Jen and Ash hike the Colorado Trail

Jen and Ash’s 52-day hike of the Colorado Trail, a route of more than 480 miles from Denver to Durango, was their first adventure as they began pursuing a nomadic life. It marked a transition from preparing to live on the road to putting that plan into practice, before they moved on to seasonal work at an Amazon warehouse.

Preparing for a Different Life

Before the hike, Jen had been searching online for alternatives to conventional living, researching minimalism and the tiny-house movement and finding CheapRVLiving.com. Ash was initially uneasy about living in a vehicle, associating the idea with a familiar comic stereotype, but eventually accepted it. The pair planned to alternate work and travel while living in a Subaru Impreza hatchback that Jen’s mother had handed down to her.

The car made the practical limits of their plan apparent even before they set out. Its rear seats folded down, but there was not enough room to lie flat unless belongings were packed into the rear footwells to form a headrest. Jen made black felt panels that could be attached over the windows for privacy. To reduce what they owned, they placed the things they no longer needed on their lawn with a free notice; by the time people were invited to collect them, the items had already disappeared.

The Trail

Their first adventure was the Colorado Trail: more than 480 miles between Denver and Durango, covered nonstop over fifty-two days. The hike came before their planned seasonal job, making it the first major undertaking in a life they hoped to divide between work and travel.

The trail was followed by a sharp change in setting and purpose. After reaching Durango, Jen and Ash headed to the Amazon warehouse in Fernley to take part in Amazon CamperForce. Their route from the long-distance hike to warehouse work made the two halves of their plan—adventure and earning money—successive parts of the same mobile life.

From the Trail to Seasonal Work

At first, the couple intended to do CamperForce while living in the Subaru. Jen later judged that this arrangement would not have lasted: the car’s cramped sleeping space, already evident during their preparations, would have made the work stint untenable. They found a van instead, although buying it left them nearly broke.

The hike therefore preceded a practical revision of their vehicle-based plan. The Subaru had been enough to carry them into their first adventure, but their next stage required a more workable home for seasonal employment. Their immediate transition was not from travel to settled comfort, but from a long trek to the search for a vehicle that could support both work and continued movement.

Significance

The Colorado Trail hike is presented as the couple’s first concrete step into the life they had been imagining, rather than as a separate vacation. It came after Jen’s research and Ash’s change of mind, and before their attempt to combine nomadic living with warehouse labor. The sequence shows their plan taking shape through experience: they began with a hand-me-down car, completed a demanding journey, and then recognized that the vehicle that carried them into the adventure could not serve as a sustainable home for the work that followed.