5 acres hosted by Stefanie W.
The Refuge is the product of two dreamers who found each other and chose to share an unconventional life together. We each had “good jobs” in the 9-to-5 world. We each lived in comfortable traditional homes. We were each dissatisfied and searching for some momentous change that we didn’t know how to define.
Stef was overwhelmed by the stresses of her job, burned out, and feeling too low to come up with inspiration for a better life. So she took three years to save as much money as possible before leaving her career to travel around the world.
Roaming freely around the world enabled Stef to release years of pent up stress, and to regain hope and a positive outlook for the future. Upon returning home, inspiration struck again, and she decided to sell most of her possessions to live full-time in a motorhome, after adopting two sugar glider joeys.
Then shortly after Stef hit the road, Dave and his menagerie rolled into the picture. We both love animals of all shapes and sizes, but it was our shared love of sugar gliders (the marsupial version of flying squirrels) that brought us together.
Dave had already left his 9-to-5 behind and was on the road in his extra-large 5th wheel trailer (sharing the home with his two beloved border collies and five sugar gliders) when he noticed Stef talking about her RV adventure in an online forum dedicated to gliders.
He struck up an email conversation about Stef’s travels, and only six weeks later we had grown close enough through our correspondence that Dave decided to leave his gold mining operation behind in the desert, and drive 1,500+ miles to be with Stef in the mountain campground where she was working.
We’ve been together ever since, caravanning our two big rigs up and down the west coast boondocking (free camping on public lands) in beautiful remote locations.
Then at the end of 2017, Stef unexpectedly sold the condo that she had rented to a friend when she moved into the motorhome. With the proceeds from that sale, the longtime dream of owning remote property became a very real possibility. And so begins the tale of The Refuge...
