The Van Life Diaries Part 2

Tuesday we spent the day exploring Olympic National Park. We drove up to Hurricane Ridge which is an overlook to the whole park, and the Pacific Ocean. Then we drove to the Hoh Rainforest, and hiked around the Hall of Mosses and the Spruce Nature Trail. Both were incredible sights of emerald green, and in the Spruce Nature Trail, one minute you were walking through emerald green moss, and the next minute, nature opened a doorway to another room that was then covered in the most perfect fall colors I’ve ever seen.

The Hall of Mosses

After leaving the Hoh Rainforest, we drove through Forks, and onto the Quileute Indian Reservation in La Push to get to Second Beach (which really gave me a hankering to watch the Twilight movies again). There we stayed until the sunset, when we ran to the van to get more miles in toward Yosemite National Park.

Sunset at Second Beach.

When we got to Yosemite, we learned real quick there wasn’t a whole lot to do unless you have several days to spend there (we only had 1.5 days). So we stood around contemplating and arguing about what to do I had my heart set on Half Dome, but the more I thought about it, the more we agreed that a big hike wasn’t a good idea, and yet the big hikes were the only ones that interested me. We ended up seeing Yosemite Falls, and then driving around the park, looking at Half Dome from the road (but hey, it still looked awesome), and we also hiked up to the base of El Cap (we’re kind of both obsessed with El Cap ever since Alex Honnald free soloed it a few months ago).

We left Yosemite and started the trek home, knowing we wanted to spend some time in Moab. Levi says if he could only choose one place to come back to for the rest of his life, it would be Moab. I can understand that. Moab was a blast. Why it’s so fun hiking across the red rock, I’m not totally sure, but it is! We found our camping spot for Saturday night before going out and braving the CRAZY Moab sand storm (okay, not really, it was just super windy, but it kind of felt like a sand storm to me). Sunday morning was beautiful as we opened the van doors and watched an incredible sunrise. We had a beautiful breakfast by the Colorado River, and then set out for my first time climbing That was terrifying, exciting, and invigorating, all at the same time, and ached in my ankles, calves, and triceps in a way I never thought would come from climbing

Shew! What a crazy ride. Snow scares me a whole lot Would you have been scared?

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Venturing in Mammoth Cave

By charity sampley • August 1, 2023

I've been trying to get to Mammoth Cave for 6 years and today I finally made it! Woohoo! I have a bucket list goal to visit every national park in the US (hopefully I can get to them faster because they just keep adding more), so there's another check mark to one! One of the things I've been realizing lately is just how many national parks are within 8 hours or less of where we're located. An 8-hour drive isn't too bad with the kids, and several are even closer. Mammoth Cave is about 1 hour from us (I know, it's almost wrong that we haven't gone before now). Prior to making the trip, I had looked on Pinterest for different recommendations and I had seen where the guided tours fill up quickly so it's best to register for them online before going. However, I decided that with the kids being the ages that they are, I didn't want to do a guided tour and would rather do the self-guided (called Discovery tour). I'm also not a big fan of guided tours anyway, but I did see some pictures of some cool views that you can only get to through a guided tour, so I think it would be worth it to do that one day. However, we spend 45 minutes in the cave, and I couldn't imagine spending any more time in there because the kids were about spent. I'm very content with the decision I made for this trip! All the information you'll need can be found on the national park website here . I had also read that the park is free to enter, but you have to pay for all the tours. This ended up being the case for us as well, even though we did the self-guided Discovery tour. It was a bummer because we have the annual national park pass, so I feel like we've already paid to enter all the parks for the year, but the tickets were only $8 a piece, and kids under 6 are free, so it wasn't expensive. As it turned out, I was very glad that we did the Discovery tour because the kids ended up being scared in the cave! We walked all the way down from one end to the other, but by the time we were leaving, they were definitely done with the cave. Killian is 2, and Reagan is 3, so if you have toddlers, I recommend just keeping that in mind when you choose the right option for you and your family.

I Finished My Nutrition Certification!

By charity sampley • June 23, 2023

I hope your week is off to a great start. A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday morning, I woke up early (okay, not that early), opened my laptop, and took the final exam to my Precision Nutrition Certification. It has been, and continues to be, so important to me to be able to continue my education in order to better serve my clientele, formally or informally. This certification is just one more step on my journey to improve myself as a coach and expert in the field of nutrition. I started it back in October, and continued to work through it during all the phases of life with two toddlers: sleep regressions, meltdowns, potty training, and all the things in between. At times it felt like I was never going to finish, and just like that I'm done, and it didn't seem all that rough! 😅 Soon after finishing, I decided to register for an NLP and Life Coaching certification, and who knows what else is in store. The sky's the limit!

Why I Started Coaching

By charity sampley • June 16, 2023

I didn't grow up being athletic, in fact, it was the opposite for me. When it came to races or playing tag, I was always the slowest. When it came to a sport, I was always uncoordinated. When it came to body weight strength, I was the weakest. When it came to being picked for a team, I was always picked last. Throughout high school and college, I managed to improve this predicament slightly as I played sports, began training on my own, and eventually made it onto my college basketball team. But I still always struggled. I always tended to be the most uncoordinated and the least athletic. When I started CrossFit in 2018, I was surprised at how my body adapted to the training. With what I felt like little effort on my part, I was able to do pull-ups and skills I had given up on ever having the ability to do. It taught me that everything is learned for everyone at some point in time, and we all have the ability to change what we've known about ourselves even if what we've known to be true about ourselves is something that has haunted us since childhood. While it was amazing that I could change my ability to perform physical movements, it wasn't until I improved my nutrition in 2019 and began to see the start of a 6 pack (which genetically speaking, wasn't really in the cards for me) that I started to truly realize how every decision we make and every step we take is an action either in the direction of what we want or what we don't want, but either way, we have the ability to choose in any given moment. Often times our ability to choose is determined by the beliefs we have about ourselves and about our circumstances. I think what shocked me the most is that I wasn't doing what I had always thought would be required in order to see these big physical changes. I was leaning out while eating ice cream sandwiches, chips, and fast food. And it wasn't just on my "cheat days" either. Although my diet was balanced, it didn't fit what I always believed I would need to do. It didn't fit m idea of "healthy" and it definitely didn't fit into most of society's definition of healthy. Most people would have assumed this was my way of having a "cheat meal", or that I was allowing myself to "be bad". But neither were the case. This was simply my way of life. And I was seeing amazing results with a very flexible approach to my diet. If we believe it's our calling in life to be fat, or weak, or slow, or addicted to food (all of which I believed about myself at one time), then those beliefs are what we'll live by. Those beliefs are what will dictate our choices. When I realized it was a choice for me to live in food freedom, and eat from a place of celebration and joy over how I can live my life and how my body can perform physically, that's when everything changed. I want all women who are where I once was to know that if they want to see change, then it's possible. But I don't want to just tell you. And I don't want to just show you. I want to help you get there. And that's why I started coaching. I started for you, and for all the women out there who are living a life making choices they're not happy with, in a body they're not happy in, but who don't want to sell their souls in order to see results. I'm here to tell you that there is freedom on the other side.

The Van Life Diaries Part 2