7.20.16 ::: Paddling the Wild Mile.

While our river is steadily evolving from the "Middle Fork of the Flathead" into its late summer form of the "Mellow Fork of the Flatwater", there are still white water thrills to be had just south of us. In the sleepy lakeside hamlet of Bigfork, Montana, lies a little stretch of the Swan River that is known as the Wild Mile. It starts just below the Bigfork Dam and runs for exactly a mile downstream before emptying out into the peaceful Bigfork Marina.

At high water, the section is considered a Class V according to American Whitewater (classes range from I-VI, V being pretty hairy and consequential, and VI being un-runnable). As the water gets lower, the section starts to run only on Wednesday evenings, when the dam has their scheduled release from 5 to 9 PM (a group of local whitewater enthusiasts actually lobbied for this release day and time to be able to kayak it!)

A week and a half ago, we got word that the water had dipped so low that the next release would likely be the last of the season. So, being the adventure-seekers we are, we grabbed our paddles, spread the word to anyone else that might be interested, packed Babou the boat into our Samurai, and high-tailed it down to Bigfork after work on a beautiful Wednesday evening.

Nothing gets the heart rate going like an official warning sign!

Babou is a great boat. She's a Hyside Mini-Max, measuring roughly 10'6" by 5' and weighing only 67 pounds of high strength, totally bomber Hypalon rubber. She'll fire up nearly anything, and is a breeze to inflate, carry, and paddle. You should buy one.

The one-person-carry is an enormous bonus to this boat. Its especially fun at park-and-play spots like play waves or solitary waterfalls.

We had some coworkers along in a larger (and eventually overladen) boat. It was nice to have another boat there in case something went wrong. We also saw a solid amount of kayak traffic, and got some good beta (local info) about a dangerous tree on the lower half of the run. Thanks, locals!

Chels was blindly shooting from chest mounted GoPro, but the results aren't bad. There's a handful of continuous sections of pour-overs and holes that make for good fun at this level.

The water being so low (944 cfs), we can't responsibly say that it was Class V when we ran it. I would classify it as bouncy class III with a few very forgiving class IV- drops peppered in between. However, it was a lot of intense and non-stop fun in warmer water than we're used to (the section we raft on the Middle Fork of the Flathead is snow and glacier melt…so it's quite chilly!).

Half of the fun of hiking and re-running a drop is overanalyzing the line!

On our second of three runs we invited our friend Amber into the boat. Towards the end of the run we hiked back up the river to run a ledge drop that was blocked off by the aforementioned tree that the locals warned us about. Made for good fun, and we got a decent little surf out of it as well.

Chels' compass pointing the way.

Surfin' Safari!

Surfing is good for the soul, even if the surf is small and uneventful. the ledge behind me was more fun to drop than it looked like. I wish I had the wherewithal earlier this season to boat this section at ~1500 cfs.

No rafting adventure is complete without a dirtbag shuttle - we must have crammed 10+ people into this poor little Tacoma. All in all, a great day on the river. Stay tuned for more blog posts, we're aiming for an update every Monday. Thanks for reading, now go have your own adventure!

7.25.16 ::: Hiking Grinnell Glacier.

I know in my last post (in February…sorry!) I promised I'd be better about updating the blog. Well, we can all see how successful that followthrough was.

Suffice it to say, family tragedy and loss has a way of derailing even the most steadfast of plans. Shortly after my sister's passing in January, we knew we needed to get to Idaho to be with my father, who was slowly succumbing to the long-term effects of the same brain cancer my sister passed away from. We spent several months in Idaho being with him before he passed away at the end of April. In the midst of all of this, we secured jobs as raft guides in northern Montana and tentatively planned out our summer, not knowing what our timeline would ultimately end up being.

We moved up to West Glacier in April and have been slowly easing back into having a life that's our own and healing from the pain from the last six months.

Enter into the present and we've been raft-guiding on the river (Middle Fork of the Flathead) and on our rare days off together, exploring our new beautiful surroundings. (There is no better way to heal than to be out in nature every single day.)

Our most recent hike was by far the best one we've done, so I figured it was time to crawl out of our blogging hiatus and ease back into it with photos from said hike.

