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 no other hobbies going on, and available evenings where I’m tired of being online and looking at screens all day I finally had the chance to give this a try.  I visited the local recycling center and pawed through the various piles in search of interesting shapes.  I came home with roughly a 150 lb “sculpture starting kit” and began looking for something to come out of it.  Dumpster the Junkyard Zombie Cat was the first to emerge and then Gearhead van Helsing (the misinformed vampire cat killer) arrived to be shocked at the unexpected discovery of a zombie cat.

I’ve really enjoyed building these. The process is probably the most purely creative thing I’ve done.  It’s not logical, sequenced, or based on many restrictions or requirements (other than size & weight of the materials I can accomodate with my garage, tools, and ability).  When it comes time to attach two things together there’s no website or manual that I can reference for how to position them long enough to get a weld in place - it’s all up to me to figure it out based on the items I have on hand.

Both of these pieces emerged organically with no preconceived notions.  It’s kind of fun to answer the “what are you building?” questions with “don’t know yet!”

I have no idea what will become of these when it’s time to get back on the road, but that’s really not the point. Worst case they’ll go back to the scrapyard from whence they came, having served the purpose of keeping my creative juices flowing over the cold winter.

Dumpster the Zombie Cat

Dumpster the Zombie Cat

Dumpster the Zombie Cat

Gearhead

Gearhead Meets Zombie

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 conversation skipped ahead at a faster pace than it would have as he started asking more detailed and in depth questions about what we had done and where we had gone.

Reflecting back later two things occur to me. The first is how cool it is to be able to be “that family” by having a family-based story to tell.  Our year on the road was about more than just seeing wonderful places and meeting great people.  It was a shared experience that gives us a shared family identity - to the point of having our own logo..;).  We will always be able to say that we were “that family who took a year-long road trip in an RV.”.  No matter if we are able to again shake free of this suburban life and get on the road again for more adventures - no one can take away the fact that we’ve already done it and it changed who we were.

As I kept thinking I had to ask - why is that unusual?  Why is it that the relatively simple and low-risk experience of a long road trip enough to establish us as “that family”?  It seems that this idea of a family identity is something we’ve lost as a culture.  We used to have pioneer families who truly depended on each other for survival.  We used to have farming families with barns emblazoned with “Joe Smith and Sons”.  We used to have families like The Flying Walendas who made big headlines with amazing family feats of aerobatics. We used to have tradesmen who took on their children as apprentices and turned the business over to them when they wanted to retire.

It makes me wonder if, in our current age, we’ve become less of a true family unit than a collection of differently-aged people “trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste” (as Erma Bombeck is quoted as saying).  With lengthened school schedules, multiple extracurricular activities, long workweeks, and short vacations, is the family unit bound only by a half-hour shared around a dinner table?  Or is it less than that - a shared Google calendar?

No answers here. Just a profound sense of thankfulness for the year we were able to eke out of our lives and spend together as the “Boyinks4Adventure” and the hope that more families will seek out experiences that set them apart as “that family” in their circle of friends and family.

That Family Jeeping in Moab

One of That Family forgot her Sunglasses

Working together as That Family

That Family in South Texas

That Family in Philly

That Family in the Outer Banks

That Family at the Grand Canyon

That Family in Arches National Park

That Family in the Olympic National Forest

That Family in Salt Lake City, Utah

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 with a pool, places with big inflatables, etc.

Last year while we were traveling Data’s birthday came while we were in Atlanta.  The plan was some traveling Grandparents were going to stop by and treat him to some special activities.  Then the big ice storm hit, Grandparents couldn’t make it in due to the weather and his birthday turned into a crappy little storebought cake and a Redbox movie.  He was disappointed but handled it well.

This year we were inclined to make it up to him a bit and splurge on a party for him and his friends.  It got a bit delayed due to work schedules and life schedules, but today found us playing laser tag, eating pizza, playing snow football, eating ice cream cake and playing Uno Attack. 

Happy 15th Data!  And yes, I know what this means.

Drivers.

Training.

