Pad Thai Ingredients

Jackson felt that the next step to having our own farm was to get a hands on education first. He applied for paid positions all over the country. The door that opened just happened to be in, what GMA named “the most beautiful spot in America” this past year. A spot we both vacationed in growing up, a place both beautiful and dear to our hearts. He’s been working on Isadore Farm in Cedar, MI – just outside of Glen Arbor, where they grow Certified Organic produce. They sell their goods at farmers markets, the local food co-op, and restaurants.

Once again, we packed up the Land Rover and headed across the county. Only this time it was on the back of a moving truck and with a baby in tow. We invited my mom to continue to live with us, and it continues to make sense. We are a family, a community, all with different gifts, talents, love, creativity and resources to bring to the table. We continue to move forward to a future working and living together.

We landed a rental home through word of mouth once we got to Glen Arbor. Our landlords understand the lifestyle we’re trying to achieve, and had a place to offer us at just the right price. Living in this beautiful place to raise our first son, with hiking out the back door and Lake MI just a few miles away, has felt a bit like a dream. We’ve been able to eat really well, in part due to the beautiful produce from the farm. All of this has been achieved on very minimal wages. The moral of the story…simplify your life, follow your heart, eat well, live well.

We were exposed to what the lifestyle out west is like, how riding a bike is commonplace and necessary, watched Jeremy in his cyclo-cross races, enjoyed the culture of the downtown, rented a historic home in the popular “North End,” lived just 17 miles from the top of the Bogus Basin – a skiing destination, and just a couple miles from a spectacular view of the Valley on top of Camelsback park. We enjoyed our beloved neighbors Peg and Harry, found a wonderful church family in The North End Collective, Rock went to her first Christmas cookie exchange (made sweet potato cookies), Jackson learned how to make Sourdough bread from scratch with a starter, and we both got Cowboy boots. Now the only thing we’re missing is an old pick up truck and a gun.

Babe, can you look where the next town on the map might be? I’ve got to pee. While we pass, we might as well top off the gas.

Well, here’s one: Christmas Valley. Maybe we’ll see some good scenery! Christmas in a Valley. There must be mountains surrounding it. Just kidding. There’s nothing there. Open desolate farm land, houses and trailers planted in the middle of nothing. How do they even get water out here? A convenient store (no gas station), a post office, and a four way stop, with streets named Vixen St. and Snowman Rd. This is weird. Its a dessert. There’s nothing Christmas about it.

Read how an agressive salesman promoted Christmas Valley to retirees from California, falsely advertising it’s appeal.

Next, we played a car game as the sun set behind the dry and flat horizon, betting length of time until we would see another car on the road. It got dark and we continued our quiet and desolate haul until reaching a town in eastern Oregon before making the final haul into Boise, ID.

Skyler loves riding in the Rover with her head out the window, but this haul seemed to be taking a toll on her. There were more shoelace strings of saliva streaking the window than usual and she was a bit anxious, whimpering little cries every now and again. I chalked it off as too much water before she got into the vehicle. At the next pit stop she threw up her bowl of food on her bed in the back. We figured she had just had enough, or maybe the elevation played into it, or she injusted some bad water.

On this cold and frosty night, we finally arrived at the rental in the North-end of Boise, with a house key and some logs for the fireplace waiting for us – as the gas and hot water was not turned on yet. We set up the air mattress and sleeping bags in the middle of the living room and emptied out what we needed from the Rover. That night, we barely slept. Skyler was pacing, crying, dry-heaving, and trying to lay down but with discomfort. At one point in the wee hours of the morning, I laid on a cold blanket in the frosty grass next to Skyler while she cried and I had this flash of the scene from “Marley and Me” when Marley roamed to the base of the tree by himself to peacefully go to sleep. I cried and then as soon as we could, called a Vet we didn’t know anything about and got Skyler in first thing.

After taking a look, he said we had 3 minutes to make a decision. Either put her down, do nothing, or give him the okay to go in and do emergency surgery, with a 50/50 success rate. “There’s no way to tell if it’s too late or not for her”, he said. Her stomach had likely flipped. He described it like a baloon. The blown up balloon is the stomach, and the end had twisted, causing nothing to be able to go in or out of it, causing great pain and slowly getting larger in size. When they went in, her stomach

was purple, like a finger that had been tied off, with no blood flow. There was a chance that the organ was already dying and would not recover even after flipping the stomach and attaching it to her side to keep it from flipping again.

God provided again. He took us to a vet in town that was willing to come in before business hours, perform emergency surgery and charge us the cheapest rate in the Valley. Not only that, but after a few days of recovery, Skyler was given a clean and miraculous bill of health. The Vet said he did one of these surgery’s on a German Shepherd just last year and the dog didn’t make it. Our St Bernard’s life is a true blessing.

The campground we stayed at outside of Crater Lake ended up being quite possibly our favorite site on this trip, also reaching our 6,000 mile mark.

Little did we know that the nite we set up was the last nite the grounds would remain open due to the changing weather. Typically, the weather in this area would have been much more harsh than we experienced.

It was foggy, damp and cold, but we were totally blessed by the previous campers supply of firewood left behind, and surprised by the heated bathrooms equipped with showers!

There was also stellar indoor/outdoor fish cleaning station available. Not even having made it to Crater Lake yet, we were in awe of the beauty of the lake and landscape on which these campgrounds sat.

The next day we packed up to go see Crater Lake, the weather began to turn, the campground closed, and as we drove into the park from the Northern Entrance, we found that after that day, the road to go completely around the lake would also be closing for the season.

Just to illustrate the type of weather they experience in this unique part of the globe, I stood on top of the hood of the Land Rover next to a stake to mark the road for the snow plows. The grace involved in the timing of our visit here was amazing.

We got to experience The Redwoods, creation’s great giants, still standing and protected today in Northern California. These are the tallest and most massive species of trees on earth. In the mid 1800′s, the redwoods covered over 2 million acres. Due to miners failing to find gold, men turned to harvesting these great trees. Not until 1918 were some of the parks established to protect the remaining trees. Redwood National Park wasn’t created until the late 60′s, and by then almost 90% of the original redwoods had already been logged.

Photos don’t due justice to the awe that they create. Capturing the size of the tress in a picture is nearly impossible. The closest we got to showing the scale of the tree is the photo below with the Land Rover next the the trees. The most recently recorded tallest standing height is 379.1 feet. These redwoods live an average of 500–700 years and a few are documented to be 2,000 years old, making them some of the longest-living organisms on earth!

If you haven’t been to the Coast Redwoods, it’s definitely something you should put on your bucket list. Stand in awe of creation and feel how small we really are.