The Date Inspired by the Letter T

If you heard the podcast this week, you heard us pretending we were on an episode of Tiny House Hunters. LOL! Today I bring you the accompanying photos.

Weeks ago, we discovered (via the magic of Facebook) that there was going to be a Tiny House Roadshow in Fort Wayne. We bought our tickets, printed them out, put them in the car so they wouldn't get lost, and counted down the days until we could go see honest-to-goodness tiny houses live and in person.

It would be our T date, we decided. Tiny house tours! How great is that?? (This photo, by the way, was taken at the conclusion of the day, and by the time you are done reading this post, you'll understand our exhausted and rather pathetic look.)

I wondered if any of the food trucks in Fort Wayne would be out and about that day, because food from a truck would be both fun and appropriate for a T date. So a couple of days before the event, when I knew the weather looked promising, I checked the website for the trucks.

Shut. Up.

Foodstock 2017 was scheduled for the same day. Twenty-two food trucks stocked with a million choices of cuisine? Our life just might be complete.

So we didn't eat breakfast that morning, in preparation for stuffing our faces with not-clean-eating food, and we parked at a garage a mile away from the park hosting Foodstock. LOL! Ryan says I was so hungry, I practically ran to the trucks. I wish I could say he was lying. Eek!

Here we are with Foodstock and a bunch of people we don't know!

It smelled so good right there. You don't even know.

They had a big board at the entrance with the menus from the different trucks so you could make informed decisions without clogging up lines. Genius.

Here's a peek at the lines of trucks! The park has this huge pavilion, and they were all underneath that. It was a nice day, so it didn't really matter, but if it had been super sunny or windy (or rainy), there was a nice layer of protection over the food. They had tables and chairs all set up at the front and live music playing throughout.

We decided to share things so we could sample more. We wanted our main food from this truck called Who Cut the Cheese? (hee hee hee.) We ordered a sammich called The Three Little Pigs. It had bacon, Black Forest Ham, and pulled pork with BBQ sauce and cheese on bread and was all grilled up. (And it came with a pickle, which pretty much made my day.) It was SO huge that splitting it was all we could do. Don't talk to me about its health factor, or lack thereof, but just focus on the deliciousness.

While I stood in line for that, Ryan got in line at a truck called Affine and ordered some fries with a delicious sauce that reminded me much of the infamous Boom Boom Sauce we had at Ivanhoe's a few weeks ago. WE munched on these while we waited for our sammich.

And then, because we hadn't consumed enough (eyeroll) we found a dessert truck and split a razzleberry sundae! That's right! Ryan's beloved pie showed up as a sundae option. We had to get it!

Clearly you can see why the mile hike to and from the car was necessary!

Once we were full, we walked to Parkview Field (ahhhh memories...the site of our 10K back when no one knew we were dating!) for the Tiny House Roadshow!

We went to one of the main gates, but it was closed. We could see a tiny house parked right on the other side of the gate, but we walked all the way to the opposite corner, came in and then all the way back around to where we started! LOL!

As we said on the podcast, we both were under the impression (from attending home shows and flower/patio shows in the past) that the field would be packed with tiny houses and vendors. Well, the field was being watered, so there were no tiny houses there. In fact, there were only three tiny houses on display that day. Three! That's it! (The program they gave us promised four, but only three showed up, apparently.) We won't lie: we were disappointed that there were so few, but we pushed that aside quickly and decided to just enjoy ourselves.

There were lines for each house, and the volunteers only permitted a few people in at a time. That was the good part. The bad part was they permitted multiple parties in together, so I have pictures of strangers and they have pictures of me. There's really nowhere to hide in a tiny house. Ha!

Wanna see what we toured?

This was the first one we went in (because it had the shortest line) and it was also the middle of the three sizes. It was our very favorite of the three. It reminded me in many ways of an RV (with a loft). It was about the size of an RV and had similar space use. It even had a bump-out on the side!

The windows you see here are as follows: the one on the right (on the end of the tiny house) adjacent to the door is the living room. The long skinny window to the left of the door is in the kitchen. The window on the far left is the bedroom, and the two windows up top are for the loft. 

Ryan on the couch. This is the part that bumped out, so you could actually walk/turn around inside the front door.

In that picture he's facing the front door, and just to his right, beyond the couch, was a stairway to the loft. (An actual stairway. Not a ladder. I liked that.)

Beside the front door: the kitchen.

I liked the overlap for stools/eating, and the fact that the fridge, which you unfortunately can't really see here, is tall like a real one, not tiny like a dorm fridge. I lament that I cannot remember what was across from the kitchen, under the stairs, other than to presume it was storage. :( There were so many people to dodge, I missed that part. :(

A doorway in the middle of the tiny house took you from the kitchen into the bathroom. It had a nice shower, as demonstrated by Ryan:

I failed to get a picture of the toilet and sink across from it. :( Womp, womp. I'm telling you. Feeling rushed and crowded did not have me on my photo game!

You can see the door back into the bedroom, which took up the entire back part of the house. It was very much like an RV in storage layout:

Oh hey! there's the toilet in the background! I guess it was beside the shower!

This is the loft, which was big enough to sit up in, and I liked that. Very spacious.

The second house we went in was the smallest of the three and neither of us liked it. It was TOO small for us. The first house had TONS of storage hidden all over the place. The second one had an area above the doorway and that was really about it. It was so cramped. I'm not even sure I could find it relaxing for an overnight getaway. (Personal opinion.)

It was stinkin' cute, though, on the outside! I did love the tiny little porch there on the right. The window behind the porch was to the "living room" and then the window above the wheels was in the one little spot where you could turn around inside. The window on the left was in the bathroom. And of course, the top windows were the loft.

The "living room" was literally just this tiny little oversized chair in the spot beside the front door. It faced the kitchen.

Above that was this open space for storage, and that was IT for storage as far as I could see. It made me nervous!

This is the kitchen, and the door to the left of the counter space goes into the bathroom:

The fridge is the under-the-counter kind and the top corner of it made the bottom of the picture there under the tea kettle.

I TRIED to get a good picture of the bathroom. I don't think there was a sink. I think it was just a toilet across from a shower. I could only get a picture of the shower.

And here is the loft, accessed by ladder only. I would perish. This was the only bedroom.

So that house is out.

And that brings us to the third and final house of the day, which was the largest of the three. Though it's mobile, it's officially considered a wide load and could not be easily transported from one place to the next. So this is more of a park model tiny house. (And Ryan's opinion is if you're going to live in a mobile home, why bother making it tiny? Just get a regular one!)

In this one, the sliding glass door goes into a living area, the back door goes in right by the bedroom/bathroom/kitchen, and the other downstairs window is for the bedroom. The upstairs window goes to a loft.

Loved the big wall of windows in the living area.

 Big, light, airy kitchen. Swoon!!

The person at the back is standing in front of the bedroom door. Behind her is the stairway up to two (cramped) lofts and on the other side of those cabinets is the big bathroom.

Bedroom with a huge closet and a companion screen door to sleep with! (????)

Bathroom - also huge.

The smaller of the two lofts was mostly useless in my opinion. It would work well for storage or if you had kids, I guess.

This is looking from my vantage point to the other loft. I then crawled over there and got stuck in there while people were on the stairs, so I took a selfie!

So there you have it! The tiny house tour! :)

Before we left the field, we did a few photo opps with signs and Johnny Appleseed. (Of course.)

A successful date inspired by the letter T! To see all our alphabetical dates so far, you can look here. (We only have six to go!)