Data and Storybird in the new Teen Room

Data and friends playing Laser Tag

Gathering by the leaderboard - we had some top (and bottom) scores

Eating pizza

Playing snow football

Playing Snow Football

Thawing by the space heater

Playing Uno

Snow detrius

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 year.  But overall it’s been - and continues to be - tough to be back in a stationary house especially with winter setting in here in Michigan.  There hasn’t been much snow yet so outdoors has been a depressing brown and cold environment with nothing to point a camera at.  Affordable entertainment options (especially for a family without many wintertime outdoor enthusiasts… middle-aged female ones anyway) are few during a Michigan winter.  Many evenings I am physically restless, tired of being online, not wanting to look at screens any longer, eyes too tired to read a book, no projects to go noodle around with in the garage, and reluctant to bundle up to go outside and walk around the neighborhood I’ve lived in for 15 years. Before and during our travels we read the blogs of other traveling families with great interest - both in hopes of meeting up with them and as research for interesting places to visit.  Now it’s hard to keep reading those blogs as reading about their explorations and adventure only reminds us of how stationary we are.

Make no mistake; if you are planning a similar adventure for your family one outcome may be the inability to return to life as you knew it.  While we’ve seen some families be done and ready to be off the road after a period of travel, for us the trip was life changing.  We are no longer as happy if not traveling and want to get back into that mode as soon as we can.

So - what have we been doing since becoming stationary suburbanites?

• We cleaned out the trailer and managed to still find inside storage for it at a nearby farm.  The barn had paved floors and the owners kept mice traps set and attended to so we felt good about getting it tucked away out of the snow (and out of the driveway) while we’re off the road.
• We’ve done some precursory research into the housing market to see if selling the house was feasible or if we would need to consider renting it out instead.  At this point we intend to try and sell - mainly to be done with the mental load of home ownership.
• We’ve paid down a bit of the debt we incurred while on the road and continue to do so with a goal of being debt-free the next time we hitch up.
• My work laptop needed replacement after 4 years, and since I’ll be getting rid of my desktop as part of our ultimate move to full-time travel I wanted the best and most mobile laptop I could get.  I ended up jumping from the PC world to the Mac world with the purchase of a MacBook Air. It’s been several weeks and I’m finally feeling like I know how to get around it.  I’m loving the lack of weight and heat and how small my “office” can be now.
• I spent a week in New York City for a work-related conference.
• I just returned from 5 days in Chicago on a business trip.  I missed having the family along but it was refreshing to be back in exploratory mode for a little while.
• I have a client project almost set to launch, after that’s done I need to revise my book as that will be much easier to do on the bigger desktop screens.
• We moved my main office desk and desktop PC up from my basement (cave) office and found room for it in the corner of the living room.
• Continuing in the vein of “let’s use this floor space differently” we put both the kids beds in the smallest of our three bedrooms.  It’s like our bunkhouse fifth wheel trailer, just bigger.
• By having the kids sleep in the same room it freed up the middle bedroom to become a “teen room”.  We repainted it and moved another desk, their schoolwork, instruments and games in there.  Now when they have friends over they have a place to hang out that isn’t someone’s bedroom.  While quick to describe this project took several weeks (and help from family) to accomplish.
• We’ve done an initial pass through our “stuff” and hauled a large load of clothes, household items and bit of furniture to Goodwill.
• The kids are getting a lot of “friend time” reconnecting with their local friends.
• The kids are getting caught up on their orthodontia.  Data is close to getting his braces off.  Storybird isn’t and we’re not sure yet how she’ll work out of hers once we’re traveling again.
• We’ve all gotten caught up with Doctors appointments.
• We’ve met with another local family thinking about a similar trip and talked about our experiences.
• We’ve attended several family holiday events - taking along the laptop with a slideshow of about 200 images from our year.
• We’ve found local high-school plays and free college concerts to attend. We’ll be watching for more of these.
• MsBoyink is prepping for a couple days away helping her Mom after some surgery - knowing in the future being able to do so might be difficult.
• MsBoyink has gone on a “learn how to cook better” mission in hopes of keeping us healthier and breaking the boredom of eating the same meals all of the time. She’s checked out cookbooks, watched YouTube videos on knife usage, and has instructed me to find my whetstone.
• We’ve tried to keep our Christmas very modest, using just our tree-topper and buy small gifts of either consumables or experiences so there isn’t more stuff to get rid of in the spring.

I write this list as much for us as anyone - it’s good to read through it and remind ourselves that we have made valuable use of our downtime.  It’s too easy to feel like we’ve simply returned to life as we knew it and feel like we’ve done nothing significant to prep ourselves for getting back on the road.

I won’t say it’s been good to be home.  I’d rather just have pretended all of this…baggage….didn’t exist and just hitched the trailer up and headed south & west again.  We’re still hoping that will be the case come late April / early May.

Merry (modest) Christmas!

New office spot in living room

The pile is smaller!

