In October 2014, Kelly Tousley and Curtiss O'Rorke Stedman vowed to quit their jobs, leave their home base in Juneau, Alaska, and see the US by "paying gas, not rent."
The couple bought a 14-by-seven-foot utility trailer and spent the next nine months converting it into what would be their new home for at least a year.
"We're proving we can spend the same amount of money (if not less) traveling across North America, than paying rent in one location," they write on their blog, "Pay Gas, Not Rent."
It's been seven months since they officially hit the road on May 31, 2015. They've been across the country and back, from Alaska to Michigan, down to Florida and around to Colorado, with stops in Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Alabama along the way.
The couple, both 27, spoke to Business Insider about their new lifestyle: What it looks like, the reality of working on the road, and how they afford it:
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Before "going tiny," the couple was living and working in Juneau, Alaska. O'Rorke Stedman taught high school English and Tousley worked in social services while completing her masters degree in early childhood special education.
"After four years of being 'professional adults,' we realized we wanted more out of life,"they write on their blog. A passion for travel and desire to live lighter culminated in the plan to build and live out of a 98-square-foot tiny house on wheels.
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Another reason the couple hit the road was so O'Rorke Stedman could pursue his dream of playing music professionally. He says touring full-time has offered him creative freedom that wasn't possible in Juneau, where he could only play on the weekends and during the summer while he wasn't teaching.
His one man band, known as "Cousin Curtiss" blends Americana, blues, pseudo-electronica, and root-stomp sounds.
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When it came time to build the framework of their tiny house, the options were slim.
"We looked into campers and RV's and there was nothing available in Juneau," they tell Business Insider.
Access to Juneau, Alaska's remote capital, is limited. Everything coming in and out must be flown or ferried in, so it would have been incredibly expensive to ship something as large as an RV. "To get anything to us — which would have been an older model of anything — was about $10,000. That instantly limited us."
"We chose to use a utility trailer because it was feasible to build it ourselves,"they write. "Not having any carpenter experience, we didn't trust ourselves to build a custom frame, like other tiny houses you may have seen. We decided to opt out of the van life because we wanted separation from our home. If we decided to camp out somewhere awesome for a week, we wanted the option to park our home and just take the truck."
They found a nearly new utility trailer in Petersburg, Alaska, just south of Juneau, and pulled the trigger.
"Without even seeing the trailer, we bought it for $4,750," they recall.
That was only the beginning. The couple spent the next nine months turning the trailer into their new home.
Above, they're pictured with their dogs Sawyer and Doug.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider