Sasquatters

Sasquatters Learning the importance of sustainable living.

Excuse my grin, it’s not often I get to coddle the succulents in this planter box. We recently had the dash apart to do ...
27/11/2024

Excuse my grin, it’s not often I get to coddle the succulents in this planter box. We recently had the dash apart to do some home maintenance (post on that soon) and it meant removing my plant babies. All but the tall succulent in the top left have been with us since moving into the bus, persevering and flourishing through the many environments and changes we force upon them. In the beginning, there were many more varieties that just didn’t make it. It was trial and error and eventually these ones kept on keeping on and sort of took over, so I let them. I am obsessed with these plants!

Our 3rd stop on our National Park tour was Canyonlands. It was, of course, amazing. The wildest thing to us is how vastl...
16/10/2024

Our 3rd stop on our National Park tour was Canyonlands. It was, of course, amazing. The wildest thing to us is how vastly different the landscape is between Canyonlands and Arches National Park being that they are less than 30 miles from each other! Geological diversity is just another reason to add to the list of reasons why we love the southwest so much.

We thoroughly enjoyed the motorcycle ride to Canyonlands, riding out onto the Island In the Sky mesa almost made it seem like you were in the Midwest on flat terrain, until you reached the edge and could see you were surrounded by canyons. The couple hikes we did were also really neat, especially the Aztec Butte trail where you could see two ancestral Puebloan structures!

Canyonlands National Park might not be at the tippy top of everyone’s list, but I assure you, it should not be overlooked. Especially if you are making the trip to nearby Arches!

The spot we stayed at in Moab was so colorful at dawn and dusk 💜
08/10/2024

The spot we stayed at in Moab was so colorful at dawn and dusk 💜

Our 2nd stop on our little tour was Arches National Park, where there are over 2000 documented arches to be seen. Some a...
02/10/2024

Our 2nd stop on our little tour was Arches National Park, where there are over 2000 documented arches to be seen. Some are enormous and tower over the landscape, others are so small, they are easily missed. We only spent two days at the park but the arches we did see were really freaking cool.

When we are at places like this, we really try to wrap our minds around how the geography came to be. It took millions of years of weathering, erosion and even salt migration to form the arches and it’s so incredible to see the results.

The most well known arch, for obvious reason, is delicate arch. The hike to it was so neat, we did it twice! During the hike, there are some amazing rocks to be seen if you’re the type to notice those sorts of things, we are a little nerdy, so we definitely noticed the chert that was sprinkled around on part of the trail. After some research we learned it is specifically, chert from the Tidwell Formation and it was SO pretty! The hike also offered a sizable uphill stretch on a huge rock face and some stretches of hiking on a narrow cliff, which is always exciting. Once we reached the arch, it was so windy that it was too dangerous for people to be hanging out inside the arch, so we were able to get some photos people free, which we are always happy about!

Our week staying at the campground in Menifee really treated us well. We met some really awesome people, they led us to ...
13/09/2024

Our week staying at the campground in Menifee really treated us well. We met some really awesome people, they led us to going skydiving (more on that later), and honestly, I think the whole experience came at such a perfect time for us. We needed to be reminded to let go a bit and let what will be, be.

So, we’ve got fresh new plans that involves Dustin working about 1,800 miles away from where we were in Southern California, which obviously means another big move for us. With our 1 year wedding anniversary coming up in early October, we decided to take a couple weeks for ourselves to travel around and really cross some things off our bucket list. We are especially thrilled to be out staying on BLM land again, as that is how we envisioned traveling when we were building the bus!

We are currently visiting Bryce Canyon National Park and it is everything we dreamed of and then some! I know these next few weeks are going to fly by, so we are trying our best to slow down and enjoy every moment.

We out here at the pool!
07/09/2024

We out here at the pool!

Seeing our bus in a campground is not something we see often! We are parked up in a spot in Southern California for a we...
06/09/2024

Seeing our bus in a campground is not something we see often! We are parked up in a spot in Southern California for a week while we try to figure out what our next move is. So far it has been a real treat. It’s been so hot and so dry since we moved to California and all we’ve wanted to do is go swimming, so we will be spending time in the pool every single day until we leave!

