The Virgin Islands: Nomad Style

"To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”

Quote from the movie, Walter Mitty (if you haven't seen it and you're reading this blog, you must rent it and see it stat--it is the quintessence of life and travel and imagination and I promise you, you need it in your life)

Tonight we set out for a new slew of adventures. We’ll be testing the limits of our travel prowess and improving on what we already know. We’ve traveled a lot this year, and each trip has proven to be a lesson in who we are as travelers and how we can do better. For some, travel is a cherry on top of a well-situated life. For us, however, it’s the necessity that drives life. We must travel. The road must be taken, as we are ever taken with it. And so, we find ways to fit the world into our lives. Currently, we’re cramming it around the edges of what is commonly called “reality.” Our budget fits tight, and the thing to give is comfort in the day to day, not the insatiable wanderlust that grips us. We’re bound to travel, servants indentured to our wandering hearts, except we’re free to decide. And we choose adventure around every corner.

Our perfect life looks like a fully paid-off spot of land in the mountains with a small, but comfortable home on it. This arrangement fits us perfectly. We’ve worked for seven years so far to attain this dream. We’ve lived in multiple renovation homes. We’ve stripped floors, ceilings, carpet, linoleum, and so many unholy things we can’t even tell you about here, because this isn’t the renovation blog and we’re not sure you have the stomach for some of it. And we’ll continue that way. Truly, we’ve seen it all. I’ve cooked in a kitchen with no counters and used the bathtub to obtain all of my water. I’ve run a crockpot in a house that doesn’t have a kitchen or floors. The crockpot just sits in the corner bubbling away, filling the structure with home-ness. And we work away the hours after we get home from work.

A couple years ago, we had projects underway and were trying to make a house (which we’d stripped bare) livable for my sister who was soon to move into it. But we also hadn’t fed the travel monster in quite some time and our anniversary was upon us. We got married in January so travel would always be cheap. That wasn’t the entire reason, but it was a consideration. The wedding was one day, but an anniversary comes every year, you see. So the night before our flight, we worked on a house we didn’t even live in yet. After a full day of work each, we put in the first bathroom sink for the house, we installed the only shower the house would have. We worked until 4am and then slept half an hour on the floor, drove an hour and half to our own home, and set off to see Seattle. We had no idea how tired we were until we began to unwind and rest. It was an awakening of the senses for us. We began to grasp (just a little bit) how important travel is to us. But all we were really seeing was the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not proud to admit this, but we generally work our living space into a state of relative functionality and then live with it until nearly time to sell when we finish all the nagging projects. Where we live has always been about resale value and income possibility for the space we live in. We bought an unwieldy duplex house that was abundantly charming and it saw us through some years when our yen to see things and change the world took us down some dark financial paths. I ended up very sick and the rentability of the larger portion of that house is quite literally what put a roof over our heads for a number of years. Then we collected ourselves and our trip to Seattle was the first time we began to meddle with the travel bug again.

So while many people say they can’t imagine what it would take to move to another country because they’re so settled, we take a different approach. For us, it’s not until we’re entirely settled to the point that we no longer even have debt on the property we own that we can move. We’re inching toward that goal with all our determination and sheer force of will. Once that property sits comfortably as ours, we’ll be able to travel in peace. For us, property ownership and vagabond-style travel are inextricably linked. To others, it looks like we’ve lost our minds and we’re wandering in circles. And that’s okay. We’ve always been outside the box to the extent that we seldom approach the box. We honestly couldn’t find it with both hands and a map.

What we can’t let go of is the way that seeing a new place changes us. We are hopelessly addicted to the way that we become more compassionate, more aware, and more involved in this world each time it shows us a new facet.

We’ve had a banner year for travel. And it came as a shock to us. For eight of the past 12 months, we’ve had at least one trip per month that involved leaving our State and sometimes also the country. With each trip, we’ve honed our travel skills. It all started with a crazy idea to buy tickets to San Diego because they cost only $35 per person each way. So we did. And then we elected not to rent a car to save money. That’s how we became nomads. As nomads, we saw things differently. We took trains, Ubers, free shuttles, an ill-fated tandem bike, and for over 10 miles each day, we used our feet as our primary mode of transportation. Our feet took us places we’d have missed in the comforts of a rental car. And still we picked a few things that we absolutely splurged on in place of that car. I saw grey whales, we toured restaurants and literally ate like kings sometimes, and other times we ate like penny-pinching nomads. We ate at the fifth best restaurant in the world one night, and then dined on cheap beach food the next day, while other days, we skipped meals to cover the cost of something else. Each experience we enjoyed thoroughly in its own right. At the end of the trip, we reluctantly traded our backpacks and road-hungry feet for our former lives as desk jockeys. And doing so brought us to the base realization that we couldn’t keep living that way.

