Hourless Life

03/01/2026

Let’s go. ✈️🌍

Our 4-month visit to the United States has come to a close. We covered something like 10,400 miles from Utah to California, to Colorado, Missouri, Florida, Texas, back to Colorado, and back to Utah to store our Jeep.

It was a joy to see many of you along the way. Other than persistent Jeep issues (poor guy), our travels were super pleasurable and Eric found them relaxing. He’s a big fan of U.S. interstates after Peru 7B, which he may still have nightmares about. 😬

The preparations for Africa have been intense. It’s reminded me of 2021 when we were getting ready to begin our drive around the world. All-consuming. But at this point, we let it ride. I relish the moment we can’t do anything anymore, and anything left undone is what it is.

The photos are from yesterday and today. We left my brother’s in Denver and drove 7+ hours to the Salt Lake area. This is where we’ll put the Jeep in storage tomorrow before our first flight. We’ve been struggling to fit everything into our backpacks again, and situating everything else to store in the Jeep. 🎒

Thank you for being part of our journey.

21/12/2025

New video! 📹 This is our final two days in our Jeep in Latin America. After three and a half years calling this region home, it's time to say goodbye.

The problem is, we're parting with our home and we don't know where we're sleeping tonight...

This is it. After 3 years, 5 months driving through Latin America in our Jeep Gladiator, our family is saying goodbye to our home on wheels.

17/12/2025

Dauntless is loaded, lashed, and sealed into his container for shipment across the Atlantic Ocean. This is an uncommon route for overlanders, so we were not able to find a container buddy this time.

I’d say having a container to himself gives Dauntless room to stretch out, but we were so exacting with all the extra straps that I’m pretty sure he can’t move a centimeter.

His journey from Montevideo to Cape Town will last 32-36 days, which is pretty typical. We leave the United States in 18 days, taking a weird route, and will end up in Cape Town in time to meet the container ship.

Shipping a vehicle without being there was very complicated and I do not recommend it. It’s too much to explain here, but I’ve thought of publishing a blog article if anyone is curious.

Next YouTube video is already up for our Patreon community. For everyone else, it goes live Sunday, December 21.

17/12/2025

After 9 months, Dauntless is leaving his storage facility outside Montevideo, Uruguay. With the help of and their local team at Wave Logistics, a tow truck came to pick up Dauntless for the drive to the port.

We left him with only 1/4 tank of gas, a requirement for shipping, and the storage team gave him a wash (which he desperately needed).

We were all a little emotional seeing these photos. We miss our home! This is really happening; we’ll be reunited soon…in Africa. 🌍

11/12/2025

Last time camping in 2025. The next time we camp, we’ll be in Africa.

🌍🌍🌍

Not set up for cold weather camping in this rig. But we’ve pushed through the nights below freezing and winds from the north to get some work done at our most trusted Jeep shop here in Austin. Finally got our electrical system fixed, we think, by replacing a burnt out solenoid on the dual-battery system. Our coolant is still leaking and it’s almost definitely the head gasket. So we’ll go until we can’t go anymore, and then I guess we’ll replace the engine. But that’ll be a future visit back to the states. Something to look forward to.

This is a special place for us. It’s the state park where we first camped in our first home on wheels. We’d bought the 10-year-old RV and it was sitting in storage while we wrapped up our lives, the ones we had before full-time travel. But when a freeze warning came, we panicked, got the RV from storage, and came here to this state park to keep it warm. You would’ve laughed to see us. We had no idea what we were doing.

And now look at us. We also still don’t know what we’re doing, just about different things.

07/12/2025

What's this? It's a new video! 🎉 No one tells you that once you reach the bottom of South America, you have to drive all the way back up again!

We are doing it in one big push, 3,000 kilometers, and the regrets are real. We're tired from the wind and the cold, a bit grumpy, and wrestling with plans for the next continent.

But there are flightless birds and dinosaur fossils! We share what the conflict is about Africa, and the options on the table.

Enjoy and let us know if you have any questions.

No one tells you that once you get to the bottom of South America, you have to drive back up! This is the story of our longest drive ever.

04/12/2025

Many of us have a story of choosing the wrong place to park and camp for the night. What’s your story?

03/12/2025

Happy 9th birthday, Caspian! 🎈

🖍️If you have a birthday message for Caspian, then please leave it in a comment. Let him know how he’s touched your life, or send best wishes for his new year and overland journey through Africa!🖍️

What can we say about our amazing travel buddy? He is vivacious, precocious, and kind. He keeps us on our toes like every young boy should. He asks questions we don’t know the answers to, and doesn’t complain when we’re not sure where to sleep that night. He has a unique perspective due to his unique life. He doesn’t know a stranger.

Mommy and Daddy love you and are so thankful for you. Keep shining brightly. 🌟

21/11/2025

S T O R A G E 📦 S O L U T I O N

It’s interesting juggling our two Jeep builds. We aren’t in our stateside Jeep Wrangler enough to justify investing in unnecessary changes. It’s a much simpler setup than our Jeep Gladiator that we’re driving around the world, and that’s okay.

BUT some things are necessary for sustainable living on the road. This visit back, we realized we needed a better storage solution. We’d been using a large, soft-sided bag for camp supplies, but it was getting in the way as items shifted off-road.

We’re grateful to our long-time supporters at in Salt Lake City for upgrading us to the Alubox. It fits perfectly above our drawers without obstructing our fridge door. It holds the supplies the soft bag used to hold, but the rigid sides keep items from shifting.

✅ Overland nerd fact: have you seen the Expedition Greenland documentary? If you have, then you know the team used a TON of Aluboxes (from Equipt!) to conquer Greenland. Through white-out conditions, the boxes kept gear safe and the access hinges never failed. Quite a testament to the quality of the Alubox!

Equipt is running some epic Black Friday sales this year. Check out equipt1.com for details.

10/11/2025

🤔 Overlanding eastern U.S.

There’s this funny conversation about overland travel in the west vs. east United States. Those who prefer the west ask, “How could you be anywhere else?” While those in the east are adept at finding hidden gems and piecing together a circuitous trip so they don’t leave gravel.

West has a point. There’s nothing like it. All that public land to get lost in, much of it all to yourself if you put in a sliver of effort. Free to use, often without a permit.

The East is a sharp contrast: boundary lines right there, smaller natural areas, designated camping sites, neighbors, all for a fee.

But that’s too simplistic, so I think it’s funny. The second you leave the United States (going south), what do you think overlanding is? With few exceptions until you get to Patagonia (reminder: that requires vehicle shipping and thousands of kilometers’ drive), the land is boundary lines, small natural areas, and neighbors. You don’t get places to yourself. And even the “national parks” are not anything like what we’re spoiled to have here. They have trash; the rock faces are chipped away; the cave formations are stunted by the human touch.

So eastern United States: I love you. I think you’re beautiful. I love your lakes, trees, and haunting history. I love your state parks, with their hiking trails and clean camping sites. I love the free or low-cost camping hideaways that aren’t impossible to find, whether Kentucky or Florida.

It’s all stunningly beautiful in its own way, so don’t be afraid to try a trip.

1. Gun Creek Army Corps of Engineers campground in Illinois, on a beautiful lake.
2. Fog rising off the water beside our rough established campsite in Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky.
3. We got a hotel on the river in Chattanooga. Caspian and I walked miles across downtown to revisit this train.
4-7. Savannah, Georgia, and Skidaway Island State Park. Love the spacious sites, hiking, and proximity to the city. We’ve wanted to camp here for almost a decade, but there wasn’t enough connectivity to work from our RV at that time.
8-11. St. Augustine, Florida, and another state park we’ve always wanted to stay at. I’m a sucker for Spanish moss.

03/11/2025

How have 4 years driving across Latin America changed us?

We dig into this topic and many other reflections and lessons in this new feature from Alu-Cab: Ultimate Overland Products!

-Does our family mission statement, Love. Explore. Study. Share., still mean what it did when we wrote it?
-Were we afraid when we started, and how did we overcome our fears?
-How is Caspian different from growing up on the road and outside the U.S.?
-Is it possible to "find balance" in our chosen lifestyle?

And so many other great discussion points!

The Hourless Life story is a radical reimagining of what family life can be when conventional boundaries are replaced with global perspective

11/10/2025

Zion National Park 🏞️ With dark, ominous clouds coming our way, we entered Zion from the east entrance, stopping to hike Canyon Overlook Trail before going through the tunnel.

I seriously considered not hiking because I imagined thunder and lightning while we were out there. But lots of other people were going and it’s a short trail, so we decided to at least start out.

At the trailhead, we were confronted by a big flight of stairs. Eric and I didn’t remember them from our last visit in 2018. His mobility is a lot less now and he rarely hikes anymore because of his knees. There was no way he was doing this one. So we parted ways, Caspian and me going up. (It was sad. I miss hiking with him.)

The rain never came, just skirting around us. It’s a stunning, interesting trail, part of it on a wooden platform beside a cliff face, the view at the end, and mountain goats each time we go. I was thinking of little one-year-old Caspian on my back, which it turns out is more peaceful than an antsy, adventurous eight-year-old oblivious to things like falling.

I love Zion. In 2018, we visited all 5 Utah national parks. Zion was my favorite. Something about it just calls to me.

This was a lightning fast visit. The fridge issues in Arizona set up behind a few days. But it was worth it to be reminded of how much beauty there is to see in this region.

*note: We visited in September before the shutdown.*