Unloading the trailer

Dining room pile

Kitchen pile

Living room pile

The bunkhouse

2nd Bedroom - before

2nd Bedroom - after

Downtown Chicago at Night

Human Hotel Hive

Angles

Watchtower

Tire Store

Merchandise Mart

Elevated

Vintage Sound

Holiday squares

Ground Zero Rebuild

Times Square

Tourist Pose

No Rocketts in Sight

NYC Church

Skyline as viewed from Staten Island Ferry

The Grand Dame

Hey Dum Dum - I want Gum Gum!

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 down, a perspective type view, and often a water feature) can be in a photo.

I think my favorites are from New Mexico (for the sheer scale and color) and Arizona (almost as good color-wise but with great natural features to frame in the photo as well).  I can’t rule out my own West Michigan however - if not purely for sentimental reasons.

Take a look, and see what you think.  What do you think the best areas of the country for sunrises and sunsets?

Sunset in Mobile, AL

Sunset in Balmorhea, TX

Sunset over RV's in Canyon Lake, TX

Sunrise over City of Rocks, NM

Sunset over City of Rocks, NM

Sunrise in Columbus, OH

Sunrise in Comer, GA

Sunset in Deming, NM

Sunset in Deming, NM

Sunset in Erie, PA

Sunset in the Finger Lakes area of NY

Easter sunrise over the Grand Canyon

Sunset over the Grand Canyon

Sunrise in Hunting Beach, SC

Sunset in Klamath, WA

Sunset in Klamath, WA

Sunset over Lake Abiquiu, NM

Sunset in Ludington, MI

Sunset in Madison, FL

Sunset in Mesa, AZ

Driving into the sunset in mid Texas

Sunset in the Outer Banks, NC

Sunset in Pacifica, CA

Sunset in Panama Beach, FL

Sunset at Picacho Peak, AZ

Sunset in Port Angeles, WA

Sunset in Richmond, VA

Sunset in Scottsdale, AZ

Sunset on the Skyline Trail, VA

Sunset on Virgina Beach, VA

Sunset on Virginia Beach, VA

Sunset in Winslow, AZ

Sunset over the Yellowstone River

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 actually among my favorite because we were all in the same space without the distractions of email, Twitter or Facebook and having a shared experience as a family. But the trip was about more than just moving down the highway from campground to RV park to campground and in this latest “Lessons Learned” entry I’ll look at what we learned about sightseeing and entertainment once we were setup in a location.

Lesson Learned

• It looked like (and often felt like) we were on vacation and people often made recommendations for entertainment that made more sense for vacationers.
• Vacationers have higher budgets with higher burn rates for that money because they are trying to cram as much into their 1 or 2 weeks off.
• We weren’t on vacation and didn’t have the budget to support weekly admission-based activities for the family.
• We did create a list of fun stuff we had done before and wanted to repeat, or oddball activities that we had never done (Jeeping in Moab, UT,  a spring training game in AZ,  a rodeo in UT, a roller derby in AZ, etc). For these “special” events we were willing to pay admission or other costs.
• When paying admission most places a 14 yo is charged the adult rate.  Some places start charging adult rates at 13.
• 2/3 of the trip was not in the typical camping/vacationing season so many attractions were closed down. The other 1/3 they were often too busy.
• A National Parks Pass was a great purchase saving us hundreds of dollars in park entrance fees (and saving us from waiting in longer entrance lines).
• We had a museum pass with hundreds of reciprocal agreements with other museums (getting you either free or discounted admission).  This was a good idea and we got our money’s worth but we burned out on museums.
• In the future we’ll buy a zoo pass for the reciprocal agreements instead of a museum pass.
• Big cities like San Francisco have so much going on that we didn’t need to pay to do much extra (but still had to ride the cable cars..)
• We really enjoyed finding little known, little marketed things to see like the Ringing Rocks of Pennsylvania - which we only learned of because a local mentioned it.
• Another fun thing to do was truck our bikes to the top of long hills and then coast down, with MsBoyink picking us up at the bottom.
• Roadside America was a great source for free or cheap attractions like Tinkertown, the President Walk,  Ferris Wheels, etc.
• We often went out of our way to meet up with people so kids could just play & adults visit (other nomads, homeschoolers, web people, or Jeep people)
• Kids can find entertainment in the simple: A broken down ski-ball machine, a tire swing, a ping pong ball, a dilapidated mini golf course or an old playground.
• Local newspapers are still worth picking up for learning about upcoming events.  Finding that same information on the internet is more time consuming and less successful.
• We didn’t geoocache as much as we expected.  It just didn’t fit.  When you’re new to an area there’s usually obvious stuff to do and geocaching is great for finding the hidden gems when you’ve done the obvious things.
• We didn’t bike as a family as we had hoped but the bikes still allowed the kids to have freedom in campgrounds.
• Our family loved Library days - we’d often spend the better share of a day at one even tailgating in the parking lot for lunch.
• We sometimes stayed in places due to the lack of distractions - for when schoolwork and work needed catch-up time.