At dinner each night, we’d craft new ideas, new ways to travel. Ideas like folding bikes, hammocks, and even an RV have swirled through our conversations. The rest is history. History I’ll gladly relive in the pages of this blog.

All of it brought us to the brink of life inside our norms, and we’ve cast ourselves headlong onto the world. This trip we’re leaving for tonight is going to be, without any doubt, the most interesting trip we’ve taken so far. And we don’t have a single luxury planned, in fact, all we have is a campground for a few of the nights. The hope of going diving died with our dwindling budget. We seriously considered cancelling the trip, and when we found the plane tickets to be non-refundable, we elected to make this the pinnacle of our travel experiments for 2015.

We will be camping, first at an actual campsite, and later in hammocks in the forest of palm trees beside the sea. I expect we’ll walk more miles on this trip than we’ve ever logged before. We’re certainly not renting a car, not with taxis that cost $2 per trip. We don’t have a sleeping space booked for all of our nights in the Virgin Islands. And we’re not stressed.

A backpack apiece is all we’re carrying, and in them we’ll have a place to sleep and everything we intend for entertainment. Our nomadic hearts will be lulled by the comfortable sense of not knowing what’s coming. I’m packing, planning, and getting myself ready for a trip unlike anything I’ve ever done before. Each step is another step closer to everything we long to become. We’re leaping off the edge of cultural norms and into the delicious unknown of nomad lifestyle. We’ll report how it goes and what we learn along the way. We are the Royal Vagabonds. We live life fully, pressing our limits and discovering our strengths. We indulge when it counts and skimp when it doesn’t. And we’re all the richer for it.

Cheers to the nomad heart, may it long beat with passionate abandon!

Wheels up!

“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. see the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that. Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.” Ray Bradbury

I'm at the airport again. It's becoming more natural, more comfortable. Less stressful. I'm proudly beginning to morph into a seasoned traveler. I've been working on my seasoning this year. Through a number of fortuitous events and moments, we've begun to hone our traveling skills this year. Instead of travel being a once-a-year-I-hope kind of pipe dream full of sand, sunscreen, and tourists, we're finding travel to be a regular occurrence. I love the smell of airplane fuel. I love watching people get ready for the places they're going.

This summer, we'd planned (and saved) to go to Cuba on a trip with Lifetree Adventures. That was our only planned trip for the year except for our typical bare-bones anniversary trip to literally wherever we find the cheapest tickets to. Then a friend got married on the East Coast and Jason was in the wedding. Then my sister moved to Connecticut and I went with her to help her settle in. Then we started to feel confident in our ability to travel and we went to visit friends in Louisiana. And then planned a trip back to the East Coast to visit my sister. (This is the flight I'm waiting for at the airport currently.) And after that, it just kept rolling. A road trip to visit grandparents for Thanksgiving. A road trip to pick up a friend from Africa who's moved to the USA. A visit from a friend from Cuba. And our confidence burgeoned and we bought a stupidly low fare to the Virgin Islands for December.

There are typical travel tips: Pack light, arrive early, eat smart, etc. But there are things no one ever tells you. Things we've been learning on our once-a-month travel excursions this year.

First and foremost; be flexible. Not just with canceled flights and TSA. That's small fries. Everyone needs to be able to handle slight setbacks. I mean large-scale flexibility. Look at a map and figure out where you can find the cheapest flight to, and go there. Don't set your destination in your mind ahead of time. It'll cost you in a lot of ways.

