So, we dropped the bombshell last week. We are <a href="/articles/personal-updates/the-journey-on">leaving the travel life and moving back to the brick-and-mortar life in my childhood hometown</a>. Believe me, no one is more shocked than us. But it is 100% the right next move. For right now, we have set the plans and are preparing to take action, but we are looking back on our journey and looking forward to what's coming next for us.

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First thing we need to establish off the bat: We do not have ANY regrets about living as nomads. We are not escaping something terrible. We aren't even certain how long we will be brick and mortar people. Travel is something special and unique and I would never ever want anyone to get the wrong impression from this dramatic shift in our living situation.

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The fact is it was a season of our family life. We moved into the camper life in May 2020 and we are getting out of it again just before 2024 begins. Almost 4 years. That's a solid chunk of time. Almost the entire span of elementary school, or of high school. It's basically an entire developmental phase. When we began, Alex worked remotely for a different company, I was taking care of a baby that wasn't even crawling yet, Bennett finishing preschool and prepping for kindergarten, and the world was reeling from the Global Pandemic. Our world was very different on all scales.

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Travel was always something Alex and I wanted to do, domestic and foreign. Taking the leap into this life was something we always needed to do. We felt pigeon-holed into the "normal" life, and we knew that it was possible to live differently. If we hadn't done it, it would have haunted us forever, that damnable question: What if?

Our kids responded to the adventure beautifully. Both were always phenomenal travelers, rarely complaining along the way. We were able to drive, hike, swim, and explore all around this country and that is a wonderful gift we felt we were able to give to Ben. Devin unfortunately won't remember much of it, but he has learned flexibility and that is a gift that will keep on giving. Given this lifestyle Dev is always down for adventure and adaptable to new situations in a way that Ben never was as a toddler. When we get in the car he always wants to know, "Where are we going?"

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We have also, as the adults, the parents, the world-citizens learned so much from this experience. It's pretty unquantifiable and difficult to explain, but we are permanently changed as people. The world feels smaller to us now in the best possible way. A lot of the anxiety of traveling is just nonexistent for us anymore. Most importantly, we just have the confidence that whatever situation we are presented with, we will move through it and be fine. Even the situation we are in now with our busted up fifth wheel... we were obviously furious about the damages, about the interruption to our plans and our expectations for this winter, but within 24 hours we were well on our way to managing our situation in the best way we could. There was no fear, no anxiety, no uncertainty about our ability to manage the situation and be 100% okay on the other side of it. We were mad and sad, but not paralyzed. It just felt like another bump in the road. That aspect of "just going with it" is actually something we have noticed within ourselves a few times in the last year or so, particularly when visiting family. We feel like we move in slow motion compared to everyone else! We would be approached with plans to do something, persistent questions and concerns about time, place, menu, etc. Even typing the words now, I can feel the anxiety rising up in my chest and the fluster of it all. But we were probably frustratingly unflustered about it all every single time. We have grown so accustomed to changes in plans or finding solutions on the fly that the idea of making a full plan seems almost silly.

We just became more comfortable with navigating the unknown. A hugely invaluable lesson in life. There's must more peace to be found not worrying about every little detail along the way. And I know there are probably some people reading this and agreeing and thinking, "Yeah, that's how I am too!" And I love you, but you're probably wrong. Knowing the words, cerebrally understanding the concept of it and actually emotionally and physically embodying it are very, very different. I never really even realized that I wasn't living, thinking, and feeling that way until we recognized it in other people around us and though, "Why are they doing that? That's weird." It was only then we truly recognized what it looked like, how it manifested, and saw it distinctly as something we had moved away from through our travel life. The final, greatest takeaway from the travel life has just been the travel itself. The sights we have seen, the photos we took, the dots on the map we were able to fill in. There is a great sense of accomplishment in just seeing the world out there. This planet is so beautiful and varied, but particularly in broad strokes. Much of the middle of the country bleeds into itself and isn't particularly distinct, but the more you travel across it the more apparent the subtle changes become, and you can see the variance in the landscapes. Not in California. California is totally different. It is basically a microcosm of the entire country in one state. But, in travel we have learned the true landscape of America. Learned of the deserts in Oregon, the rainforest in Washington, the many volcanoes in the southwest, the insanity of snow-packed, impassable roads in June, the magic of warm water, mountain surrounded lakes, and the nearness and beauty of our neighbor to the north, Canada.