Splurging on a Jeep rental in UT

Camping with Jeep Friends in NM

Storybird loved this tire swing in Carlsbad, NM

Data and Boyink after a downhill coast in NM

Ringing the Rocks in PA

Storybird on Ferris Wheel in NV

Kids played for hours on an old ski-ball machine in ID

Storybird meets author Louis Sachar at a free festival of books in AZ

Data attends a Spring Training game in AZ

Hearing local music at a free event in Chico, CA

Riding the cable cars in San Francisco

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 families:

Q: “How do you know when you’re a fulltime (traveling) family?”
A: “When you have photos of yourself by every national landmark, monument and park and you’re wearing the same thing in all of them.”

RV’s don’t have unlimited space so choosing a wardrobe is a puzzle.  Since we didn’t have the budget to go to Cabellas and buy everything new we tried to start out with what we had and adjust as we went on.  Here’s what else we learned along the way:

Lessons Learned

• Just because people “go South for the winter” doesn’t mean it doesn’t get cold down there. We ended up buying winter coats in Raliegh, NC
• Spending more on coats with guarantees makes sense for active families with teens.
• Avoid white as much as possible.  Between the lifestyle and the changing quality of the water at laundromats our whites have not stayed white.  The other benefit to minimizing your whites is you’ll have fewer separate loads to deal with.
• Think and pack in layers.
• Temps get colder as elevation increases - pack layers if daytripping to higher elevations.
• Use sweats for pajamas so they can be worn in public in a pinch.
• We needed full-brim hats when we got to the west.  Columbia versions that are sufficing for now, but they aren’t perfect (brims too floppy in the wind, fit for MsBoyink not great, etc).  At some point I hope to get Tilley hats instead.

In addition to (and somewhat as a result of) those lessons learned MsBoyink and I are now moving to a “personal uniform” approach to our wardrobes with multiples of pants and t-shirts in the same color and then just some different top layers - but with everything coordinating.  Our goals are to spend less time worrying about finding a matching outfit and to make shopping for new easier by just replacing the common item and working within a very specific color scheme. I’ve detailed my approach on my personal blog.

Eating

Eating presented a learning curve in shopping, preparation, and consumption.  For shopping - when you are constantly on the move you rarely shop at the same store twice.  For food preparation the trailer had a fully-equipped kitchen until part way through when the oven died. We made do with the remaining microwave, crock pot, electric griddle, electric skillet, and a propane camp stove carried in the truck. 

For consuming - the mechanics of eating inside the trailer proved trickier than expected (we had removed the trailer dinette in favor of some freestanding chairs assuming we’d just eat outside at picnic tables).  But we experienced poor weather, parks without tables, and pesky insects that kept us inside eating off cutting boards as trays. 

Lessons Learned

• When shopping at a new store go to customer service and get a rewards card application.  You get the discount immediately and prices could be ridiculous otherwise.
• There is an iPhone app to store and track the discount cards - sometimes the stores could just scan my iPhone screen instead of the card.
• Some stores are part of larger networks and if they were the cards we had already signed up for would work.
• Pre-cooked sausage links are regional.
• While Walmart is evil in many ways the mostly standard layout is a respite in a lifestyle of constant change
• We left too late in the season to find farmers markets.
• We got tired of sandwiches and wraps while out sightseeing - so carrying a small propane stove in the truck gave us a way to have hot meals and coffee while away from the trailer.
• The Starbucks “Via” instant coffees are pretty decent - much better than the Folgers/Maxwell House singles.
• Adding Ramen noodles and chicken breast to a pack of frozen veggies makes a pretty good stir-fry
• Having a crock pot supper waiting at the trailer after a long day of being out sightseeing is really, really nice
• The occasional splurge on a meal out to taste the local flavors is well worth it
• You don’t have to eat around a table
• You can pull out a drawer and place a cutting board on top if it for a quick place to eat (or use a laptop).
• The more you eat while sitting on the main trailer furniture the more you can expect it to suffer from food stains.
• Living as a family in RV provided plenty of “family time” - so we didn’t sweat meals not eaten simultaneously.

