Welcome to our family travel adventure blog! We are so happy you are here. You might be asking yourself, “Here? Where is here?” Or, “How did I even get here? Who are these people?” Don’t worry, we were asking ourselves this, too. ‘Who are you? Why are you here? How did you get here?” The great thing is, no matter who you are or how you got here, you’re here now. Yay! Now, let’s get this adventure started, shall we?

Since you asked, “Who are these people?”, here’s a little background info about us and why we started this whole crazy blog adventure two decades after blogs were cool. I mean, they’re still cool… right? Well, I can assure you, this one is. That’s because it’s all about what happens when you decide to pack everything you own into a storage unit, buy a reliable car instead of a house, and take your family of four, including your two adorable cats, on an open-ended, Airbnb-style, road-life adventure. 

That’s right, we ditched the norm—no house for us. Well, we didn’t intend to ditch the norm, but we got the call that our landlord’s son needed to move into the house we had been renting for the past five years, so it was time for us to move out. Seriously, though, this adventure started in Southern California in 2022, so there really wasn’t a house for us. Prices were crazy expensive. I’m talking $1.3 million for a three or four-bedroom fixer-upper. Inventory was limited to say the least, so people were asking us to rent their home back to them for three months free of charge if they accepted our offers. It was wild! Rent for a 4-bed, 2-bath standard 1990s house was upwards of $6,000 a month. No joke! Were we ready to be house poor, living in an area we may or may not want to be in, just because it was the only option available at the time? NO! That’s not what we wanted. 

Our kids were eleven and thirteen. They had been sharing a room their entire lives, and we wanted them to have some space to themselves during their teenage years. So renting a small house or apartment was not what we had in mind, nor was buying something small just because that’s all we could find. We prayed about what to do and discussed our options as a family. As I was sitting in the bedroom, isolated because I had COVID-19 for the second time that year, I heard God say to me, “Just drive”. 

“What? Just drive? As in, don’t rent or buy a house? Get an RV and drive around aimlessly?” I questioned.

“Yes. Just drive. Just go. No house, just go. Now is not the time for a house. You just need to go,” He said.

Well, ok then. How was I going to tell this to my amazing hubby? I mean, God has talked to me in the past, and it’s always turned out for the best, and it’s never been what I could have imagined. Maybe I will tell some of those stories later. But when God speaks, I listen! Or at least when I KNOW He is speaking, I do my best to listen. So, I called my hubby in the other room, remember I was isolated in my room with COVID talking to God, the only other being that was allowed in the room with me, and I said, “So, I was praying, and IDK if this is the COVID talking and I have officially lost my mind, or if it was God, but I think it was God. And, He just told me that we are supposed to get a car or vehicle of some sort and go. In other words, pack all this into a storage unit and drive around the country for a bit. So, pray about that and think for a bit and let me know.”

Much to my surprise, it took no time at all before he was on board. Now, if you know my husband, he is not usually Mr. Spontaneous. He likes plans and things to be well thought out. He likes to know what the end result will be and then organize the steps to get there in a ‘proper’ fashion. He is the responsible one in this relationship. I’m much more fly by the seat of my pants, take the adventure, do something new just because I want to, not because I should, or shouldn’t. So when he was all in on this seemingly crazy idea, I was shocked! I mean, I did have God on my side with this one, so I think that helped.

We wasted no time. When I was freed from the bedroom and no longer sick, we headed out to look at RVs and camper vans. We toured all of them. We considered a bus overhaul for a hot minute, but quickly came to our senses and knew we didn’t have the time for that project…yet. One of the kids and I get extremely motion sick, so these homes on wheels were not working for us. Not to mention, God never told me how long we would be gone for. Was it a month, three months, six months…? Surely He didn’t intend for us to be gone for years. Was the RV the right way to go? That was a substantial financial investment for what might be a short-lived experience. It just wasn’t feeling quite right. That’s when it hit us, Airbnbs. We could stay in Airbnbs. This would help us figure out if we even liked traveling together for long periods of time. It would help us determine if we wanted to, and were supposed to, move to another state altogether. It would work well if this was going to be a short adventure for a couple of months to let the housing market cool off (spoiler: it didn’t really —not yet, at least). This Airbnb idea began to feel right. Now it was time to consider what it would be like to put everything we owned into a storage unit and live life on the road full-time, from one Airbnb to the next.

This blog tells the story of our life on the road together, as we travel across the entire United States and portions of Canada. We’d love to share our journey with you and, hopefully, inspire you to get out, explore new places—even in your own city or a neighboring one—and meet new people. Don’t be afraid to try something new, even if it might sound ludicrous at first. You never know, it just might be the best adventure of your life.