Little Red Vardo Gypsy Wagon Road Trip
This week, my wife Julia and I hitched our little red vardo gyspy wagon to the Subaru and headed west. It’s the same wagon my mule Polly pulled across most of Newfoundland and then through Pamlico County in eastern North Carolina. It featured in the “Our State” / UNC-TV’s episode “Mule Rider” which won a regional Emmy Award for director Morgan Potts.
Why We’re Heading West in our Little Wagon
Julia and I hope to travel the West with our horses and mules next year. The plan is to trailer our critters to our starting point somewhere between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean and tour our nation’s public lands by saddle. While we’re out West, we hope to do a Friday night podcast in addition to posting on my website RiverEarth.com and Julias site ConsideringAnimals.com.
The goal of our current trip west with our little red wagon is to find out where we might start our saddle trip. Montana? Colorado? Wyoming? We’re still not sure exactly sure which state we’ll start riding in, but we have a sense of what we’re looking for.
The biggest challenge of long-distance saddle travel is finding grass, water, and shelter for our horses and mules. We won’t have a support vehicle following us on our trip so we won’t be able to rely on someone bringing us provisions as we travel. That means we’ll need to travel during spring and summer in areas where grass grows and water flows. That can be hard to find out West.
In addition, we’ll need to think of wildfires. In the last few years, much of the West has burned. If you’re traveling in a car, you can avoid the parts that are on fire. If you’re traveling with a horse or mule, it’s harder to get out of the way of a fast-moving fire.
Right now, we have three areas in mind. They are:
- Oregon
- Along the Rocky Mountains from Montana toward New Mexico
- New Mexico and Colorado
A Few Photos From our Current Road Trip
I thought you’d enjoy seeing some of the land and meeting some of the people Julia and I are meeting on our exploratory road trip. Here, in no particular order, are some photos from our first few days on the road. We started in Caldwell County in western North Carolina and are heading to Oregon. I’ll post a few photos every few days and let you know what we’re finding. Enjoy!
More on the L’il Red Wagon
I built the wagon in my barn a few years ago. It’s based on a trailer frame I bought from Northern Tool. Here are some photos and links of how I built it.
The trailer kit 
Covered with blanket 
Front wall 
My dad, Art Harberts, checking out progess
Here are some links to posts of my wagon voyage across Newfoundland with my mule Polly
- Wagon Construction Week 2
- Wagon Construction Week 3
- The Newfoundland Mission
- End of Voyage Wagon Accident
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Man, so happy to see the “Newphie Wagon” back on the road! As you may recall, I wrote all kinds of content in the cozy confines of the little arch-backed ark. I guess not enough room for two concurrent artists working in the same space, but you’ve already spelled out the solution – Cracker Barrel. Since when can you buy beer at Cracker Barrel? My productivity would plummet, under those circumstances… Plan B could be the RV nomad’s oasis, aka Walmart. But, that’s not got quite the nice friendly aura of your current choice.
Regardless of your choice of venues, hope you’ll meet some RV folks and do your usual magic showing the best of “ordinary” people – we all need regular doses of that!
C
The Newfie wagon is a content-churning machine! We’re making up for the last six months it spent in the barn with plenty of updates from the hinterlands – okay, with a few posts from Cracker Barrel along the way. I’ll have to commission you for a pen sketch of the wagon in exchange for a night aboard. We sure look forward to seeing you soon! Bernie
Pen sketch? NOW we’re talking!
(You do know that it won’t be red, right?)
C
Yes. The 24-foot-long 2021 SuperDuty SuperCab 6.9 liter SuperStroke towing the eight-foot long Newfie Wagon!