Fresh Seafood in Outer Banks, NC

Prepping a meal on the truck

Tailgating in Philly

Poor pic of sampling at Cheesesteak in Philly

Storybird sampling spreads in Cooperstown, NY

Storybird samples a fresh pretzel in Savannah, GA

Eating outside with friends in the San Antonio TX area

Huckleberry ice cream in Wallace, ID

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 words. School. Church. Both of these words have meanings that can include physical stick-and-bricks buildings.  Our year on the road had so very little to do with buildings.  Instead, we need to talk about what’s expected to take place within those buildings. Learning, rather than school.  Worship, rather than church.  How did we do there?

Learning

We’ve always been homeschoolers.  This, in addition to working online, was half the lifestyle that put this crazy notion of full-time travel into our heads in the first place.  But that word - homeschooled - is a big bucket word, a bucket that gets filled from sources with vastly different ideas about how to educate your kids.  There is a continuum of approaches to homeschooling - on one end are families that basically replicate the school experience at home with dedicated rooms, purchased curriculum, desks and strict schedules.  At the other end are people who identify as “Unschoolers” which Wikipedia defines as

...a range of educational philosophies and practices centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including play, game play, household responsibilities, work experience, and social interaction, rather than through a more traditional school curriculum.

We’ve always been somewhere in between those extremes, moving towards one or the other based on the kid’s ages, what season it was, or what curriculum was of interest. 

When we were prepping to go on this trip MsBoyink was getting stressed because she wasn’t getting the kid’s schooling planned as she normally did.  I had this vision of us hunkered down in the trailer, with Yosemite visible out the window, but not being able to go explore it because some empty spaces in a workbook hadn’t been filled in yet.  Why not be alot more like unschoolers for the year, letting the context of our life and location provide the learning opportunity?  Worst case, what, they’re behind a year in some way compared to their age-mates?  But what will they have gained?

I pleaded the case and it was accepted by the judge and jury. We still weren’t complete unschoolers however.  We packed along a number of historical fiction books and also wanted Data and Storybird to have a more formal math program curriculum for the year.  We didn’t nail the latter until we were into the trip for a few months, sourcing a Math-U-See program for Data (which he started around the first of the year) and Teaching Textbooks for Storybird (which she started in March).  Both kids finished their math curriculum by the end of August.

Past that?  It’s hard to even know where to begin with what we learned. But I’ll try:

Lessons Learned

• Constantly-changing locations improved our wayfinding skills.  Storybird especially improved in this area by practicing finding her way back to the trailer in different campgrounds.
• Oddball things like a scavenger hunt for Presidential statues on a blustery cold day became great learning opportunities that still stick with the kids.
• A smartphone is handy for getting more info online while you are in the moment, in the location. For example - while looking at the statue for a given president I would call up the Wikipedia page about him and read off the basics of his life & career.
• East-coast Civil War sites were a mixed success. Data appreciated them, while Storybird got “warred out” and wanted to learn history that wasn’t about men dying.
• Ranger programs at state and national parks were awesome (and free) learning times, but for much of our trip we were out of season for them.  Or they had been trimmed in budget cuts
• The kids didn’t blog as much as we hoped they would. Storybird journaled for the first half of the trip but overall we fell behind in the practice of writing.
• Museums were also a mixed success.  We had a pass that got us free or reduced-cost admission to many museums but our kids seemed at an awkward age - too old for “kids museums” and too young for general-age museums. Some were great, and some were a total waste of money.
• New location, places to explore, and no TV on-board can be great motivators for us all to get out and learn about the area.
• There were still days I had to take books away and kick kids out of the trailer to get outside time (Readers!)
• Storybird bought books in different locations to learn more - a seashell identification guide, cacti identification guide, local stories from the Outer Banks, Arizona women in history, etc.
• Geography and the natural sciences are best learned while traveling.  There is no substitute for being there.
• Formal learning time is hard to come by while full-time traveling.
• We learned to expect the unexpected, and be flexible enough to embrace it when it happens.  Moments like this where among my favorite of the trip.
• I had to learn to be willing to stop working at times and be pulled out to go see what the kids found - birds nesting in a cactus, a dead rattlesnake, etc.
• Learning is a skill that can be improved - thinking to ask “I wonder why that thing has that name?” and then immediately setting about to find the answer was something we got better at as the trip went on.
• Travel/sightseeing/busy days need to be balanced with quiet/do nothing/read/reflect days

Church/Faith/Being Missional

We are a Christian family, and leaving our home church behind for a year was tough. We had thoughts of staying connected via the podcast, but found that between time-zone shifting schedules, iffy internet connections, and not wanting to sit still long enough to listen to an hour-long audio file made that tough.  We also had the goal of being more “missional” in our living - finding places to volunteer like soup kitchens, rescue missions, etc.