Despite having slept in, we jumped at the invite from our friend Kaden to hike to Grinnell Glacier. Getting a late start ended up being a blessing because we had the trail nearly to ourselves by the time we started hiking a little after 2pm.

The hike was just shy of 11 1/2 miles there and back and we finished around 9:15 pm, just before it started getting dark. The hike itself was just phenomenal and every turn stopped us in our tracks and left myself and Kaden reaching for our cameras.

Now, brace yourselves, because I'm about to inundate you with photos.

The trail started off around some lower lakes and you circled around them to start climbing the mountain up to the glacier.

Christian can be seen on the far right side overlooking the Grinnell Lake.

The Bear Grass was in full bloom and showing off for us.

Slight water crossing.

This goat was all about being the centerpiece of my photos.

This beautiful bighorn sheep was hanging out by the glacier rim

Grinnell Glacier.

Me, enjoying the sunshine and stretching in preparation for the hike down.

2.10.16 ::: An update a long time coming.

I apologize for the long delay between posts. After our time at the Christmas tree lot came to a close and we spent Christmas on the Texas coast with Christian's dad, (where I was originally catching up on the other most recent posts), we unexpectedly found ourselves hurrying up to Alabama as quickly as possible to be with my sister and the rest of my family. We arrived in Huntsville on New Years Eve and were incredibly blessed to get to spend the next two weeks with my sister before she passed away after a two year battle with brain cancer.

Currently, we are in Northwest Arkansas, spending quality time with my cousins while awaiting a part to finish installing our tiny wood stove (more on that later!). We left Alabama on January 23rd and began our slow trek west, making our first stop a 1.5 week layover in Searcy, AR (where we began our conversion). We'll be heading out of NW Arkansas shortly, taking a more southern route along the way to slowly, but surely make our way west of the Continental Divide and back into the mountains.

I still want to stick to updating about the bus from start to finish, so here's the next one in line, even though it's about two months belated…

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Because we got our kitchen from the Habitat Restore, it was a lot deeper than we needed it to be. To create better utilization of that extra counter space, we decided to build a "backsplash" storage cubby. I wanted to be able to leave things on the counter while we drive, so corralling it in with a cubby seemed like the perfect solution.

We made the cubby 7 inches deep to not interfere with the propane connection on the back of the stove. It turned out perfectly, so once we had it all lined up, we took it back outside so I could stain it to match the countertop.

I did the staining, I promise! This is Christian attaching the "L" brackets to the cubby so we can attach it to the counter.

It looks great!

The next big project we had to tackle was the bench seat. It's future home would be behind the driver's seat. Our plan was just a basic box with a lid to store stuff beneath it.

Yay, it holds a person sitting on it!

And the lid works too!

We stained the bench seat the same color, but it turned out looking a bit more exciting because of the pattern of the wood.

That's all for now. I need to dig up the rest of the photos of progress to post in the coming updates. Since we'll most likely be hitting the road tomorrow afternoon (2.11), it might be a few days before I get wifi and am able to post again, but I promise to try to better keep up with it from here on out!

If you need a solid dose of our adventures while you wait for most posts, follow our daily journey along on our Instagram! (@TravelingTuttles)

12.28.15 - More curtains, and a tool box upgrade!

Ever since we loaded up Stubbs to go to Texas, Christian had insisted we needed to upgrade to a large rolling tool chest. With five separate tool boxes clumsily taking up precious garage space, I agreed. However, we hadn't found one that fit the space in the way we needed it to…until a trip to Home Depot took us by a limited edition Husky tool chest. It was perfect. The shorter height (of the lower half only) would allow us to roll it freely beneath the bed. It was also the perfect depth and width for the space beside the bed that we wanted it to fit in.

I wouldn't let Christian have it until we'd unloaded the motorbikes and started cleaning out the garage to actually accommodate it. Thankfully, with our time dwindling at the tree lot, he made it happen and I came home with it on one of my solo shopping trips.

He was beside himself with excitement over the box. Here he is with one of our favorite lot helpers, Evian, who helped us get the motorbikes unloaded and load the tool chest.

I had finished the main "house" curtains and ran out of the patterned duck I'd used, so I ran off to a Hancock Fabrics store to see what I could find. While there, I looked for some more of the insulating fleece layer and found an even better solution that I'd known about before sewing half of the curtains: metalized mylar fleece! It was the same thickness as the stuff I'd already used, but with a special metal interior to help reflect heat.

