Our Travels

Finding Ways to Keep Busy

2012-02-16T11:46:11+00:00

This site was looking a bit neglected so I thought I’d post one of the ways I’m passing the time while stationary in West Michigan for the winter. While I sold off my hobby Jeeps in preparation for our big trip I still have all my tools which includes a welder. For years I’ve wanted to try some “junkyard art”, making new things out of the various bits and pieces of people’s lives that end up at the scrapyard.

With… View the entire Finding Ways to Keep Busy entry >> (Text and photos).

Being “That” Family

2012-01-24T17:05:02+00:00

I was having a conversation the other day with a guy from church whom I only knew casually. As we were working through the typical “what do you do” type of questions the topic of our big family adventure came up and he suddenly smiled and said:

Oh, you’re that family!

It seems our reputation had, in fact, preceded us. My new friend already knew about us and that we had taken a long road trip as a family. The… View the entire Being “That” Family entry >> (Text and photos).

Happy 15th Data!

2012-01-22T00:00:44+00:00

We’ve never been big on birthday parties. We had a couple when the kids were younger and grew weary of the planning, execution and cost. For many years we’ve instead done “family days” where the birthday person gets breakfast of their choice (anything - even ice cream), a morning activity, lunch out at a restaurant of their choice, and then an afternoon activity.

Since Data has a January birthday we’ve gone to aquatic centers, spent the night at a hotel… View the entire Happy 15th Data! entry >> (Text and photos).

Must Be Good to be Home?

2011-12-17T14:50:04+00:00

As we’ve moved into the holiday season and are re-connecting with family and friends this is the phrase/question we hear a lot: “So, it must be good to be home?” It’s often not even posed as a question, just sort of an assumption with the speaker saying it while nodding their head in anticipation of our agreeing with it.

Except, we don’t.

Yes, it’s been nice to catch up and see people in person that we didn’t see for a… View the entire Must Be Good to be Home? entry >> (Text and photos).

Sunrises & Sunsets

2011-11-24T23:32:36+00:00

I’ve been posting alot of heavy-thinking type posts lately - so let me make up for that.

Here’s one that is meant to be complete eye-candy. I went through all my photos from the trip over the last year and tried to find the best sunrise & sunset photos. It wasn’t easy - as evidenced by the number of them.

It’s amazing to me how beautiful and similar yet different the same basic ingredients (sun either coming up or going… View the entire Sunrises & Sunsets entry >> (Text and photos).

Lessons Learned: Sightseeing & Entertainment

2011-11-22T13:50:22+00:00

This post almost seems silly to write. When you set aside an entire year to travel as a family it’s hard to think of sightseeing and entertainment as an aspect of the trip, rather than the entire reason for it or basis of it. And it’s true - almost every day was a “sightseeing” day, especially if it was a travel day where we had the truck and trailer connected and were moving to a new location. Those days were… View the entire Lessons Learned: Sightseeing & Entertainment entry >> (Text and photos).

Lessons Learned: Clothes & Eating

2011-11-20T23:45:01+00:00

This is the 5th entry in a ‘Lessons Learned’ series attempting to summarize our experience of living on the road for a year in a 5th wheel trailer as a family of four. So far we’ve covered the truck and trailer, internet and technology, making an income, and school/church on the road. In this installment we’ll look at what we learned when it came to clothes and eating.

Clothes

There’s a joke among full-time traveling… View the entire Lessons Learned: Clothes & Eating entry >> (Text and photos).

Lessons Learned: School & Church

2011-11-14T14:05:03+00:00

Continuing our series of “Lessons Learned” entries, in this installment I’ll look at how our year of full-time travel worked in the areas of school and church.

This is really easy to answer - as far as school and church are concerned the year was a total, utter failure.

But I can see you’ve already noticed this blog post doesn’t end here so there must be more to the story. There is, but we need to look past those two… View the entire Lessons Learned: School & Church entry >> (Text and photos).

Lessons Learned: Making an Income While Traveling

2011-11-11T14:17:12+00:00

The question we see asked the most about doing full-time travel as a family is “how do you make money while traveling?”

Stepping back for a moment, one of the reasons we even ever dreamt about long-term travel as a family was that my work in the web development world naturally lent itself to full-time travel. We feel extremely blessed to be coming to our adventure from that position, rather than having the dream of extended travel first and then… View the entire Lessons Learned: Making an Income While Traveling entry >> (Text and photos).

Lessons Learned: Internet & Technology

2011-11-02T11:18:48+00:00

Internet Connectivity
Since I needed to be online to keep an income coming in internet connectivity was important. We’ve seen some people attempt similar trips either assuming they’ll just use free available wi-fi or just tethering an existing iPhone, etc - but those approaches seemed risky to us (we do like to eat). Options included a 3G aircard (or “mi-fi” type unit) or a satellite based approach. The latter involved equipment started at $1500 & went up from… View the entire Lessons Learned: Internet & Technology entry >> (Text and photos).