We are excited to announce a new sponsor: Magnum Energy (Inverters). They hooked us up with a CSW 2012 pure sine wave inverter. Now we'll have no trouble keeping out batteries charged during trips!

Another day, working on the drawer slides after work...

Here's a link to the bearings I used:
Here's the link to the bearings: http://amzn.to/1YXTC9f
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It's been a long 4-6 months looking for a remote job! It has been an uphill battle with lots of mental and emotional struggles. The hiring/selection process of some companies has been extremely frustrating, but it all paid off! After over 100 applications, I landed a fantastic remote job.

​Here are some of the things I wish I had known before searching for a remote position.

Get HAM license - CHECK!

48 days to launch. Woot.

Wow, things are really starting to move fast. We plan to be on the road in the next 50 days. We have a mobile job, we put in our 2 week's notice, and our to-do list is rapidly shrinking. This dream is actually going to happen!

We can't believe it's already been a year since we started the More We Explore. It has been a VERY unexpected journey so far. At times we've been frustrated that our plans for becoming full-time RVers haven't been coming together as quickly as we'd hoped. However, when we stop and think about all the happenings of the last year w're reminded of all the wonderful things in our lives and how far we've really come.

The day we sold our house was a happy day! No more mowing the lawn and no more heating or cooling all that superfluous square footage. We've been able to talk to people living the minimalists lifestyle and learn from them. These conversations helped us downsized our personal possessions by about 95%. Tess is getting more and more comfortable on a mountain bike and that's opened up all kinds of new adventures for us. We backpacked a 50 miler in Zion National Park, and a 90 miler through the Wind Rivers Mountain Range. We had our first real packrafting trip. We spent more hours RV shopping than we can count. During the long months of RV shopping, we learned a ton and we're glad we had all that time. We found our van Fred, eventually our Airstream and we've been hard at work getting both set up for full-time living. In the midst of all this preparing and exploring we've continued to hold down our full time jobs, hunt for mobile ones, and share the adventure with you via youtube and our website. 

We've met lots of people who inspire us in the last year, both online and on our many adventures. We look forward to continuing these new friendships and we hope to make many more. What have you explored this last year? What will you explore in the coming one?

We were recently interviewed by mobilehomepartsstore.com, along with 18 other RVers. Head on over to their website to read the full article. Here are our responses:

How much should a young couple spend on their first RV?This depends entirely on their financial situation. In my opinion, you should spend no more than 80% of your savings on an RV. Also, I don’t believe anyone should finance an RV.
This is pretty personal, and it depends entirely on your financial situation. In our opinion, some people shouldn’t spend more than $5k, and others can afford whatever they want. We have a lot of friends who finance everything: TV, couch, vehicles, etc. We are not a fan of this mentality. We realize you can write off your interest as a second mortgage for your RV, but we don’t finance anything, including our RV. We’ve never had a car loan, and we have always paid cash for our vehicles (including our tow rig and our Airstream).
Sure, it means you may have to wait a little while ‘till you can afford it, but it’ll be worth it. We all want to be on the road ASAP, and there’s a certain excitement to throwing caution to the wind and going for it, but we always recommend being financially prepared first. There’s no need to add financial stress to your RV experience. Buy what you can afford, or save ‘till you can afford what you want.
We’re Millenials, so we can relate to the desire to have new and shiny stuff we can’t afford. A lot of Millenials these days want instant gratification: we want what our parents have without realizing it took them 30-40 years to get there. Who wouldn’t want a big $200-300k diesel pusher? As a young, first time RVer, with less disposable income than most retirees, buy used! RVs depreciate faster than just about any other purchase. Buying used can save you a huge amount of money. Most people use their RV about 4 weekends out of the year, so “used” models are almost new. You can save $10k-50k buying a year or two used. Plus, used RVs usually have all the bugs worked out. New RVs have more issues than used ones. Don’t be surprised for your brand new RV to spend 3-4 months in the shop the first year, getting all the bugs worked out from the warranty. If you buy an RV that’s a year or two or 10 old, the bugs will already have been fixed under warranty.
The $300k rig can come one day, but give it time.
$3000-8000 can get you an extremely nice, used trailer that’ll serve you well for years to come. Plus, you never know what type of RV you’re going to want in 5 years, so save that money once you decide what you really want.
Assuming they already have an RV, how much money should a young couple save up before embarking on their fulltime RV adventure?This depends as well, but I think it’d be good if people had $20-30k in the bank before embarking. That reflects my personal views of finance.
However, this is extremely personal. We are of the mentality of having a solid savings account before heading off. Stuff is going to come up: you’ll need new tires, or a new transmission, or you’ll decide you want a huge battery bank with solar and a monster inverter. You’ll want some money socked away to handle these issues as they arrive. A lot of young RVers are living paycheck to paycheck, and they have a tough time making their savings account grow. While that can be fun and exciting (and it certainly works for some people), we recommend having a solid amount of money in savings first. We didn’t feel comfortable leaving until we had $20k+ in our savings. What if you’re unemployed for a few months? What if something big goes out? We think it’s better to be prepared. There’s no one dollar amount that’s going to be ideal for everyone, but we think it’d be smart to have 6-12 months of living expenses in your savings account before heading off.
ABOUT THE AUTHORSteve and Tess, from The More We Explore, love the outdoors, exploring, living simply, and have a YouTube video series of their journey as they prepare to live in their Airstream Full-time.  

• The More We Explore website
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Packrafting Canyonlands - Hitting all 4 districts of Canyonlands in one trip.This was our first true packrafting trip. We were following the footsteps of a fellow adventurer and hero of ours, Yans. This will probably be the last time we retrace his steps; the man is intense!

Canyonlands National Park is divided into 4 districts or regions:

• Island in the Sky
• The Needles District
• The Maze District
• The rivers (the Colorado River and the Green River)

We had visited each of these districts separately, but we were excited to link them all together in one epic trip. The only way to visit all 4 districts in one day is via packraft. 

Canyonlands is a beautiful, rugged landscape. It's an extremely remote and harsh desert, especially in the Needles and Maze districts. There are deadly rapids and mellow rivers. One amazing feature of this area are the desert springs, which make backcountry travel possible. You need to know your route well ahead of time, as well as whether the springs are flowing or not, or you can easily get dehydrated and die out here. This is not a forgiving landscape. Not only is heat a danger, but there are cliffs, rattlesnakes, and a maze of narrow canyons that have claimed the lives of more than one adventurer due to getting lost in the maze.

Our friend Adam joined us on the trip, and he was fantastic company. We learned a lot, struggled a lot, and overall accomplished a lot. The enjoyment of this trip would rate a 2/10; it's definitely type 2 fun, like running a marathon: we're so glad we did it, and we proved to ourselves that we can do difficult things, but it wasn't very fun in every moment. Nevertheless, this is our story.

Are we going to packraft again? Absolutely! Will we be repeating this trip again? Probably NOT! In the closing words of Adam, our hiking companion, it was a million dollar experience that we wouldn't pay a dime to repeat.