How in the world were we going to pull off a Thanksgiving dinner out in the middle of nowhere (boondocking outside of Sedona) with no hook-ups and no friends or extended family to spend it with?  Well, lucky for us we have the sun for power, great internet for Skyping and love from friends and family that travels wherever we go.  It’s like the book says, “Wherever you are my love will find you ” (If you’ve never read that book, you should!  If you’re anything like me, you’ll cry your eyes out).  

We started our morning with homemade sourdough pancakes with maple syrup!  It was delicious and our 5 year old was proud that she ate 6 of them and our 3 year old ate 3!  Our littlest eating this much breakfast is almost unheard of these days.  She usually eats a mouse serving size and claims she’s full.  We even put together the dinette for the occasion rather than eating standing up!

Thanksgiving breakfast pancakes

Throughout the lovely day the girls played outside in the Juniper tree, in the dusty dirt and on the rocks in the fields around us.  They had SO much fun coming back to Wobbles here and there to help prep food, eat a little snack or get bandaids.  The dessert is a very inhospitable place with all plants covered in spikes and thorns.  It didn’t slow them down much though.  They were too busy building various forts, fairy gardens and homes.  Justin had time to practice some guitar and I was left to bake and cook to my hearts content (or until our power ran out– our oven is electric!).

Since I was cooking a vegetarian feast, it took the pressure off cooking a turkey in a miniature microwave size convection oven with no hook ups.  Our spread was: Herbed roasted carrots, acorn squash, twice baked potatoes, mushroom gravy, marinated tofu with apple crisp with vanilla ice cream for dessert.  The idea was to try only using the oven once for all items.  I was able to prep the apple crisp filling on the stove which saved a lot of oven time.  I also prepped the potatoes and acorn squash in the microwave with a glass bowl over them to steam. Then, when the time came, I was JUST able to fit all 4 potatoes, two halves of acorn squash and the apple crisp in the oven to bake.  I had about 1/16″ to spare.  It worked out beautifully!

Just barely fits in the oven!

After all of that, our dinner was ready within a minute of our scheduled 4pm eating time (and with about 25% of our battery capacity remaining).  Yes!!

Most of us filled our bellies.  We soon learned on our after dinner walk that our youngest may not have had her fill.  Not even 10 minutes after dinner she said, “I’m hungry.  Are we going to eat dinner?” Haha, kids! 

Lucky for her, we hadn’t had dessert yet.  It was at dessert time that we realized how poorly our freezer was working in Wobbles.  Our “ice” cream was now sugary cream.  We got a good laugh out of it and just changed the desert presentation to apple crisp and cream.  It was very tasty regardless.  We have so much to be thankful for!  

I am so thankful for my family and friends who couldn’t be with us today and so very thankful for my amazing and understanding husband, lovely smart little girls I have and that we have been able to take this incredible journey together!!  Despite some bumps in the road, this has been such a magical and memorable trip (and we still have more than half of it left!).