Last year when we started this journey, one tank of diesel cost us somewhere around $80. This year, the pump shuts off at $99, and we have to slide our credit card again, for another $22 or so in fuel. Today, I just heard that prices are going up another 25 cents per gallon in the next few days.

I’m glad we’ll be workamping in Lake City Colorado during the so-called “peak driving season.” Maybe prices will stabilize after summer, when we hit the road again (one can always hope, right?). But if you’re on the road now, here are a couple of websites that can help you find the best prices in your area.

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We came across this earthen home near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. It’s under construction. We were so thrilled when we saw see a “For Sale” sign on the property. We thought “Hey, maybe it’s a sign! Is it meant to be?”

When we stopped to talk to the closest neighbor, he gave us the scoop.

The home is for sale because “Wild Bill” as he’s known by the locals, ran out of money after pouring over $1 million into it. It’s a bare shell, nothing more. It’s been on the market for over three years, and the property owners in this tidy subdivision near Williams Lake would be happy to see it blown up. They’d pay someone to bulldoze it if they could.

Looking at the sorry state of this property, one man’s earthship dream, got us thinking; maybe we don’t have enough money to be so green?

One year ago this week, we drove away from Humboldt County in a daze. We couldn’t believe that we had really pulled our sabbatical off, and year on the road seemed like an eternity. Little did we know that it would fly by seemingly as quick as a two week vacation. We have so much to say about our epic journey. But for now, let’s start with the hard numbers.

Thanks to the meticulous Quickbooks expense tracking I’ve done over the last several years, and Carol White’s Live Your Road Trip Dream book budgeting templates, I was able to put together a budget that works for us. In short: we came in under budget, and the money we’ve saved will enable us to continue to live this lifestyle for at least the next year if we choose to.

If you’d like to see the technical details, a PDF with summarized numbers is here. But if spreadsheets make you snooze, then here’s a quick summary of my numbers for the year, and some ways we saved money:

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As soon as our rig crossed the border into Colorado, my spirit felt as if I had returned home. This land just calls out to me.

From Minnesota to Maine, there are lots of beautiful places in this country that I think I could live in. But none of them feed my soul like Colorado does. I know I’d love living here. But it could be a pipe dream.

Because in Colorado, you’d never know real estate is crashing all over the country. The Rockies are the most beautiful place in the U.S., and property owners know it. They have it made. I’m not seeing reasonable prices on any pieces of land, except for the most isolated patches of non-irrigated ag fields in the plains regions.

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This journey isn’t only about choosing where to live, but how to live. Like how to use sustainable, eco friendly building construction methods that we can incorporate into our future stick home. From straw bale to earthships, there are countless, affordable options to live a less impactful life. All it takes is a little research, and a lot of elbow grease.

Before leaving New Mexico, we toured the world-renowned Earthship Institute, just outside of Taos. Earthships are built out of recycled materials like tires, and aluminum cans, and are designed to be completely off-grid. They’re a lot of work to build, but as you can see, the results are spectacular. We definitely see one in our future.

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You can’t go anywhere in New Mexico without running into another miraculous historical building or energy vortex. It’s a challenge to pick which ones to visit, but checking out this church was a must for me (the last one for a while, I swear!). Because this church isn’t just any old church, it’s a church built on miraculous dirt.

I first heard about Chimayo through a family friend, who made a pilgrimage there in the 1980s, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She headed there like so many others, in search of the holy spirit that would receive her prayers and aid in her recovery. The magic worked. She beat the cancer, and swears that the reason she’s made it into her 80s is because of her pilgrimage and the miraculous dirt she took home from Chimayo.

Last week, my friend took a bad fall and is now in a rehab hospital. When I heard this news, I decided to make my own pilgrimage to Chimayo, just north of Santa Fe, to get some more of that magic dirt to send to her.

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As real estate prices drop, we keep thinking about where and when we want to buy. As much as we like this mobile lifestyle, we do want a piece of land where we can park the rig for a while and not have to pay rent. And we’ll need something to leverage when we’re old. So there are two ways we’re thinking of approaching a purchase whenever experts say prices are at rock bottom:

Property Idea 1: Buy two separate, smaller cheaper pieces of land (around 5 acres) in different regions of the country. Say, one piece in Colorado, and one near Luckenbach. Winter in Texas, summer in Colorado.

• The advantage: Staying mobile, and keep on living an internet-based self employment lifestyle.
• The disadvantage: Fuel prices. Moving around won’t be cheap. How long can we sustain a lifestyle like this?

Property Idea 2: Throw all our eggs into one larger piece of land, say an old ranch, that backs up to BLM or Forest Service property. Park the rig, settle down for a while, and utilize that land for some kind of outdoors-based business.

• The advantage: We would have a larger piece of real estate that we could sell off little by little as we get older.
• The disadvantage: Getting tied down again. Property taxes. Ugh!

I like to get other people’s ideas about situations like this. What would you do?

When you visit New Mexico, whatever you do, don’t get New Mexican culture confused with Mexican culture. The two are very different, and the locals will let you know it. For starters, the Mexicans I know never eat Sopapillas like this one I had in Albuquerque.

But it goes deeper than the culinary differences. As a California Mexican, I always heard about New Mexicans who insisted they weren’t “Mexican,” they were “Spanish.” Even in my own neighborhood, some fair-skinned kids came from families who preferred this label. I don’t know if their parents came from New Mexico or what, but it didn’t matter; we insisted that by preferring to call themselves “Spanish,” they were in denial about their ethnicity, ashamed to be linked to the Mexican Indian blood that many western Latinos share.

It’s a complicated issue, but ultimately, whatever label we Latinos choose to use, the fact is, we all have our unique ancestral histories, some that we relate to more than others.

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Our workamping gig at Riverbend gave us the opportunity to meet so many interesting people from all over the world. Two regulars were Ann and Roger, a couple from Santa Fe.

As longtime volunteers at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, a living history museum, Ann and Roger graciously invited us to the museum’s annual “Civil War Days.”

Did you know, the Civil War was fought in New Mexico?

“On July 23, 1861, Confederate soldiers mobilized out of Texas invading the New Mexico Territory… so began the American Civil War in New Mexico, a battle lasting 12 months, leaving 1300 dead, with no territorial gains for the Confederate Army.”

Every May, the museum holds Civil War Days, when hundreds of volunteers dress in costume and hold battle re-enactments, life and culture demonstrations and more.

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I never thought living history could be so much fun. Thank you Ann and Roger, for your kind invitation and friendship.

You might have guessed by now, that I’m not the churchiest person. Spiritual, yes, churchy, no. But, as anyone born into Catholicism can tell you, once you’re in, you’re in for life. You can run away from it, but it never leaves you. Just when you least expect it, you’ll put up a velvet Last Supper painting above the TV, and stick a dashboard Jesus in your SUV.

As a recovering Catholic, I love checking out old churches. Maybe I’m subconsciously facing my fears, but the more realistic Saint statues and lit up candles they have inside, the better.

In Santa Fe, I had no shortage of Catholic churches to choose from, but the Loretto Chapel was first on my list. Briefly, the story about the Chapel’s Miraculous Staircase goes:

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