This mom is taking her family off the beaten path.
Laura La Rue, a 32-year-old retired model from Los Angeles, California, traded the high life for the trail less traveled when she retreated from the spotlight several years ago.
Now, she lives in a renovated school bus with her baby daughter, growing their own produce and living off the land as much as they can.
“Most people get married, buy a house and have a kid. This is what I wanted — a safe haven where I can have people over and enjoy the bare necessities. Luckily, how I live doesn’t require a lot of money,” she told the LA Times in a recent interview.
La Rue had previously worked with the likes of iconic photographer David LaChappelle and was spotted on the arm of Hollywood’s most notorious hunks including Leonardo DiCaprio.
But after quitting school at 16 to pursue her dreams, the aging model found herself longing for nature — as she had when she was a young girl growing up in Thousand Oaks.
“I was over the city life,” La Rue said. “I thought, ‘I don’t like this at all.’ I could feel my cortisol levels shoot through the roof. I had health issues brought on by stress.”
“I had been on a ridiculous model diet, and I wanted to turn myself around,” she continued. “I started going to therapy and spent time alone to work on myself.”
By 2016, La Rue had had enough of toxic workplaces and relationships and retreated to a one-by-12-foot cabin on her mother’s 72-acre ranch in Santa Paula — though the start of her new life would be upended a year later: Her humble new home was destroyed by the fires in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in 2017.
Amid her healing journey, La Rue fell in love with a man who worked on her mom’s ranch, and the pair soon set out for a life of adventure on the road, living out of a 1981 Silver Streak trailer.
La Rue’s relationship began to crumble as she became pregnant and then realized that off-the-grid living wasn’t conducive to raising a family.
That’s when she decided to settle on a piece of land in Ojai — and build her makeshift mobile home inside an old bus.
“It was already built out,” she told newspaper, which included a composting toilet, a shower, a stovetop and an oven. It’s also got a “perfect [sleeping] nook for a baby.”
Aside from her DIY home, La Rue also managed to carve out a new career as a tie-dye artist, launching her brand Ride or Dye Ojai during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, her YouTube channel has over 26,000 subscribers as she spends her days creating tutorials, teaching workshops and selling her own unique tie-dye pieces.
“My goal is to inspire people to make changes to better their lives and not be afraid to take risks,” the mother of 16-month-old Lasca said.
Despite her suped-up shelter, La Rue said she and her daughter “do everything outside.”
“That’s the best way for a kid to grow up.”