Be flexible about travel dates. This is the hardest one for Americans. We like scheduling and our jobs require it. We like neat plans packed in around our busy lives. But your busy life will have to move around a bit if you want travel to be a priority. Please remember I'm speaking from the perspective of someone married to a 2-weeks/year vacation allotment person. You have to get good at working things around each other. If tickets are cheapest on Thursdays, you're going to either jump at the chance and take a couple days off, or you'll miss out. We've even begun working things around our travel schedules. For example, when we went to a dear friend's wedding on the East Coast, Jason's company allowed him to make it a business trip to two of their offices in the State the wedding was in. I drove quite literally all over Pennsylvania. We were road warriors in every sense. And we were tired. But it worked. And we spent a week away from home without using any vacation time. (It helps a lot that Automation-X is a beyond-fabulous company and Jason's boss is quite literally the most incredible guy ever to be anybody's boss, and that's a fact. But we've worked around a variety of work schedules in the past.)

Be flexible about your comfort and your options. Sure, Spirit Airlines is kind of a basic airline and their amenities are situated accordingly. Sometimes, flying with them can be a bit unpleasant (the seats are hard, for one, and sometimes there's not enough leg room for Jason's legs). But if it costs less, it means that money can be saved and spent elsewhere. Spirit is incredibly up-front about their costs. And every little thing will cost you. So it's time to get creative. That could mean more money spent on meaningful experiences, or it could mean more money spent on another trip. Saving that kind of money opens doors. And a few hours stuck in an uncomfortable position is entirely worth the destination. Flying is not about the experience of flying, it's about the destination, right?

Be flexible with your plans. When we went to San Diego for our anniversary, we had a small budget. So we elected not to rent a car. We elected not to rent a typical hotel for a large portion of our stay. And the result of that was us staying on a sailboat floating in the Pacific. It kind of really rocked. We also made new friends who've offered the use of their sailboat should we ever return, and we're seriously considering taking them up on some sailing lessons. Now that we're headed to the Virgin Islands, we're planning to camp the entire time. We'll be saving tons of money and spending about $30 per night. That's so cheap, it's hard to argue with. And when we only paid 1% of the cost of our airfare, it begins to become a question of why we wouldn't choose to spend our time on a beach soaking up the sun.

Now, we're growing in our confidence. I don't see why we can't travel just about every month when it costs about the same as staying home and having an inexpensive dinner out each night. We're learning the things that don't mean enough to us to be valued above travel. For example, we drive a crappy car. We love the car dearly, but it truly is crappy. Bonnie is a '97 Toyota Corolla with over 230k miles on her. She's got peeling paint, a banged-in door, and ceiling fabric that rests comfortingly on your head while you drive...like a cocoon of old car smell. She's brilliant. And gets 40 miles to the gallon. And she enables our lifestyle. So we cherish Bonnie. We also have chosen not to stretch our income on a house. It's comfortable, cute, renovated by us, and it's affordable.

Often when I talk to people who can't afford to travel, our lifestyles are out of sync. We look like paupers because we have old clothes, an old car, and a house that looks like it may have been a halfway house at some point in its potentially sordid history. But we have destinations under our belt that those people often tell us they hope to go to someday. We love those odd things that comprise our daily life because they free us to do the thing we love most: Travel.

Everything is a choice. And in each choice to say "yes" to one thing are the reflections of the thousands of things you've just turned down in favor of that one thing. For a while, we were always feeling poor, always feeling like we couldn't afford things. Then we reviewed our expenses under a critical lens and realized we were spending a lot of money on dining out and on frivolous entertainment that we didn't really remember. So we did away with those things. I started cooking at home for basically all of our meals (and I make everything from scratch, even mayonnaise, yogurt, canned goods, and cream cheese), and I became more resourceful. In all of that, we found we could consolidate those other expenses to make room for that one thing we love doing most. For us, the one thing is travel. If you look through your checkbook, you might find what your one thing is. If you don't like what it reflects, the good news is you're the one in the driver's seat and you can make changes. The kinda bad news is that it's not easy. We still have to often remind ourselves why we're different and the fact that it's on purpose has a lot of weight to it. Trips don't have to be expensive. Destinations don't have to be set in stone. Create a bucket list and whenever one of your destinations has cheap tickets, BUY THEM! Become addicted to travel. It'll only open your mind and eyes to new things. You'll never regret it. Don't take home souvenirs, but memories, pictures, collections of moments that mean more than any Chinese-made attempt at a replica of your destination.

