Genesis of a Renegade Adventure

I imagine everyone loves going on vacation. What’s not to love about shirking responsibility for a while and relishing your personal brand of fun and freedom from morning till night? Throw in the indulgence of new flavors, exciting adventures, and shameless relaxation, and it’s no wonder vacation is a life-giving elixir for the hard-working soul.

Yet I often hear people quip, whether around the proverbial water cooler or even waiting for a home-bound flight with bags full of dirty laundry, “Traveling is fun, but I’m always glad to get home.” Or, “I can only take so much vacation before I need to get back to my routine.”

I don’t relate.

Maybe I’m lazy by nature, but I truly believe I could be on vacation all the time and not miss my current routines. Is that absurd? It’s not that my post-vacation returns to reality are all depressing drudgery and “back to the grind,” so-to-speak. I mean, I like my Real Life. My family is awesome, we live in a comfortable home, I can make my own work schedule. It’s just that I would prefer to be on vacation, you know, doing all those awesome things I described above. Even after I’ve already been on vacation.

For Gary and me, most of our wacky adventure ideas and bigger travel dreams have been born in that wistful twilight we experience at the denouement of a sublime getaway. Once, while taking the scenic route home from a short trip to Astoria on the Oregon coast, we daydreamed about renovating a vintage trailer, a thought the likes of which had never crossed our minds before. Before we pulled into our driveway a few hours away, I had identified my target on Craigslist and within the week brought “Lulu” home as my summer project.

For the last few summers, our family has been taking road trips in a rented Class C motorhome. We fell in love with the RV lifestyle on that first trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton in 2016 as we discovered how a self-contained travel unit embodies a unique level of freedom—in both the capacity to relax and move about in transit and to have all your gear along and ready for any spontaneous adventure. We also found the environment highly conducive to family bonding. And so it was at the end of our next trip through Arches, Canyonlands, and Zion National Parks, while savoring the few remaining drops of that blissful travel tonic on the long road home to Portland, Oregon from southern Utah that my husband Gary gave birth to another little seed of a crazy idea.

What if we didn’t have to go home so soon and could keep these moments of euphoric family fun and adventure going? There is so much to see and do and experience and learn in this wonderful country. What if we took a proper amount of time—a whole year—to live in an RV together and see all 50 states? Is that crazy? Is it possible?

With Gary at the wheel of our little temporary home speeding down the highway, I got out my notepad and we started brainstorming. (He’s the Idea Man, I’m all about Plan & Execute!) Questions: Why would we do this? Where would we visit? What would need to happen to make it feasible? The answers seemed vaporous at first but ideas started to take root as our belief in them grew. We theorized that three years would allow us ample time to prepare properly, and our kids would be at ideal ages. The dreaming had begun.

And then we simply allowed this seed of an idea to breathe. We gave it time and space to either germinate or wither and fade. And with our cautious but open-minded nurturing it grew into a real possibility and then slowly began to flourish into a solid plan.

We are an ordinary family, determined to live an extraordinary life. Even if it means taking a renegade path, which sometimes it does! We invite you to join us along our journey as we share our stories and inspirations, challenges and triumphs, travel tips, and ideas. Our sincere hope is that we inspire others to develop outrageous ideas and follow dreams that call to you. Please join our community and share this extraordinary adventure with us!