Lessons Learned

• The trip was a great time to talk about different denominations and how I was comfortable going to any church that based itself on the Apostles Creed.
• We went to 15 different churches, and worshiped with Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Bible churches.
• We went to churches where we comprised 1/3 of the congregation (and MsBoyink was called into duty to play “the pianer”) and churches where we watched the pastor teach on a large video screen with 500 other people in the room.
• We took communion in a number of ways, including kneeling around an altar with a priest in robes serving real wine if you wanted.
• We experienced Easter at a sunrise service at the Grand Canyon - an awesome experience.
• One advantage of our 8-week stint of camphosting was being able to attend the same church for that time. We didn’t “shop around” - just picked one and made it work.
• During the summer months churches tend to be running on skeleton crews - so things like designated greeters and teen programs won’t be available.
• Churches as a whole are hard to find and choose between.  Their websites (if they have one) are usually terrible.  They don’t have their service times on their answering machines. They answer the phone with “Hello?  Who is this?” They don’t make it easy for a complete newcomer to know how to dress and where to go.
• Church life while travelling is just tough. As a good friend put it, “It isn’t about going to church. It’s about being part of a church.”
• Being intentionally missional was tough. Our near-constant movement made it hard enough to find & schedule serving/volunteer opportunities that we didn’t do it
• We did, however, become more deliberate in being proactive in small “in the moment” ways - stopping to help people push an out of gas truck, giving jumpstarts, packing extra soup & bowls in hopes of being able to give some away, etc.
• On a sunny, clear morning in a spot with a beautiful natural view & wildlife around it was hard to feel the need to drive to a building & go inside to worship God.
• The trip provided enough reading time that the kids and MsBoyink each read completely through the Bible while gone.
• On our next leg of travel we’ll slow the pace down in hopes of making volunteer & service opportunities easier to find.
• While we had less formalized worship over the year, we definitely experienced God through the wonder and variety of the natural world.

Using sea-shell guide she bought with her allowance money on Virginia Beach

Data weighs and measures at a museum in Raleigh, NC

Storybird on the microscope at a museum in Raleigh, NC

Figuring out a sundial in Richmond, VA

Learning G. Warren's role in the Gettysburg battle in PA

Doing a Jr. Ranger program in the Petrified Forest of AZ

Learning about rattlesnake mating habits in AZ

Touching a piece of the World Trade Center in SC

Big church service in Buckhead, Atlanta, GA

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 struggling to find a way to fund it.

While traveling we had six streams of income:

• Workamping.
• Activities for some of our sponsors
• Sales of our ExpressionEngine (software that powers websites - including this one) training materials.  We have a book available in print and electronic versions as well as some screencasts.
• Affiliate income from a few select sources including (as you might guess) sales of ExpressionEngine licenses.
• ExpressionEngine classes.
• Web development for clients through Boyink Interactive.

Workamping
Overall the engagement provided only a token stream of money but rather allowed us to slow our spending on gas/campgrounds and freed up time for doing client work. I’ll leave you find the other “lessons learned” in the complete post linked to above.

Sponsorships
We’ve been asked a lot about our sponsors.  I think many people see an RV as a big empty rolling billboard and hope they can sell ad space on it and make an otherwise financially impossible trip do-able.  I think that would be a tough sell - if you can’t measure the impressions of an ad, if you can’t track inquiries it triggers, if you can’t provide demographics for the people who will see it, you’ll have a hard time selling the idea of a high-priced ad.

For us the sponsorships mostly started with companies we already had existing relationships with.  Garmin is a client, ExpressionEngine is software we use and wrote a book about, etc.  Even then, I’d say overall they were a failure.  In one case we didn’t write as many blog posts for them as we should have. In another case we video recorded & submitted some user interviews that never got edited & posted to the web, and then the whole plan of doing those monthly fell apart. 

Lessons Learned

• Sponsorships will be easier and make more sense if your trip has higher purpose (philanthropic, missional, or sales-based) that potential sponsors can buy into.
• Putting logos on your rig won’t be enough - you’ll need to create web content or build community around the sponsor product by attending or creating events as you move around.
• Potential sponsors are going to want a schedule, a list of cities, some kind of a plan for what you intend to do - which may be at odds with the type of unplanned, serendipitous trip you have in mind.