Happy travels!

Onward

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination with reality, and instead of thinking of how things may be, see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

I spent a total of six months living in Guinea-Bissau by myself. But because my camera was stolen in a book store in Denver (of all places) and I lost the memory cards that held pictures from my first three months. I can't find any pictures of the time I had there by myself. I can remember everything clear as day. I have photos from after when people showed up and joined me. Perhaps some day I'll have to recapture those pictures by returning to the places I went.

My six months in Africa passed slowly at first. Like a death crawl. And then gradually, it sped up. I began to thrive after about 3 months. It took that long, but I was finally in a good place and able to figure things out. By the end of the sixth month, I was in love with the place, the people, and with seeing things I'd never seen before.

After Africa, I stopped in London on my way home. I was alone. And I was surprised that I reveled in the aloneness. I just wanted to see the world. And so I did.

I made friends with a French girl and an Australian girl named Sophie. Together as newfound friends, we found all kinds of things in the local markets. On the left we'd just discovered what real mistletoe looks like (at home, we'd only ever seen the fake stuff). We toured the city from our shared hostel. And we explored what London offers at Christmas time. Borough Market was amazing and the sense of peace over the city was so different from the American cacaphony. 

Borough Market was full of breads, chocolates, fruits, and I was amazed at both how cold I felt after living in a tropical climate and shedding some of the pounds I had previously carried, and at how temperate it was in London. People never talked about freezing and snow wasn't really a thought.

The experience was deep and never lonely. I had friends and family members who were very concerned that I'd find myself lonely wandering the world alone. I was the furthest thing from lonely I could imagine. I felt alive. I felt rich even though I think I had less than $100 for the entire expense of the week in London. I was immeasurably content. 

I made a load of new friends. Some of whom I'd met in Guinea-Bissau and then met back up with in London, and others who I have never seen before or since. And that didn't discomfort me, instead if built a sense of self. I knew who I was and it didn't matter that none of the people I was around had any clue about me. I felt confident on a whole new level.

From my experiences, I learned that travel forces each of us into a new box. When we travel alone, we see the most. When we travel with someone, we're limited by the filters we share, but there's still a great expanding of our horizons because we're breaking out of the mold.

Me "sleeping" at the airport.
Clearly someone had to take the picture.
When traveling alone, I advise you get
comfortable photgraphing yourself
and asking strangers to do so.
That way you come home with a full
set of memories.

On my full-day layover in Morocco, I met some shop owners at the deli I made my temporary home inside the airport. They invited me to share breakfast with them. It was awesome. We had tagine...which is delightful. 

People at home felt sorry for me over the long layover. I guess they didn't realize it was a chance for me to get to know a new place. I wasn't uncomfortable. I also didn't have the constraints that most of us "adults" have these days. I didn't have to worry about making it home in time for work. I didn't think about what I was missing out on. I was just present. I just enjoyed what came to me.

The picture on the left is me before leaving Bissau. My dear friend Esperanca fixed my hair so I could be African when I got home. I loved it. The experience of going home with my hair showing where I'd been was amazing. When I arrived at the airport in Denver, I felt like a wholly different person. And since then, I've slowly returned to who I am with the contraints of everyone around me. 

I want to find a way to break free again and be the person who doesn't mind a 20-hour layover in a city she can't explore safely alone. I want to be the person who isn't afraid of anything because I trust myself. And I think more travel is the key to that.

Since this time, I've traveled with my husband and I've had to learn a whole new level of letting go of stuff. It's not just doing what makes most sense to me, it's also about doing what makes sense to him. And we're learning to find the balance so we can both just exist in any new place and find what makes the experience best for us in that place. 

The very beginning

I first discovered my addiction to travel when I was 23 and a recent college graduate. I hadn't gone anywhere outside the USA before that time since I was 6 years old. And of course, then I traveled with my parents. I had literally no idea what I was doing. But I guess I thought someone would tell me if it was a horrible idea.

Looking back, I'm glad the first person who told me I had no business in West Africa was the ticketing man at the airport for my flight. I'm glad I didn't hear it sooner, or I might not have gone. And everything would be different.