Luckily, the remaining curtains to be done were the bedroom and the front cab area, so at least the two most important areas to keep insulated would be sewn with it.

The next curtain I set out to tackle was driver's side windows. This included the sliding windows and a triangular window beside it. I opted to do one large panel for the whole thing and add a dowel at the bottom to make rolling it up for driving an easy task.

I was very proud (and nervous) about my first non-rectangular curtain. Lucky me, when I went to fit it into place, it was perfect!

The curtain blocks every bit of light out and is easy to roll up with a dowel in the bottom.

I have plenty more to update about, but for now, I'll leave those for later to try and avoid overwhelming anyone.

Also, for those interested and or if you might know someone who is…we finally got the Craigslist listing up for the Campbulance. It breaks our heart to sell her, but with Stubbs in our lives, having two converted vehicles just isn't all that logical.

Please feel free to pass this link along: http://littlerock.craigslist.org/cto/5376795762.html

12.26.15 Curtains, bookshelf and layout changes.

Christian and I had been a little divided on what to do regarding our planned toilet room. If you remember in the original layout plans (I'll post the photo below), we had intended to do the toilet room in the center beside the living room seat/couch. However, once we lived in the bus for a while, we began to doubt whether splitting up the space that much would work for us, so we went over our other options.

In the end, we decided to move our filing cabinets and switch their spot with the toilet room after realizing the space they were taking up was the perfect size and location for our future toilet.

We took turns sitting in the space to make sure it was a comfortable size.

One of the other top projects we needed to get done for both function and necessity was curtains. Christian had pulled the insulation off of the windows that we were using as our temporary coverings, so the need became urgent and I was sent to Hobby Lobby to procure supplies.

Christian added two layers of foam insulation to the walls before putting OSB over it for some extra insulation. Now that we had a working heater, we realized how much some simple walls and insulation would help our cause.

Here's a photo of the filing cabinets moved and the toilet room walls beginning to take shape.

I spent a lot of time (and money, to be honest) at Hobby Lobby after hemming and hawing about what fabrics I wanted to us. We wanted thick insulating curtains, so in addition to choosing a nice patterned duck and the heaviest duty blackout fabric in the store, I also got some thick Thermolam to sew between the layers as insulation.

We had sold through our back stock of trees and weren't getting any more shipments, so we took advantage of the shade of the tent to set up our work space. Christian was working on the walls and then a book shelf while I began to tackle the large sewing project before me.

I did a lot of reading before I ever sewed my first seam.

As a sewing technique, I went with a suggestion from my mom, which was to sew everything inside out like a pillow case and then turn it right side out to do the finished seam on the top. I ended up only doing the two sides like this and then sewing a folded over seam on the top and bottom.

It took me all day to conquer just one curtain, but I was proudly making progress while Christian continued work on his bookshelf.

I'm extremely proud of Christian's ingenuity with his bookshelf. He had this idea to build a small shelf beneath the foot of the bed to utilize the space there. Because of wanting to be able to access the garage space when moving the motorbikes in and out, he didn't want it to be permanent. Instead, he built it on wheels and even added a spot for Loulou's litterbox that will be hidden once he puts a face on the shelf.

He also built walls for the toilet room and installed them (sorry, no photos of that…I was too busy wrestling with my sewing machine and way too much fabric).

In addition to moving the filing cabinets out, we also shuffled around the hanging space to accommodate some planned changes to the garage space (more on that later). With the filing cabinets out, it still divides the space, but not nearly as much as a walled room would have, so we're pretty happy with our decision. Honestly, we almost nixed the idea of the toilet room at all, but part of our upgrade to the bus was specifically to include a toilet, so we figured we should make it happen.

After finishing one curtain, I was both exhausted and energized. Most of the curtains would cover two windows, so it was a large amount of very thick heavy duty fabric to be working with for someone as inexperienced as I am. I kept running into issues with the machine along the way, so each curtain seemed to take longer and longer. The curtains for the living space are completely done now (I'll have to get a good photo of them later) and I'm still working on the ones for the front windows and the cab space (the odd shapes and sizes are giving me a run for my money).

They make a world of difference for light and insulation, so we're happy I went with such heavy duty materials.