About our trip

The Idea

I guess this crazy idea all started last September. I read a blog post from a fellow developer who was traveling with his family and wrote a bit about it. He had taken his wife and 2 daughters and were traveling to where ever for a year. They homeschooled as they went, they moved every week or two and were going from country to country. They never planned too far out so the road was wide open to them. He was working as they traveled and they seemed to be having an incredible journey.

I remember discussing this blog post over lunch as a family later that day and all the excitement as we dreamed of taking a similar trip. Every one of us seemed to love the idea, but the likelihood of us doing something like that was remote at best.

Thinking it through a bit over the next few days, it did seem as if we already had a number of the hard parts taken care of. I am blessed with incredible flexibility in my job as a software developer and typically spend 4 days a week at home. Our children are all homeschooled already so that is another thing we could do from anywhere. Obviously, there is a lot more to making this happen, but those are 2 of the big pieces so I felt like it wasn't a huge leap to travel as a family for a longer period.

Shelah and I thought about this on and off over the next number of months. Then, this spring when it was time to order chicks and piglets, we decided to hold off so that if we could take a trip like this, we wouldn't be tied down. We weren't committing to anything or even daring to get our hopes too high, but just leaving the possibility open.

Over the course of the next few months, the pieces fell into place to make a trip like this possible and in early July, we knew we were going to be able to make the journey.

The Plan

The plan part is a work in progress. We are going somewhere and we hope to travel for 2 to 4 months. 2 months is the goal and if all is going well (my work, expenses, etc), we may extend that to 4 months. We will try to move every week or so to a new location to give me some consistency for work and gives us a chance to see an area without rushing from point to point.

We are expecting to use AirBnb to find reasonable places to stay. Hopefully, picking places where Shelah and the kids will be able to branch out from and explore during the week, while I stay behind to work most days. (I'm sure I'll get to see a number of the highlights, but not near as much as the rest of the family.)

We are trying to find a flexible affordable balance with our planning. We don't want to commit ourselves too far out (in case we need to return for my work or we want more or less time in an area) but I don't want to be scrambling to find places and locations for the next week or two either. Hopefully, we'll find a happy medium to this as we go that isn't too expensive.

Regarding our place, Kenton, our nephew, is back in the area and is living in the apartment attached to our house. When we leave, he gets a lot more space to himself and will take care the house and farm for us. It is a huge comfort to know he is here and able to help us out while we are away.

That is the extent of the basic plans. We are not trying to look too far out. The places we would like to visit are piling up in our notebook. It would be impossible to hit them all. I guess we'll have to see what happens.