot and she was actually staying just 1 turnoff up the dirt road. Go figure. Diana has been fulltiming for 12 years!!! What the What? She too keeps a blog of her adventures on the road. Diana has tons of knowledge of life on the road and was such a sweet person. It was neat to meet her and also get a tour of her trailer. Thanks Diana!!!

It’s exciting and cool to travel and see the country and something we’ll obviously never forget, but at the end of the day it’s just as exciting and cool to meet new people, make new friends, and develop new relationships with people we would have probably otherwise never have met.

On the way to Sedona from Santa Fe we stopped for a half day to check out the Petrified Forest National Park. Part of the park was an area called the painted desert and was really pretty. You couldn’t walk around it which was too bad but there were numerous turnouts around the rim (it was kind of a canyon) to take the obligatory pictures (which of course we did). You basically drive through the park and then they have turnouts and some small walks that take you through the areas. Not ideal in my book as I’d rather explore an area on my own but it is what it is and it was kinda cool to see nonetheless.

The petrified wood was surprisingly pretty cool (as were the psychedelic lizards). The insides (the trees not the lizards) were all crystals and rock but they were clearly trees on the outside and incredible to think they were from an area that was once tropical – when the landmasses of the Earth were all one (that is if you believe in that whole evolution thing…if not, it’s crazy and funky cool how “insert diety here” decided to bury a bunch of rock trees in the desert…either way, it’s nifty). I’ll post some of our pics below.

There were also a bunch of petroglyphs on rocks throughout the park. Bree made a collage of some of our pics of those. Now I realize most of you aren’t scientists and won’t be able to tell the difference but as a little Operation Tally Ho game day challenge we threw in a couple of fake pics. See if you can spot them. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t. They pretty much look like the real thing. Recognize.

Stay tuned for our upcoming Sedona post with more pics and fun times with our new blogging/RV friends.

Until then.

Tally ho…

vortexing,
Matt