"The Leap"

For our first travel post on Life Beyond the Leap, we would be remiss if we didn’t give a nod to our previous travel blog, Tiny Trailer Trips.

Our travel adventures began 7 years ago when we would escape for tiny trips up and down the coast of California in our 10-foot wooden teardrop “Edie”.  We had so many amazing weekend getaways from Mendocino to Santa Barbara to Tahoe and beyond. The most memorable experience, however, was when Edie caught the eye of a video producer in LA which landed us in a Subaru commercial that ran on HGTV for a couple of years.  Our teardrop was shipped, and we were flown to Boulder Colorado where we shot several scenes from sunrise to sunset, ate amazing food and were treated like celebrities for a day.  A one-of-a-kind experience brought about from our passion for adventure and the unique look of our tiny teardrop.

After Edie came Poppy – our 13-foot fiberglass U-Haul camper.  We continued our weekend excursions with Poppy, made a few upgrades and even toyed with the idea of taking her on a cross country trip, only one problem, no bathroom, and for Kandace that wasn’t going to fly.  Our most memorable experience with Poppy is when COVID shut down Kandace’s salon for the third time and my offices were still off limits, so we took a three-week “work from home” aka “work from our camper” trip through Northern California and Southern Oregon.  After being cooped up in our condo for several months, this trip eventually became the foreshadowing of a much bigger adventure that was brewing in our hearts and in our souls……

Then came “Olive” and “The Leap”.  It was the summer of 2021, we sold Poppy and upgraded to a 20-foot vintage 1965 Airstream Globe Trotter we named Olive.  We brought her home in July, fixed her up and got her ready for the road.  The next series of unforgettable events unfolded over a 6-month span. Kandace sold her condo, we downsized, moved to a 450 square foot tiny house, Kandace sold her salon, then three months later I quit my job and we embarked on an epic road trip that transformed into our “Life Beyond the Leap”.

Those stories still live on at tinytrailertrips.com and our future posts here will consist of our time in Southeast Asia (Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand), how we made the move to Portugal, and our travels throughout Europe and beyond…….. come along for the ride and hit subscribe :-)