We now have favorite places dotted around the continent. We have even more pins for places of interest in our Google map. And we will always suffer the injustice of having favorite foods and restaurants all over the place. Best pizza: Taos Mesa Brewing Company Best wings: LL Creek Bar and Grill, Waycross Georgia Best crab cakes: Waterman's Bar and Grill, OBX, North Carolina Best seafood chowder: Tipsy Tails, New Brunswick, Canada Best lobster: Sou'West, PEI Best Sushi: Pier Sushi, Canyon Lake, Texas Best Brunch food: La Creperie Bistro, Lafayette, Louisiana Best Tacos: Iron Daisy, Tallahassee, FL

We could probably come up with more for that list, but those are just the things that came to mind on the fly. We will forever crave food from all over the place. It has been a hugely rewarding way of life. Not without its low points, because life is never always perfect, but generally speaking it was a beautiful chapter in our family's story. We are destined for more travel, that I know, because it feels so natural to us it will always be something we do, and that too is awesome.

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Where we are now, Alex is working for a different company that is a little less flexible with his time which led to big changes in how and when we could travel with the camper. Nothing that we couldn't overcome, but it changed the game. Quick 1-3 day stays or moving more than once a week was basically no longer an option. We were restricted to Sunday drives, or Saturday and Sunday drives if we were okay with missing out on the "weekly rate" discount at many campgrounds. I am in full homeschool mode, struggling a lot of the time to encourage Ben through his elementary school education. I love what we are doing, and I love my kid, but he is not studious, and achievement oriented in school as I have always been, and it leads to a lot of head butting between us. He's a smarty pants, but he also doesn't care about that fact and therefore doesn't give his best effort and commitment to his tasks. I have also written a draft of a novel that I really want to finish (but have been too distracted and stressed out to do so), I have picked up a hobby of playing the ukelele, become interested in a lot of "from scratch" cooking and homestead adjacent practices of canning, processing meat, etc. and struggle to explore that in the small-scale RV kitchens. Devin is a full-blown kiddo now and is ready for preschool and I truly do not feel that I have enough bandwidth to butt heads with Ben through fourth grade while trying to encourage Devin through either a home-preschool, or kindergarten curriculum. They are just far enough apart in age and experience that the idea of doubling up through lessons feels daunting and I don't feel like I can give my full time and energy to teaching one and then the other. Our entire relationship would become student-teacher and our mother-son relationships would suffer for it. I don't want that at all. Ben is a computer-video game-technology nerd, just like his dad. As such, he struggles to have the space, privacy, and equipment that he would like to have to explore that side of his interests. He got a laptop last year, but he really needs his own proper desk space. He also really wants to explore creating his own YouTube content and creating his own videogames.

Additionally, he has been asking for two years to have a pet bearded dragon. What is a parent to do? I want him to have all of these opportunities and he can't really do either while sharing a small room with his brother and picking up and moving around the country all the time, changing time zones, having unpredictable internet and environments.

We have simply entered the next phase for our family.

Of course, we have vehemently insisted since we left Ohio in 2020 that we would absolutely never return. So, what happened?

Honestly? We can live anywhere. We could make a wonderful life for ourselves anywhere. But, there are a few specific people that are important to us and to our kids that can't be "anywhere". They are in Ohio, and they will remain in Ohio. We could live close and visit sometimes, sure, but why? We could just as easily live close and visit more. Particularly as parents, grandparents, and our own siblings age, the more frequent the visits feel more valuable. Alex and I have both lost a grandparent in the last four years and it was hard to be away during those times.

Furthermore, after four years of figuring out life on the fly and learning new towns, new grocery stores, new parks, new people, it will be really easy to go home and just know what to expect. The same tedium that made us want to escape in the first place, is now a comforting balm to our weary minds. Instead of giving energy to solving day-to-day problems, we can have easy solutions and give our brain power to the projects and experiences that we crave in this new phase of life.

We are looking forward to normal things that we haven't gotten to experience with our boys: public school and it's events, sports (if they want to), music lessons (if they want to), walking downtown for community events, going to parades, going to the county fair, the kids having their own pets, even their own consistent friend groups and peers, hosting holidays with friends and family and spend valuable childhood years with cousins.

Those things didn't feel as important to us four years ago as they do now. It's not that they weren't important, but they were more easily taken for granted. We are genuinely excited to get to bring the people that travel has turned us into back into the regular home-life that we left behind.

We are ready for grown-up friends, kid friends, grown up time, regular schedules, four seasons a year, and all of the traditional hometown glory at least for a little while.

That traveler's flexibility is still sticking with us. As of now our plan is to rent this house for a year and then buy a home in the same town. We are mentally prepared to put down our roots and really get into this phase of adulthood and parenthood. We are however always checking in with ourselves and we are not afraid to pivot if need be. When we began the travel life everyone asked, "How long will you be gone?" We said we didn't know. We said, we expected at least a year, but it could be more- it could be forever. We didn't know. But we trusted that when it was time to stop, we would stop, and if that feeling never came, we wouldn't. We have pretty much the same attitude about moving home. It could be a year, it could be five years, ten years, until both kids finish high school, forever. We don't know. We are committed to the journey wherever it may take us, whether it's up the street or across the country.

Standing in the Road

Travel is Never the Wrong Choice

The Call Home