After a cross country road trip through 35 different states, Kayla decided to drop out of college and move to Colorado.
The 26-year-old American knew the ‘conventional college path’ didn’t appeal to her and made a huge lifestyle change.
Alongside her partner, Andrew, Kayla booked an Airbnb for a week and used the time to find a car, an apartment and jobs.
After some time, the pair moved into a 100-year-old log cabin in the mountains, nearby Denver, and have lived in the unique two-bedroom abode for five years on rent-to-buy.
Though living in the cabin is ‘a lot of fun’, Kayla acknowledges it is also ‘a lot of hard work’, and exclusively tells the Daily Mail what life is like in the mountains.
She reveals: ‘We mostly only use fire to heat the house. So some mornings we wake up and it’s 49F [9C] inside.’
Kayla explains how aside from the heating, which she describes as the ‘biggest hardship’, the cabin runs like most homes and has electric and a propane tank.
Winter presents some challenges for cabin life, especially considering most of the windows are 100 years old.
After a cross country road trip through 35 different states, Kayla decided to drop out of college and move to Colorado
‘We do get frosted windows all the time, and we actually have to put plastic over the windows so that it prevents the cold from coming in,’ Kayla explains.
Despite this, Kayla still describes the cabin as ‘magical’ in the winter.
‘Just being on the outside of the cabin and seeing it and when it’s snowing, it just looks right, it feels right, but it’s cold and brutal sometimes,’ she adds.
The couple have even been snowed in before and a few years ago they experienced three feet (0.9m) of snow.
‘I had never seen that much snow, but we were making the best out of it. We were skiing and sledding in the yard, just bringing out our inner child,’ Kayla says.
Living in the mountains comes with some wild neighbours, too, and Kayla is visited by a range of wildlife.
‘We saw a mountain lion outside of our window,’ she recalls. ‘We were just laying on the couch, and we were actually playing a video game.
‘I looked out, we have a window right next to our TV, and all of a sudden I just saw movement and there was a huge mountain lion right outside our window.’
After some time, the pair moved into a 100-year-old log cabin in the mountains, nearby Denver, and have lived in the unique two-bedroom abode for five years on rent-to-buy
Kayla and Andrew have also seen bears, foxes and are visited by deer daily.
‘I feel like we know the deer now, they’re our little neighbours and they’re are pals,’ she adds.
Even with the lack of central heating and the difficult weather, Kayla insists she has ‘no regrets’ with her move.
‘I love living in this cabin,’ she says.
‘It’s always been a dream of mine to move out west so to be here and look out my window and see mountains and see mountain lions. I have no regrets.’
For Kayla, her favourite part about cabin life is the ‘accessibility to nature’.
She explains how there’s ‘always a lot of traffic’ in the area on Fridays because ‘everybody wants to come here for their weekend trips’.
But Kayla is grateful that the dreamy location is her ‘everyday’. ‘I can drive 15 minutes and be camping or hiking,’ she adds.
Living in the mountains comes with some wild neighbours, too, and Kayla is visited by a range of wildlife. Pictured: A mountain lion near Kayla’s cabin
With the cabin being a century old, it comes with its own individual quirks and characteristics.
The walls are not very tall and Kayla describes the abode as ‘super tiny’.
She explains: ‘It is not big. I’m a very short person and I can touch the ceilings.’
While Andrew’s height means he can’t always stand up fully straight while walking around his home.
‘My boyfriend’s tall and he’ll have to duck under sometimes, because this was built 100 years ago when everyone was super short,’ Kayla adds.
The age of the cabin also means the couple have had to do a lot of work to get it up to scratch.
Kayla isn’t sure exactly how much money the couple have spent on repairs but recalls, ‘When we first moved in I don’t even know how it was still standing, to be honest’.
They fixed one of the two decks and made sure it was a safe area for their dog to go outside. Inside, they’ve completed work on the wood stove.
With the cabin being a century old, it comes with its own individual quirks and characteristics
Despite loving her life in the mountain cabin, it isn’t a forever home for Kayla and she plans to eventually move.
‘I think that we’ll move on at some point,’ she comments.
Kayla and Andrew dream of building their own home one day, but are settled in the cabin ‘for now’.
She adds, ‘We always talk about buying our own land and building on that and building our own home eventually. But for now, this is our home and I love it.’
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