Our beautiful mountain top spot in Anza went south really quick on Wednesday when the land owner, whom we thought we became pretty good friends with, decided he wanted to double the rent and overall went a little looney tunes on us. Naturally, that all happened after we took the front of the bus apart to replace the fan clutch. So we stayed up until midnight and got it all back together and rolled on outta there first crack of daylight. I’m INCREDIBLY pleased to announce that the bus ran fantastic and the fan was kicking on to high when it should, so our overheating issues have been resolved! Otherwise we would’ve never made it out of there with the current heat wave.

We are still reeling from the whole ordeal. It’s such poor timing for us all things considered, but once again, we will be fine and figure it all out somehow. There’s a chance we might be leaving the west coast and while that is nothing short of devastating to us, we gotta go where the opportunities are.

So for now, we are going to party in the heat with these kind campground folk, hopefully squeeze in another beautiful hike and get ready to roll out again soon!

P.S. How gorgeous are these bluegum eucalyptus trees?! 😍

A few photos from our trip to Santa Monica and Venice Beach we took recently. We really enjoyed exploring and snacking t...
03/09/2024

A few photos from our trip to Santa Monica and Venice Beach we took recently. We really enjoyed exploring and snacking the day away before heading to Inglewood for the Billy Strings show, which was absolutely incredible! Photos from the show are not mine, they are Jesse Faatz amazing photographs. I just never end up taking photo’s of my own at shows anymore.

Hey y’all, in the spirit of being 100% real, as we always aim to be, here’s a “brief” synopsis of how things have been g...
28/08/2024

Hey y’all, in the spirit of being 100% real, as we always aim to be, here’s a “brief” synopsis of how things have been going for us…again.

I, Holly, lost my job today. Due to workforce reduction. I always considered my job so secure and so perfect for us as I worked remotely. That all changed in just one zoom meeting. The company I work for has been slowly downsizing and it had not really touched my payroll department, until it did. I unfortunately, was the one with the least seniority, so got the axe. I figured it out before the call, but I am still devastated. Severance helps, but again, honestly, we moved from Northern California to Southern California with the prospect of buying and running a water well business. That fell through about a month ago.

You know what this makes me want to do? Hug and kiss our bus and appreciate the living s**t out of our lifestyle. Had we moved down here and bought a traditional house, we’d be fukt, with a capital F.

Obviously, things aren’t great, but they could be so, so much worse.

There’s a chance I can slip back into a remote job through some contacts I’ve made, and that would be awesome, but everything is very much still up in the air.

Until then, let’s have a 10am shot, regroup, have a laugh and a quick cry and press right the hell on. Things will workout, they always do. Even more so because we have chosen to live this weird, unconventional lifestyle. Thank you, !

*Dustin is filthy because he’s been working his ass off fine tuning the bus because we *maybe have someone interested in buying this beauty 😱

It felt so, so good to get out hiking. But, California has been really giving us a hard time if we are being honest. If ...
21/08/2024

It felt so, so good to get out hiking. But, California has been really giving us a hard time if we are being honest. If it weren’t utterly stunning everywhere we’ve been in this state, we might be high tailing it home right freaking now.

We’ve had so many good opportunities lined up and they’ve all fallen through due to others over promising and under delivering.

It’s hot, everything takes us an hour to get to, everything costs a small fortune once you get there, it’s hot, the repeated letdowns are discouraging, and our favorite folks are 2,488 miles away. Did I mention it’s hot? Our hike was a little spicy even though it was the coolest day so far to get out on a trail.

We are gonna continue to keep on keepin’ on, because that’s what we do? We’ve maybe got a new spot in the works, and it’s situated right outside the gates of hell! 🥵But, we are throttling our expectations, and if it falls though, back to the drawing board we go.

It’s sure been nothing short of an adventure in California!

The best boys, in arguably, the best sittin’ spot in Southern California.
19/08/2024

The best boys, in arguably, the best sittin’ spot in Southern California.

We had mentioned a while back about having some mechanical issues when we made our latest cross country trek. Below, and...
08/08/2024

We had mentioned a while back about having some mechanical issues when we made our latest cross country trek. Below, and continuing in the comments, is our short novel of what we fear the most when traveling, the not so smooth sailing.

