While in Albuquerque we had the privilege of meeting a few new friends.
Chasity and her husband, Jodi, emailed me to say they were passing through Albuquerque on their way home to North Carolina and asked if we could meet up. Um, yeah! They only had a couple hours late in the day before continuing on and we spent it talking non-stop about diesel engines, life, RVing and family. We had so many things in common that we couldn’t help but hold them up. Chasity told us how she’d been trying to convince her husband to go on the road and you could see the reluctance all over his face, but I will never forget her look of excited astonishment when, after hours of chatting about how much we loved it, Jodi suddenly stated he supposed they be on the road by the end of the summer! 
I forgot to take a single photo or have them sign our road journal, but we’re pretty excited about the potential of seeing them again somewhere along the road soon.
Then there was Deona and Colin. They live in the area with their 3 boys and little girl and are at the beginning stages of transitioning into an RV. They came by the farm to say hello and pick our brains a bit about our own process, as well as check out Benny. They were such a cool, laid-back family that when they offered to show us the town, we couldn’t resist. (They’re so cool , they even brought us a car!)
They took us out to “New Mexican food” and then to Explora, a children’s science museum. Our Las Vegas membership got us in for free – gotta love that! Zeb was several years older than their oldest boy, but they all had fun regardless. Explora was such a cool place with so many awesome exhibits; definitely a favorite of Zeb’s!
Deona and Colin are thinking school bus conversion and we’re hoping by the time they’re ready to install a veggie system, we’ll be seeing them again to help with the install! I’m already looking forward to kicking back with them again, maybe as next door neighbors next time? 
After leaving the farm, we decided to stay a few more days in town. We boondocked at a local casino and spent most of our time downtown visiting the art museum, Natural History museum (also a free admission with our LV pass) and The Plaza. Downtown Albuquerque was really wonderful but doing so much in just a couple days was too much. After Albuquerque we headed south through Roswell but only got about 10 minutes of the museum before it closed (and ten minutes isn’t enough to convince us). Now we’re hanging out in near Carlsbad Caverns and planning a nice slow day of hiking and tours tomorrow. I hope.
For more photos check out the Ironwood Farm set and Albuquerque set on Flickr.
I'm Tara Wagner, life coach and creator of the Digging Deep process, where I coach women out of survival mode to recreate their lives and families.
That looks like too much fun.
I’m actually listening to the soundtrack to “500 Days of Summer” right now and so far every song, even if the lyrics don’t match EXACTLY, the music still kinda fits the fun/adventurous nature of your posts. 
I think I might read again with this soundtrack. 
I’m always very interested in ‘the reciprocals’!
And Trev would love Roswell!!
OH man! What a blast! We are headed out on the road in 2 weeks, so I hope that we can catch up with you guys, as well! We are looking at a diesel RV in the morning, so hopefully that will pan out. If it doesn’t, we’re just going to shorten the trip plans to a couple of months, and head out in our XTerra. Anyway – I can’t wait to see if paths can cross with the people I’ve learned about in the blogosphere. Who knows? I can’t wait for this adventure to begin:) Now to get this weekend’s estate sale over with;)
I am loving following you on this adventure! Oh…to be young again!
so many new experiences and friendships and such excitement and wonder. You’re lives are so rich and inspired and inspirational.
Such a good thing about homeschooled/unschooled children – they mix with all ages and stages and adults and kids and there’s never (in my experience) anything other than acceptance and understanding, and finding a common ground – although mine do go to school, in the weekends and holidays there’s a little tribe of kids here who all hang together, all ages and they just accept, the big ones help the younger, they play and have fun and we encourage that just as much as we can.