There I stood, my luggage all wrapped in saran wrap, blinking at the man behind the British Airways counter, ready to receive my boarding pass from him so I could depart for four flights and about 40 hours of travel to reach a destination I knew painfully little about.

It was 2007. There were only two articles on the Internet about my intended destination. And now here was this pilot who was manning the trans-Atlantic flight for my trip, and he was telling my father how there was no way he'd let me on the plane if I didn't change my final destination. For emphasis, he looked straight at my dad and told him there was no way he'd ever let his daughter go to "a place like that." I was flying into Senegal and then taking a hopper flight down to Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. It was that final leg of my journey that he wasn't willing to accept. Apparently with a total lack of US presence in Guinea-Bissau, the personnel in charge of the plane weren't allowed to accept that as my final destination.

I melted into tears, my dad helped me change my final destination, and I walked through security bawling my eyes out. I imagine that was fairly disconcerting for my parents and friends who'd come to see me off. It's never ideal for your most recent memory of someone to be of that person in absolute hysterics and headed to someplace far away. But that's how it went down.

When I landed in London, things just got more interesting. My flight had been delayed in Denver because of ice on the plane or something like that, and so by the time we took off in Denver, I'd essentially already missed my connecting flight from Heathrow to Dakar, Senegal. I landed, went to the desk to alert someone that I'd already missed my flight, and I was given another flight that was just under an hour from the time I stood at that kiosk. I called my dad to let him know I was okay and he gave me instructions for how to find a hotel in Senegal. I told my dad I'd been transferred to a new flight because of my delay. Then I hauled myself and my mountainous backpack through the airport until I hit security. I waited in the security line for an agonizing 30 minutes of the precious 45 I had available, then finally I began to hear my name over the loudspeakers. I told someone in the security line and was pushed through immediately. From there, I began running and didn't slow down. I ran straight at signs trying to read them as I decided which way to go from the information on them. Often I was able to read the signs just as I darted under them, causing me to run in an erratic, crazed pattern. I don't think there's a person who was at Heathrow that day who I didn't bump into. I was so new to everything, I had no idea what a gate was, what a concourse was, or anything. So I just ran blindly at a full sprint.

My flip flops slapped the ground and my backpack weighed more than I remembered in Denver as I bolted through the airport. I made it to my flight just before they closed the doors for good. And it was then that I realized I was bound for Morocco. For someone who was entirely green to travel, this was an all or nothing kind of journey.

I finally took a moment to breathe and really look at my itinerary. I had a layover in Morocco for just a couple hours and then a quick flight to Milan (or it might have been in the opposite order, it's such a blur, I don't remember exactly). Then it was on to Dakar, Senegal where I would get what information I needed to board a plane to Bissau.

Can you say deer in the headlights much?

Yeah. It was a travel anomaly happening to a travel novice. I wasn't aware what a mess it was. And I think that's a good thing.

Aside from being yelled at for showing my passport when they asked for my boarding pass in Morocco, the rest of the day went as well as could be expected. Then I landed in Senegal in the middle of the night instead of my nice, friendly daytime arrival that was planned before my flight was changed. I was sitting on the plane beside a girl about my age. She was a million times more travel savvy than me as she was returning to Senegal to meet her boyfriend whom she'd met during a Peace Corps stint in Senegal. She promised to help me find my way to where I was going.

We got outside the airport and I immediately felt a total lack of air around me. There were people everywhere asking for money...even though it was the middle of the night. And nothing felt remotely clear. I had no idea what I was doing. The girl I'd met on the plane reunited with her boyfriend who'd found an unmarked car for us to ride in. I got all my stuff into the car, then told the driver where I wanted to go and he had no idea what I was talking about. I got uneasy and put up such a stink that my things were removed from the car and the girl and her boyfriend went with me to a marked taxi where we found our way around town.

I found my hotel and went to my room. It was a beautiful room with two levels and a very nice bed, but it smelled like foreign and felt so unfamiliar. I spent the entire night unsure what I'd gotten myself into and not sure how to get back to the things that seemed safe and familiar. The following morning, I walked on the beach a little and then caught my flight to Bissau. For me, it's usually at night that I find myself facing the dread that I keep at bay while I'm making decisions during the day. Nighttime, I've begun to learn, is not a good time for me to arrive strange places, but I'll get used to it.

