Another month has flown by! It seems like the more intentionally we live it, choosing carefully how to spend our time, the faster it goes. That feels counterintuitive to me, but it flied because we spend our hours doing the thing that we truly love doing with the people we love most!
Trip Planning This Month
It was another month of just really filling out our weekends for the year with weekend trips in the camper. (Spoiler, expect a lot of content from Arkansas this year, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!) And we started looking at things to do for our upcoming Mexico City trip! This will be our first international trip since 2019! We’re also considering a trip over Thanksgiving, but we’re in the very early works on that.
Travel This Month
As it seems to be our “thing” lately, we started the month in Arkansas. We took a weekend trip with my family (my parents, brother, sister-in-law and 2 nephews) down to Conway, Arkansas. We lived in Conway when I was little, so we decided it was time for a pilgrimage back to go to Toad Suck Days, a craft festival that takes place in downtown Arkansas. We had a great time spending time together, eating delicious things and making more memories in this town. Plus, on the way down, my little family made stops at Petit Jean State Park and Pruitt Landing of the Buffalo River to stretch our legs and enjoy some nature!
Just after returning from Toad Suck Days, my mom, the kids and I went on a day trip to explore some of the mills in southeast Missouri. We had a really special day trip there in 2017, so it was a bit of an homage to that and we got to explore a new mill as well! It was a really lovely day to spend together.
We returned to Ponca again and this time we had visitors! Matt’s parents finally came down to enjoy some of the splendor of this area. So, we did some of the the highlights: Hawksbill Crag, Magnolia Falls and Twin Falls. And we got to try out Jasper Pizza Company in Jasper, Arkansas which had just opened earlier that week – which was delicious!
The day after our camping trip, we took a spontaneous evening trip back down to Arkansas to get to do a hike that we missed out on over the weekend! It was a really sweet gesture by Matt and a beautiful continuation of the lifestyle we’re trying to truly foster: doing things that we love to do as often as possible.
For Memorial Day weekend, we spent a long weekend in the Fayetteville, Arkansas area. Our campground was just outside of the city and we made it our base to explore a few different areas. Our dear friends came down and met us for a morning hike and then an afternoon of craft brewery hopping while our little girls played together! We had such a great time with them! Our little family unit also did some hikes, ate out a few different places and drove to a fun garbage-truck themed park!
Travel Mishaps and Laughs This Month
We have definitely learned some interesting things about our camper with more and more camping trips this month. I would say that there were two notable mishaps, both involving our camper toilet! Firstly, Matt had the lid open while flushing chemicals down into the toilet before turning on any faucets so he was, of course, sprayed down by chemical-filled toilet water! Secondly, our bathroom is super small. We put a greater emphasis on square-footage in our living spaces, which I don’t regret, but truly, our bathroom is tiny. One weekend I stood up and caught my heel on the flusher of the toilet. Guys, it ripped my heel open! This toilet is going to give us grief for a while I think! Haha
Blog Posts from May
A Monthly Recap: April 2023 – Our monthly recap of our life and adventures in the month of April.
Hike to Fern Falls, Arkansas – This was a new hike for us and we fell in love with it! Can’t wait to do it again next spring!
Magnolia Falls, Arkansas – A Hiking Guide – Another new trail for us but we love it so much we did it three times in the span of a month.
The Life Stat That Shook Me – My most popular post this month! This post is about a crazy stat that blew my mind and is changing the way that we live our lives, especially weekends.
Discover Petroglyphs Near Moab, Utah – This post shares some of the spectacular examples of rock art that we’ve had the privilege of seeing in the Moab area!
Most Popular Reel + Post on Instagram in May
Best Thing We Ate This Month
This is a tie for me between two very different things. The food at Cesar’s Old Mexico (in Springfield, Mo) was so delicious. The fajitas had the most impressive punch of flavor and the beef enchilada in particular in the Viva Mexico enchilada platter was delicious. The other favorite of the month was the sourdough pizza at Wicked Wood Fired Pizza food truck (in Fayetteville, Ar). I had the Chicken Florentine and it was 100% perfect. The blended alfredo and pesto sauces were so zesty, the toppings all had amazing flavor and were so fresh and the cheese blend was just perfecto!
Favorite Local Find in May
Cesar’s Old Mexico! We’d had people recommending this place to us for so long and we finally went there! The food was unreal – it was so flavorful and had these insane portions! We saw so many things on the menu that we wanted to try, so I cannot wait to get back there.
Life Updates in May
We spent a lot of our evenings getting our house back in order. Being gone almost every weekend means that we had to figure out a new way to prioritized our week nights to simply get shit done. We have hit a really good rhythm, though. Getting our yard cleaned up and garden planted was a big relief too! We lost a lot of shrubs and even our trees to an ice storm, so we had a lot of work to do out there. It feels good to be slowly getting our life back together in our house too.
This month, Liam turned 6 months old, which is so insane! I can’t believe he’s halfway to a year old! In true Paige form, I’ve already started planning his first birthday! Both kiddos are growing like weeds and really settling into the camper life, which makes my heart so happy!
What’s Coming in June?
We will, once again, be kicking off the month in Ponca, Arkansas on a camping trip. Don’t act too surprised. Hopefully we’ll be able to find some more new trails to do!
I’ll be meeting Stacey for a day hike somewhere in the state. We do this annually and I love this tradition! (All my long-time readers remember her from the 101 day trip to Southeast Asia and so many other adventures that are in the archives of the site).
Overall, we’ll have fewer trips this month because of some family events, but Matt and I have our first trip away from the kids coming up next month. We’ll be spending a long weekend in Mexico City! This is a destination that’s been at the top of my list for a long time and Matt has never been to Mexico, so it’ll be a new country for him and our first time out of the country together since our big trip ended in 2018! Whew, it’s been a long time coming. Super special shoutout to my parents for gifting us the childcare for this trip!
Clearly, the new look for For the Love of Wanderlust didn’t happen in May… Whoops! Turns out traveling and trip planning takes a fair amount of time! Haha. Maybe this month I’ll get it finished!
We hope you guys all had a wonderful May and are looking forward to a fulfilling June! We’d love to hear what you’ve been up to this last month! Drop a comment below!
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