When we started traveling we had so many places on our list that we wanted to see, there was an actual list, in a notebook. Now that it has been a little over two years on the road and living in our fifth wheel we rarely bust out that notebook. Initially we thought that everything had to be so planned out, reservations months in advance and jobs lined up for Korey months in advance, but that ended roughly 3 months in when we learned to relax and enjoy the journey and not have it planned to the hour. Now we feel comfortable sleeping at a truck stop instead of getting reservations in an RV park for a quick one night stop. Honestly we both sleep really well with the hum of the semi truck generators all around.

As I write this we are 27 states into our journey and still have no end date in sight. There are a handful of states that we have stayed in multiple times, even RV parks with more than one stop. The list we initially started with all the places we wanted to see did not even come close to the amazing places we have actually been. And honestly, most of the places we have loved the most were either not in this “list” or we had never even heard of the place… Like where we have been this summer in West Yellowstone Montana. Not sure about Korey but I had never even heard of this little town. Most of the little towns I had not previously heard of have actually ended up being my favorite stops 🙂

Traveling together has been amazing on so many levels. We have enjoyed this crazy journey, even when he black tank valve broke or our shower door shattered, or the fridge died! Still, the best adventure and we both feel so blessed to get to live this lifestyle. We have been able to make some really great friends on the road who share the same excitement of living on the road and also share the urge to try something new.

One thing that Korey has always wanted to do was to go white water rafting. I (Michelle) have always been so scared to try it. Something about an activity that requires both a life jacket and a helmet freaked me out. BUT, I sucked it up and gave it a shot because Korey wanted to do it so badly and I had the BEST time! I cannot wait to do it again!

We chose to go here in Montana, just about an hour north of us in Big Sky. We went with 4 friends, 2 of them had rafted before and 2 hadn’t so I had at least one other nervous friend on this trip 😉 Those nerves went away about 15 minutes into the trip though, what a FUN time!! They spent time explaining the different commands at the beginning and taking us down smaller rapids so we could get the feel of it. This was really helpful in easing the nerves too, they start you out slow. Our trip was roughly 2 hours, maybe a tad longer than that? It was 7 miles on the Gallatin River. The outside temp was in the low 70s so us girls decided to wear the rain jackets to try to stay a little warm with the cold river soaking us.

No one fell out of the boat, thankfully. We did see 2 others go overboard and we were thankful it wasn’t us. What did happen that was pretty funny though was we got stuck. We did not paddle enough to turn to go around a large rock in the middle of the river and we got stuck, fully centered on top of the rock. All of us had to cram ourselves up in the front of the raft and rock it until we were off and moving again. There wasn’t time to be scared that one of us could fall out when we were laughing so hard at the fact that we were stuck! The real bummer about this is that it happened in an area where there wasn’t a photographer to catch it.

Korey was so excited, loved every second and loved that he got to check this off of his bucket list! That is what this kind of lifestyle can bring and it warms my heart to see him loving life so much! We were both all smiles the rest of the day and could not stop talking about how much fun we had and how we cannot wait to do it again. We are returning to West Yellowstone next summer and decided we will go a little earlier in the year so that we can get bigger rapids, you know….now that we are pro’s 😉

Next up on Korey’s adventure bucket list is to sky dive. I will NOT be doing this with him, I will instead hang out on the ground and take pictures. He plans to do this next summer in Bozeman with a friend here in Montana who is also coming back next summer for the same workamper job. We leave West Yellowstone in about 10 days. I have so much to share here so I will be breaking out different areas of the park to share pics and what we saw while spending our summer in Yellowstone…coming soon!