MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Summer 2019

59 “We hung out in the southwest last fall,” says John. ”Sedona, Tucson, Texas and then, through January until spring, we were in the Carolinas, Tennessee and Florida quite a bit. We kind of just check out Trailforks, and see where to go.” So what’s next? “The future is west,” says Kim. “We wanna go to the Grand Canyon, we wanna go to Yosemite.” “I hope for the fall that we’ll head west again and do the Yukon tour and then take Highway 1 south,” says John. And while they plan to spend the next couple of years roaming the continent, there are also plans to settle down again somewhere. Sometime. “Selling it all was a risk,” says John. “It takes a different mindset.” “We took a little bit of a cut, but we can live sustainably,” says Kim. “We simplified, but we’ll both work again. We’re going tiny next time we buy a house; maybe a container.” And as they drive off into the sunset (currently heading west to see their son), the smiles on their faces are self-explanatory; selling it all was one of the best decisions of their lives. “When the sky is blue and the mountains are calling, we have to pinch ourselves,” muses John. “We probably questioned each other a few times when we first got in there… But you figure it out. It all settles in.”