Online Sales
The book and screencast sales took a lot of upfront production effort (we spent a significant part of 2010 updating the book before we left, it was actually a main driver of our launch schedule) but once in place sell with little to no involvement.  The affiliate sales are almost the same, although returns will start to slip if I don’t periodically publish new articles with affiliate links.  Income from these isn’t enough to live on, however, so I still needed to do client work and classroom training.

Lessons Learned

• What people call “passive income” is often really “delayed income” in that you do a lot of work upfront but don’t see the financial returns until sometime later.
• Passive income streams are awesome but aren’t predictable, require substantial prework and weren’t enough to sustain us.
• This type of income can often be more profitable than straight “bill by the hour client work” - but only over long periods of time.
• We want more of this type of income on our next leg of travel.
• There are many reasons to distrust PayPal, but it does provide an easy way to get paid while traveling.

Classroom Training
Over the course of our year on the road we did ExpressionEngine classes in Atlanta GA, Richmond, VA, Scottsdale, AZ and San Francisco, CA. 

Lessons Learned

• Of all of our income streams the classes had the most impact on our trip because we had to know where we were going to be at a certain time. Other than the classes and a couple scheduled visits with family we never had any other reason to worry about where we were going to be and when - we just chose our direction based on what was around that we wanted to see and what the weather was like.
• Inclement weather can turn kill the profits from a week of classroom training.
• From an income perspective we experienced mixed success - from little better than breaking even to doing reasonably well.
• Financials aside, we still love doing the classes for many reasons - cool people, great conversations, lots of eating out, seeing past students be wildly successful, seeing new business partnerships arise between students and more.
• While we intend to keep doing the classes in some fashion we’re also exploring other training delivery options.

Client Work
Our most significant source of income for the past year was still “bill by the hour” (or by the project) client work.  Websites like this one were coded up while sitting in public libraries, outside national parks or in coffee shops across multiple states.

Lessons Learned

• It worked best if a given day was either a travel day, a sight-seeing day, or a work/school day.
• Moving west allowed exceptions to that, as I mostly stayed on Eastern time, getting up in the 5:00 hour and getting a solid day of work in before noon, leaving the afternoon to explore.
• We had to be purposeful about finding a place to be that had internet service so that I could work.
• Clients didn’t mind me being mobile and in fact found great interest in asking “where are you today?” when communicating.
• Worries about being too distracted with sight-seeing were kept in check by the giant sucking sound of the checking account.
• The flexibility of RV-based travel is awesome - for all of the issues we had with our workamping experience it remains a viable option for times when the financials are tight and work is piling up.
• Freestanding furniture in the RV helped - on heavy work days I could face a chair into a corner to tune out the rest of the family.
• Some days I had to either kick the family out for the day or leave myself to get a solid focused day of work in.
• Headphones are a requirement.
• Given all the variables of location, timezones, and available internet having any idea of a “set work schedule” was impossible.  I ended up working early mornings, weekends and late nights at different times.
• We didn’t boondock as much as others can mainly because I needed to be plugged in to work. In the future a generator or laptop with longer battery life may change that.
• Frustrations with not being able to get out and sightsee were mitigated by remembering that the alternative was being at home in Michigan, in the basement

Overall?
Note what you don’t see in that list of income streams - and that’s income from the rental of our house.  When we looked at the expected costs of taking this trip we decided we could make it without renting the house (doing so also would have necessitated a re-mortgage as it would no longer be an owner-occupied dwelling).  We decided instead to see if our family adventure could also be a blessing to someone else so found a friend who could benefit from a year of living in our home rent-free.  She paid utilities, sorted & forwarded our mail, and took care of any little repairs that came up. 

It worked, but we also had a major and unexpected trailer repair come up (it needed a new roof).  We came home with a much bigger balance on our credit card than we want.  Paying that off is one of our winter goals, and between that and selling our house we hope to have much less overhead on our next leg of travel.  We want to have an “activity fund” for doing more of the fun stuff (water parks, zip-lines, boat tours, etc) that we had to pass on this past year.

Speaking of which, I need to wrap this post up and get back to the work that pays the bills.  If you are considering a similar family adventure I hope here are some nuggets in here you find useful in your planning!

The 'office view' in AZ

Meeting Friends / Work Peers in Mobile, AL

Meeting Friends / Work Peers in Minneapolis, MN

Meeting Friends / Work Peers in Chico, CA

View of the home/office from a tidepooling lunch hour.

Having a ExpressionEngine meetup in Philly.

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 there, so we went with a USB aircard approach (read the details of what we bought). 

