We want to help you find the best decor and resources to remodel your RV or brick and sticks house, along with gear and tips for camping and outdoor adventures.
Does the desire ever present itself to just take your loafers, slippers, flip flops, boots, high heels, slips or any other foot held separation device off and experience whatever jungle you live in, work in, stand into the fullest?
We believe everyone should take detours to connect with nature and disconnect from our busy and loud everyday life. Leave your shoes at home and go barefoot with us.
Who are we?
KEN KELLEY – An avid adventure seeker, photographer, professional firefighter, craftsman, paddler, cook, snowboarder, mountain biker, and remodeled trailer owner among other interests. With all that said, my greatest and most important adventure is being a husband to an amazing wife and father to three creative and adventurous boys.
JOY KELLEY – I am a lettering artist & creative blogger at HowJoyful.com – I am a self-taught English speaker, with a love for decorating, lemon pie & green tea. I started blogging to improve my English and share my love for creating, whether that involves lettering, sewing, crafting, or power tools. I am the mamá to three little tornados that are always up for an adventure.
The story behind barefoot detour
A few months after I (Joy) started my creative blog HowJoyful, in March of 2010.
I tossed the idea to Ken about him starting his own blog, he liked the idea but I didn’t really convince him until a year later in 2011, while we were visiting my family in Chile and took a road-trip from Peru all the way to Santiago hitting some awesome coast cities.
He was tempted, so we did a little brainstorming session and came with the name Barefoot Detour!
The origin of barefoot detour came about when many hours of my day were consumed with ideas of travel and the outdoors. Of being barefoot roaming the world in its unfiltered rawness. And all the while, documenting the adventures and providing a foundation of gear, food and travel ideas and techniques for others to take their own detours from lives daily grind. – Ken
He knew that he wanted to talk about outdoor adventures and make it some kind of journal about the trips we took and our hiking, climbing, adventures.
We got busy… YEARS passed! but I kept the domain.
I figured that maybe one of our boys would like to do something with it since we were too busy, BUT then we started renovating our camper and the idea grew stronger again for us to make this space a family adventure.
And here we are, starting this from ground zero, with nothing but our passion for sharing our journey and hopefully inspire you to take a detour with us!
OUR FAMILY
We meet in 2006 while I (Joy) was working at a Ski resort in the same mountain we now live at, I came from Chile on a work-exchange program while on my summer break in College because I wanted to learn English.
I had no idea there was no public transportation, so I had to hitchhike my way to the resort, on my first day of work, my roommate and I stood in the side of the road while it was snowing.
Cold and clueless!
Ken was THE FIRST ONE that stopped and offered us a ride.
It was Ken’s first week working at Ski Patrol at Snow Valley.
What are the chances 🙂
(We always joke about how crazy it was that we were both there at the same time. Actually, our wedding song talks about this.)
After a few weeks of running into each other and half Spanish/English conversations we started dating, we had a long-distance relationship for 3 years with trips for both of us to go see each other.
We got married in November 2009 after doing the K1 “fiancée” visa process and married again in April 2010. Since our first wedding was so rushed (we only had 90 days), we decided to plan our “real” wedding for later on. It was a lovely hand-made Wedding, you can read more about it here.
We have 3 boys, Conner (6), Collin (3), and Cooper (2). A beautiful German Shepperd/Belgian Malinois girl (Zuma) and two guinea pigs (Tom and Jerry)
Our life is busy and crazy, but we would not have it any other way!
OUR CAMPER
In November 2018 we purchased a 1991 fleet wood “wilderness” (29 feet, 2 axel travel trailer) and we started remodeling the day we pick it up!
The opportunity to get it from a family friend presented after talking about getting an RV for months, but it was not in the budget to get anything new. And we thought we might do it in a few years.
We were so excited about the chance to get it, so the day we finally decided we started the plan for the renovation, I made a shopping list for Ikea, and Home Depot and after stopping to take some quick pictures to help us visualize the remodel. We shopped for a day, picked it up on our way home, and started that same night.
We made mistakes and learned really quickly that even though we had experience with renovations, and RV presents a very specific set of challenges.
It took us about a month, working on every day off Ken had, and we absolutely love it!