While crossing the country to our new home in California we began experiencing some overheating issues with our new motor. This was extremely disheartening since we had just spent a significant amount of money to have it installed. It was on our third day when we hit the warm weather in Arizona that our issues began.
Holly had booked us a really cool UFO HipCamp location near Holbrook, AZ to stay for a couple days to relax from the long drive. The host assured us that his four mile dirt road was in great condition and would be easily passible in the bus. He lied. The dirt road was nothing less than a fu***ng nightmare of 3’ deep potholes and massive washboards that we spent an hour “driving” down and still had not reached the destination. To make matters worse, a light on the dashboard that we had never seen before became illuminated in bright red. ENGINE WARNING. Fortunately before leaving Pennsylvania we had purchased a BlueFire device which provides a lot of details that a typical cluster doesn’t - including on the fly code reading. The fan should kick on at 220F and it was currently reading 260F. We were overheating and immediately shut the bus off. It was 1AM and the HipCamp host was furious we weren’t coming. Like, big mad. We knew we had to get back out to the main road, so after a couple hours of letting the bus cool, we limped it to a truck stop and went to bed. The following day we narrowed down the problem to a few possible things.

The first was a partially blocked radiator. When we had purchased the bus in 2016 the front heater wasn’t working, so while the motor was being swapped, we had the shop flush the lines. One of our braided hoses had corroded and pieces of it had become lodged in the heater which wouldn’t allowing coolant to pass. We thought that maybe some of the corroded line had also worked its way into the radiator once the heater was flushed. Since there wasn’t much we could do about that while on the road, we opted to fix possible problem number two - stuck thermostats.
Our new motor came from Alaska (which is another story) and included a starter, turbo, Huey pump, gaskets, line, filters, etc., but when you swap a motor, some parts from the old motor go onto the new block. Because of this, we made the assumption that the thermostats were from the old motor and may have been stuck closed. Fortunately we were able to locate some at a Rush Truck Center while passing through Arizona, and made the swap. We eventually arrived to our location in Sacramento with no further overheating issues and settled into our new spot.

After about four months in Sacramento we were afforded a better opportunity and headed south. It wasn’t until we hit Tejon Pass, in mid 90’s outside temps, that the bus began to once again overheat. We pulled into Flying J to try and do more troubleshooting. We knew at this point we needed to focus on why the fan wasn’t kicking on when it should. Some Google searching led us to believe we may be experiencing issues with our fan clutch. We also noticed a female electrical connection was missing its male counterpart. After realizing the fan clutch had two broken wires, we got to work. We crudely spliced wires to the fan clutch and jammed the other ends into the female plug.
Upon starting the bus, the fan kicked on and our newly ran wires wrapped around the fan clutch, ripping them out of the female connector and breaking our splices. All of the pieces of the puzzle were now coming together.
When we had our new motor installed, the mechanic did not install the bracket that holds the fan clutch to the motor. At some point during our journey across the country, our fan kicked on and spun the wires around the fan clutch, ripping them out and leaving an empty female plug. The short term solution was now glaringly obvious.
We went across the street to Car Quest and purchased two 16” universal fans and a bag of zip ties. Within 20 minutes we had the fans secured to the front of the bus and wired to be always on if the bus was running. We made it over Tejon Pass, and into Temecula with no more overheating.

Moral of the story? Pull over, don’t panic, get in there and start trouble shooting, don’t give up when your solution fails, and MacGuyver the s**t outta whatever you need to get to the destination!

Desert views and critters. In order of appearance: San Jacinto Mountains, California Horned Lizard, Bucksnort Mountain, ...
23/07/2024

Desert views and critters. In order of appearance: San Jacinto Mountains, California Horned Lizard, Bucksnort Mountain, Hopi Rattlesnake (AKA danger noodle), killer sunrise that makes being up before 5am everyday worth it, Broad Necked Darkling Beetle, neat storm rolling through the valley from Palm Springs.

Just wanted to share this blooming spineless prickly pear cactus with y’all. This beauty is practically right outside ou...
08/05/2024

Just wanted to share this blooming spineless prickly pear cactus with y’all. This beauty is practically right outside our door and I feel so lucky to be able to enjoy it.

The trees we encountered at Lake Tahoe are deserving of their own post. Many of the large trees around the area are suga...
23/04/2024

The trees we encountered at Lake Tahoe are deserving of their own post. Many of the large trees around the area are sugar pine, ponderosa pine and cedar. There are others as well but these are the conifers that I was able to positively identify. I, Holly, absolutely love conifer trees and seeing so many huge, beautiful trees, was a real treat! I’ve since planned our trip to see the redwoods as soon as possible!

