Goodbye Winter and Hello Spring

Oh doesn’t it feel wonderful to say goodbye winter and hello spring for those of us in the northern hemisphere?

We have left the backwoods of Maine and found ourselves in familiar territory: Vermont State Parks.

The Maine Woods was a pretty magical place to be this winter. Although covid was still quite prevalent this past winter, we had a wonderful team that got to live and work together at our backcountry lodge. Little Lyford Lodge provided a little bubble of what almost felt like normalcy. Our team was so strong and we were so grateful to have found our way back to that chunk of the world.

We had a wonderful transition time in Vermont. After much debate and sadness, we decided not to go home this spring to see our families. At the window of time we had available to go home, the travel restrictions were still in place. Everyone has had to navigate these decisions and sometimes all options feel a lose-lose, but we did not go home. Time is arguably our most precious commodity, followed by health. Vermont gave us the time to work on a bunch of our own projects and life chores.

With that there are some things to update you on!

I gave a facelift to the site: vagabondway.net

It had been in the back of my mind to do this for a while. What really projected the energy forward was we have been trying to get a lot more focused and intentional with our money. I have been paying $9/year for basically the colors on the previous site design. Tracking all our expenses again with the google budget sheet (free and so easy to use!) I put the google sheets on my phone as an app so keeping up on them are so easy to do now. It seemed I could do away with this $9 but we will see.

But.

UPDATE: Since the time I starting drafting this newsletter this all might have been a mitake. So I don’t know yet. Might end up changing it all back.
Sometimes we don’t know things until we know things and try them out.

We’ll see what happens. Ah!

Another big task I did was explore and start using a bunch of different money saving apps I listed in this post: How I Saved Over $535 in 2 Weeks

I didn’t know about a lot of these before I started the mission, but I just knew there was stuff out there that I didn’t know about. Which side note, if you also sign up for any of the services or go to Vagabond Way and click on the Amazon icon to make a purchase you were planning to make anyway, we get a small commission at no cost difference to you. It’s one of the easiest ways to help support the site and that goes towards the annual fees for website hosting.

Then I put some efforts into our Etsy store too. This area still feels like a bit of just being a tiny blade in a big field of grass. I put up some digital prints to experiment with how those might sell.

We have had a couple of sales from strangers on the internet!

That has felt like a success. I started playing around with putting quotes on photos. I have always loved when I see inspirational quotes like this. We already pay for Adobe so this was an even better way to maximize this service. I’m excited to see where it leads.

Our viral video on youtube is still circulating with over 4.5 million views. If you are not already, I hope you will consider subscribing to our channel and hit the notification button so you can know when someone new goes up.
I finally posted THIS VIDEO from when we went diving with hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos. (!)
This is probably one of my favorite videos that Chris put together. The music is on Youtube and I love the pacing of it. Diving with hammerheads was a dream we’ve had. Watching this video I still can’t believe that was us.

So currently we end our days with tired bodies and grass clippings all over. Spring is always a glorious chaotic mess.
You know we’ll be working away in one of Vermont’s busiest parks.
Please tell me what have you been up to? What are you looking forward to this summer?

What have you been up to says this cute little muskrat?