My adventurous living:)

(we painted the tipi ourselves) (Little Kohanna Trying to get out of the Tipi)

(Both Tipis up. The 16ft and our 20"ft)

So when I was 19 my fiance at the time wanted to live in a Tipi and I said sure why not?? So we set about having the tipi made and then trying to find a place we could live in it. So we drovearound and happened to stop by a campground on a ranch and talk to the owner and he said we could do it on their property. He also had a smaller tipi we could set up and use till ours was done. So we set about setting up the 16' tipi. It was april so the weather was decent. We had to dig a cool hole for our cold stuff, build a kitchen box and go about getting life in a tipi set up.

(cooking dinner in the tipi)

I will say I loved this life. It was definetly a lot harder and you had to learn things the hard way sometimes but I loved how simple it was. It was so beautiful to lay in the tipi and look out the smoke flaps in the summer and see the stars. We learned all the little tricks as the location we picked was beautiful but not very protected. So it was well over 100 degrees in the summer and below zero in the winter there in Idaho.

(One of our early snows)

We learned to keep forked sticks around in the summer to push up the edges of the bottom of the tipi and that would let a nice cool breeze through and we did most of the cooking outside in the summer months dutch oven style. You always got to know which way the wind is going to move the smoke flaps the correct direction to pull the smoke out.

In the winter we learned you must keep the snow dug away from the bottom of the tipi so that the air can push up under the tipi edge and then run up the liner and push the smoke out. We also learned you don't want to keep a fire going all night it is to much work and a waste of wood. So we put our bedroll up on pallets and insulated with wool blankets in the pallets and then we built a little hut over the bed with willow branches, canvas and wool blankets and then when we would go to bed we would close the front and that would hold the body heat and keep us warm enough to sleep in tshirt and shorts. After you get a fire going in the tipi it gets PLENTY warm:) Even with ours being bigger.

( You can kind of see the hut behind me over the bed)

(Started the Fires with flint and steel mostly)

It was a very fun and exciting thing to try. We lived in it in Idaho for 2 years and almost a year in wyoming. When we moved to Oregon it was to wet for it in the winter so we only used it in the summer and that is when we built the yurt to live in.

It was fun to have people visit and see how we lived, it was funny to see peoples reaction when I worked at the ski hill and they would say did you see that tipi on the way up it had smoke coming out of it. I would tell them I lived there and they wouldn't believe me because I didn't look like a "hippie" they would say:) Even my mom made a visit and stayed for 2 weeks. She loved it:)

(Yes we did Tomahawk throwing and LOVED IT)

(Kohanna's Redneck trampoline. The cowhide we were making into rawhide:))