Fun tree facts!

Did you know that large coniferous trees like these can survive wildfires? The ponderosa pine for instance, when mature, can have bark up to 3 inches thick that protect it against fires. Some trees, like redwoods, rely on the high temperatures that wildfires provide in order for their seeds to release from their cones and to expose bare mineral on the forest floor so that seedlings can take root. These seedlings also benefit from the trees that do not survive fires, leaving open holes in the forest canopy for sunlight to be able reach them. Isn’t nature neat?

We finally made it out to Lake Tahoe and it was just as stunning as we had hoped. Our goal was to get there while there ...
23/04/2024

We finally made it out to Lake Tahoe and it was just as stunning as we had hoped. Our goal was to get there while there was still snow on the mountains, but also warm enough to hike and explore without being bundled up and last weekend provided us with just that.

Rather then starting with the hike we had planned, we ended up hiking straight up the side of Jake’s Peak first thing in morning because our drone inexplicably fell out of the sky and we needed to recover it. Tracking the drones last location led to us hiking trail-less, through sand and snow with zero traction, or brush so thick it was nearly impassable, all at about 8,000 ft elevation with what I would guess was at least a 60% grade. It’s what we now affectionately refer to as a real “huffer” of a hike. Even though we found the drone in pieces, it was hard to be upset after seeing the views that I doubt many others have seen from that perspective. It was absolutely beautiful. We spent some time admiring the view before ripping down the mountain, jumping and sliding in the sand where we could, and gently walking accross several feet of snow in other areas, trying not to break through the thin crust. We spent the remainder of the day hiking to Eagle Falls and exploring the area around Sand Harbor. We cannot wait to go back when it is warm enough to swim in the crystal clear water!

March 2nd marked 10 years that we have been together. We were so busy around that time that it wasn’t until about 7PM th...
06/04/2024

March 2nd marked 10 years that we have been together. We were so busy around that time that it wasn’t until about 7PM that we realized our milestone. We couldn’t believe it slipped both of our minds, but considering everything that was going on prior to the move, it made sense! We then decided to wait to celebrate until we were settled in California.

We’ve made so many memories together in ten years. Traveled to amazing places, hiked so many awesome trails, tried all the foods, set and accomplished countless goals, and occasionally, lived with complete reckless abandon just for the fun of it.

There’s so much that could be said about the life we’ve created together, but I’ll keep it short. Finding love is cool and all, but being able to say that the person you are in love with is also your best friend, is something extra special. Being able to be yourself, uncompromised and real each and everyday, is exactly how I want to spend the rest of my days together.

(We are endlessly trying to get nice photos together, but end up being goofs, these are todays as we head out to celebrate us)

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In 2006 @godsmack released the song Hoodoo which worked out perfectly for this hike we did in @brycecanyonnps_gov. Who knew those guys loved geology so much!? While much of the landscape is the result of millions of years of changing climates and shifts and uplifts of the Colorado Plateau, the hoodoos that stand sentry in Bryce Canyon today are largely the result of a combination of wind, water, and ice erosion. #hiking #hikingtrails #hoodoo #geology #brycecanyon #nationalpark #travel #skoolie

Took some time last weekend to stop at Moss Beach on our way to Half Moon. Big thanks to Tyler for the recommendation! #cypresshill #cypresstrees #hiking #exploremore #nature #outdoorliving #outdoors #skoolie #buslife #buslifeadventure

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What’s all this hootenanny about?

Her name is Holly, his name is Dustin, and we’re the Sasquatters! We both have a passion for the earth and all of the animals that live here. Holly is a wonderful wild life photographer and Dustin is a web developer with a B.S. in environmental science.

One weekend in 2016 we were having a few beers and decided to buy a 2003 Thomas FE school bus. We purchased plane tickets that night and flew to Florida the next morning. With zero building experience we are converting the bus into our own mobile school complete with rooftop deck, 1020w of Canadian Solar panels, rain catchment system, and composting toilet.

Once our bus build is done we plan to hit the road with our (now two) cats to teach people that sustainability doesn’t mean sacrifice. With the earth’s finite resources running out, population overshoot, and pollution making millions around the world deathly sick, it is important now more than ever to learn how we can live harmoniously in the symphony we call life.