The next day was a blur of a small walk along the ocean outside my hotel and a frenzied cab ride back to the airport. I recall distinctly wondering at one point whether I could simple hole up in the hotel and not go out into that city again. I played out the entire scenario in my head culminating in headlines about a scared American girl dying from lack of food and water because she refused to leave her hotel room. I couldn't do that to my family, so I left the hotel room.

As soon as I arrived in Bissau, the swimmy feeling I'd had in Senegal vanished. I was picked up at the airport by Polly and Fernando, two people who would play very different and very important roles in my life. Fernando would become a lifelong friend and Polly would speak into my life for a time.

I arrived on the compound and was shown to a supply closet with a bed (nope, not an exaggeration, that's all that was available). I ate dinner with Polly and her husband, Jack, and their kids, I think. I honestly don't remember much of the first day except feeling better when we arrived at the compound, and confused when Polly pointed things out to me along the way in town. I had literally no grid for where I was and what that meant in comparison to anything else.

All I knew was that I had arrived.

I spent six months there, and had a variety of experiences from accidentally propositioning everyone I spoke to for several months to eating bad canned food because I couldn't figure out the market. Then again, I'm the dunce that considered holing up in a hotel room because I was scared. I exited that trip with a whole new perspective on travel. It had gotten into my skin. I no longer feared the market, in fact, at one point, I took a group of Western girls through the market and translated for them when they purchased items.

But it took lots of nights of telling myself to breathe.

This is the official beginning of my travel history. 

Stuff your eyes with wonder

“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. see the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that . Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Good old Ray B is my favorite author. And he said it perfectly.

Travel is one of those things that will take hold of you and create something new from the fibers of your being. Once you've dipped your toes in the world, you'll never be the same. You'll happily let it drag you in over your head, and there you'll be immersed in your own immense smallness.

You'll daydream about spice markets while you sit in a cubicle. There in that veal cage you atrophy, yearning for any hint of something vibrant to jolt against the dull hum of fluorescence and the non-smell of people's lives ticking away for a dime. You'll lose track of time as your mind wanders through far-off dense jungles, or get whisked away by the ruins of ancient worlds with each blink of your eyelids. Tides may rush in and threatening the productivity of your work day. And suddenly, that cubicle will become unbearably tight, gray, and repetitive, no matter how much you delight in the what of your existence.


For some, travel is a when-we-can kind of thing, for others, it's oxygen. And some few people have found ways to make it life itself. While I haven't quite hit that point, it is oxygen for me and I am bent on building my life on the banks of the jet stream.

Since we're bound to the reality of our present existence (mortgage, job, car, bills...), my husband and I have discovered ways to make travel a more common reality. We've determined what we want most from a given destination and what we can do without. And we've found that more often than not, it's the little things we take for granted that can be foregone for much larger, better experiences. We experience the world like royalty and move about it like vagabonds. We've quite literally dined at one of the world's top-ranked restaurants, but arrived on foot after miles of walking.

In our most recent ventures, we've foregone rental cars in favor of getting to do things that mean more. We ate better food and stayed better places because we searched off the beaten path. And we allotted time for walking miles on beaches.

We travel light and we travel often. Remember, it's oxygen for us, so travel isn't really something we can do without for long periods of time, despite the cultural notion that it's a once every few years kind of thing. For us, it's a desire that can be assuaged with less effort, cost, and time than you might think.

Right now, my husband has a wonderful job and the only catch is that he only gets 2 weeks per year for vacation. So we're working with that. We traveled in January for our anniversary, and we'll be going to Cuba this summer as well as Philadelphia and we'd like to plan an end-of-year trip someplace as well as a weekend away at a winefest in Palisade, CO. That's a lot of vacation for a single year. And we're going to make it work into a modest budget and tight time allotment.

We are currently living the veal-cage lifestyle. Even if we love what we do, when we perform these tasks from a cubicle or office instead of a coffee shop or airport, we feel a bit trapped. So we're trying to find ways to make this into a great adventure. Some day, we hope to launch into full-time travel in some capacity. And alongside that dream is the deep need to do something meaningful.

I look forward to sharing travel tips and learning from you as well. We've been so many places and we've seen lots of beautiful and stunning things. And the more the see, the more we long for the next venture.