Lucky Penny Moves to Walla Walla

Only 17 more miles on the Lucky Penny’s journey to Walla Walla, WA!

When I first started building the Lucky Penny at Green Anchors in 2014 I wasn’t quite sure where I’d be parking her. I felt so lucky to be invited to join Simply Home Community and Lucky Penny’s Maiden Voyage was a successful shake down tour. Since then she’s moved a handful of other times in the Portland area. She made A Tiny Move for a Tiny House at Simply Home. Then, when we created Going Places in 2016 I moved her to our new tiny house community. When Isha and I parted ways in 2019, I brought the Lucky Penny to a new spot in the Irvington neighborhood that’d biked by hundreds of times and often thought “that would be the perfect place for a tiny house!” Once I was Brattleboro Bound in 2020, I got the Lucky Penny settled back at Going Places. And then she spent the past year and a half at a new start up tiny house community in SE Portland.

Lihn and Stephanie did a great job getting my tiny both into and out of this spot in SE Portland!

A number of circumstances collided recently to compel me to move the Lucky Penny to my property in Walla Walla where I have a ground bound small house called Valencia Cottage. So on Tuesday trusted tiny house movers Linh and Stephanie Pham helped me move the Lucky Penny safely from Portland to my place in Walla Walla. It was a slog getting the Lucky Penny out of her parking spot in SE Portland because it had rained and snowed and rained and hailed and rained and iced and rained some more in the preceding weeks. But once we were gased up and on the road, it was smooth sailing.

This drive through the Columbia Gorge is one of my favorites in the world! The drive along the Columbia Gorge is one of the most beautiful I know and it was a gorge-ous day, too.

It’s always a little white knucklish watching your beloved house hurtle down the highway, but after so many moves I trusted my tiny house haulers completely. We took it slow, knowing it would be a slower drive than it usually is and that was just fine. As the follow car I got to watch people’s reactions. It’s amazing how many people didn’t even seem to notice my tiny house cruising down the highway!

Nothing like a tiny house under a big open sky!

We stopped every hour and a half for safety checks. The pups got out to stretch their legs. We chatted about how cute my tiny house looked in the line up of dozens of semi trucks.

I’m currently teaching a 6-week Downsizing Tune Up, so I was amused by the juxtaposition of this truck full of stuff for other people’s houses and my tiny house which could fit inside it!

When we got to Walla Walla my long driveway was waiting (as it seems it always has been!) for a tiny house. It was pretty quick and easy to get the tiny backed into place. Now the Lucky Penny is safely settled. It feels incredibly satisfying to have literally everything I own in one place. Not many people can consolidate two houses that were built in two different states in two different centuries to one property!

Two of my favorite places: The Lucky Penny and Wallula Gap. *swoon*

For now the Lucky Penny is just a tiny house on a trailer in my driveway (and insured as such), but when I’m back from my international travels I hope to continue working with the City of Walla Walla to get her properly set up as an ADU. There are hoops to jump through and the Lucky Penny is so tiny that feels a little silly, but as a longtime tiny house advocate I’m hopeful we can find a path forward. I’d love to chart the course for other tiny houses to be set up as ADUs. Welcome home, Lucky Penny!

Lihn and Stephanie did a great job getting the Lucky Penny settled into my driveway for the time being!