With a 3G based approach you are only going to find connectivity where the phone companies think they can make money - so around either busy freeways or population centers.  From a practical perspective this means many of the beautiful natural places in the country will probably not have a signal.  If we wanted to visit a Yosemite, Yellowstone or Grand Canyon we’d look for a private park closer to a population center and offering wi-fi.  This way we’d increase our chances of having a workable signal while keeping us close enough to daytrip into the park.

This approach worked well.  There were only a handful of times when we had no usable signal and had to move strictly to find one. The aircard proved handy. If we were headed out for the day and I wasn’t certain I could find wifi I’d just pull the aircard from the router and tuck it into my backpack. I watched other RV’ers struggle with the stowage, setup and breakdown of a freestanding satellite dish and it looked like a real hassle, especially if it was windy. 

Lessons Learned

• The downtime of visits to natural areas with known internet “dead-zones” can be minimized by staying in a more populated area and commuting in to sight-see
• Most private RV parks offer free wi-fi but more often than not it’s either not working or too slow/unreliable to depend on
• If the park wi-fi isn’t working it’s a fair bet that no one on hand will know how to fix it
• 3G coverage is pretty good around major freeways and population centers
• Libraries are the best place for free wi-fi - they offer quiet with comfortable seating, no expectation that you buy something, and overall faster & more reliable wi-fi than RV parks
• Exterior antennas for both 3G and wi-fi can make the difference between a usable and unusable signal

Technology
Other than the gear required for internet connectivity our technology in the trailer consisted of:

• 2 Windows laptops (my work machine and a shared family unit)
• an external back up drive
• Two cell phones (an iPhone & a non smartphone)
• 3 iPods
• 2 Garmin GPS units (kindly provided by Garmin for our use)
• Cameras - A Nikon DSLR, a Canon P&S (and the iPhone)

For computers - there were many occasions where the family laptop was desired by more than one person at once but the family learned to negotiate for it. In a pinch the kids could also use my iPhone to check their email.  Backups were done both to the external drive and to a cloud-based service.

For music - the iPods were a Christmas gift.  Initially the kids didn’t have their own as I wanted drive time to be family time (I don’t like how as a society we’ve become so disconnected while driving with kids tuned out with headphones on or watching movies).  As the trip went on I realized how many hours we’d be driving and how for many of those hours there just wasn’t much to look at, so we bought iPods and set some rules around their usage.

For route planning - we used a combination of Google maps on the PCs & iPhone and would then plug addresses into the Garmin unit for actual in-car navigation.  Many times we would be in transit while MsBoyink researched destinations on the iPhone.  We did often find that Google map data was out of date or incorrect so learned to double-check against Garmin’s data or confirm addresses via corporate websites.

For photography - I bought a used Nikon D40 DSLR before the trip that served us well.  For video, “throw-away” photos, or during inclement weather I’d usually just use my iPhone.  The Canon point and shoot was only used a few times, mostly when the family was somewhere without me and MsBoyink didn’t want to drag the big DSLR along.

The one piece of tech we didn’t take advantage of yet is an eReader.  We’re all heavy readers and we’ve trucked many books around this past year.  We donate the read ones where we can (either RV park libraries or Goodwill) and have restocked with fresh material at Goodwills or library sales. It’s worked, but it’s time to look to technology to save some weight and make reading easier.  To that end I’ve since purchased a Kindle to experiment with and if we like it will probably buy 2 more.

Lessons Learned

• RV’s are inherently insecure - have multiple backups making sure one is off-site
• 2 Laptops may not be enough as the kids get older and schooling demands increase
• A centrally located “charging center” reduces clutter and keeps track of all the various chargers & cables
• A network attached backup drive would have made for easier and more frequent backups
• It’s OK for kids to “tune out” for portions of drive times - we had lots of family time to make up for it
• Don’t take a trip like this without a great camera to capture the memories of it
• Don’t buy technology for the sake of technology, but rather when it fills a need and can reduce weight/clutter
• Don’t let the urge to record the trip get in the way of enjoying it “in the moment”
• No matter what RV park websites say always call ahead to check availability, price, and state of the wi-fi.
• Before leaving to go visit something like, oh, the Grand Canyon, make sure that you put the SD card back into the camera. Or carry a spare. Or have friends willing to lend you theirs.

While this post covers the gear aspect of internet and technology, it doesn’t talk about the actual process of working while traveling full-time.  I’ll cover that in a future post.

Data using an iPhone

Storybird on a laptop

Boyink sucking up free library wi-fi