Changing the Way We Live

Why oh why would you leave stable jobs to travel the country fulltime? That's a question we get asked and one we have asked ourselves. The answer is simple, to live life day by day, moment by moment. Getting to that answer was quite a journey in itself so if you're interested read on.

In 2008 I (John) had to travel to Seattle for work so Mandi tagged along to make a combo trip out of it. Falling instantly in love with the Pacific Northwest, we were faced with making a change in our lives. We decided that we would be Seattle bound and came up with a multi-year plan to move there debt free. We made lists of apartments, campgrounds, nearby national parks, etc., as we slowly progressed towards that goal. After a couple of years the daily grind was really wearing me down so we were again faced with assessing what we really wanted out of life.

Realizing that there are many more wonderful places in this great country and that the traditional form of retirement will probably not be a reality for our generation, we started to discuss where we saw ourselves ending up. Being campers throughout our marriage, from tents, a Coleman pop-up, and a small 13 foot Scamp travel trailer to a Pleasure-Way camper van, it was obvious we wanted to retire into a camper to travel around North America. Why wait? We began researching the possibilities of going fulltime as a way of life and not just a retirement plan. To our surprise, we found that there are others who have successfully made this change. Fantastic!

The idea of traveling the country as soon as possible instead of during our olden and golden years was solidified. If we decide not to remain living on the road forever then we hope to find the exact place we wish to live our lives, or at least a place to start. Since we both still had traditional jobs and debt we set our targeted launch date to be the end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013.

Bad & Good... or just plain ole luck

There are times when each of us hits a crossroad and we need to alter our course. It had come time for me to make an employment change. Since we want to live a life where we'll need to just roll with it, why not start now? We knew any change could force us to delay our launch date and the employment market was pretty tough so I began focusing on my small application development company at night. As luck would have it, an independent contracting opportunity presented itself and, after 12.5 years of service, I left my day job to be self-employed. A scary step but one that provides the possibility of income while on the road, a necessity for us. This was one of the best decisions we have ever made and an opportunity we will be forever grateful for!

As of this writing Mandi is still working the traditional job but we are several steps into our plan of hitting the road. We found and purchased a Bigfoot 25RQ travel trailer and we consolidated our vehicles into a Ram 3500 to pull it.

We've had this website since 2001 but we never really updated it. We decided to re-design it and use it to chronicle our journey for anyone to follow and hopefully learn a couple of things. We also will be setting up pages related to specific things we feel are necessary or helpful to anyone who is thinking about doing the same. We are not trained in journalism but Mandi would say I have the gift of gab so hopefully there will be some insightful topics. At the least, this site will serve as a journal for us and hopefully some comic relief for you. This is an entirely new experience for us so feel free to contact us with questions, suggestions, encouragement, or stories of your own.