Seeking a life of travel and adventure, we sold everything we
owned in May, 2007, rented out our house in Arizona, and moved
into a travel trailer to have the adventure of a lifetime. For two and
a half years we criss-crossed the North American continent. We
traveled primarily throughout the American West and Southwest
and scooted across the south to Florida twice. We also got out of
the trailer for two extended motel-based excursions, one around
Michigan's perimeter and the other to the southern Caribbean
islands. In January, 2010, we took to the sea, purchasing and
moving aboard a sailboat with plans to divide our time between
summer RVing in North America and winter cruising in Mexico.
These pages are a photo journal of our experiences. If you are
planning similar adventures, enjoy pretty photos of fun places, or
are curious to find out what the full-time RV lifestyle or liveaboard
cruising lifestyle is all about, we hope this website will serve as an
inspiration.
Highlights of places we have visited are grouped on individual
pages, by state and country, and are accompanied by anecdotal
stories. The Route page shows the chronological order of our
adventures with links to each area we have seen. Latest Items
(above right) and News (top banner) both link to a list of the most
recent updates to our website.
Full-time RVing
In the top banner there are pages describing our rigs and other
equipment, including our solar setup and vent-free propane
heater. The full-time RV lifestyle is unusual, so there are some
pages related to it, including resources about other travelers that
inspired us before we left, and some thoughts about why we
chose to live this way. There are some fun statistics from our first
year and a half of travel, and information about our favorite
method of camping, boondocking. There is also some nuts-and-
bolts info about living in an RV full-time, a peek at our budget,
and some tips & tricks we've learned along the way. "What's it
like?" offers a play-by-play view of our lives, describing all that
happened in one month on the road.
Our first RV was a popup tent trailer. It was a blast. Every time
we took it on a trip we fell in love all over again -- with each other,
with the trailer, and with life. So we called it The Luvnest. For
good luck, we gave that name to our first fulltime travel trailer, and
the name stuck when we upgraded to our current fifth wheel.
Cruising
We had contemplated a sailing lifestyle before we ran off in a
trailer, but the distance was too great from the desert to the deep
blue sea. Besides, we could never come up with a good name for
the boat. Everything for a cruising lifestyle fell into place when
Mark awoke one morning with the name "Groovy" on his mind.
Our purchase of Groovy is a crazy tale of transcontinental flights
and sudden changes in plans. However, the boat itself has been
a great winter home, and has taken us along the Pacific coasts of Baja California, mainland Mexico's Costa Algre (Mid-Pacific) ,
Costa Grande (S. Pacific) and N. Pacific coast, as well as the Sea of Cortez. To get your bearings on the Mexican coast, check
out Mexico Maps. Outfitting a boat to go cruising and then living aboard in a foreign country is quite an experience and we offer
some insights and things we learned in Mexico Cruising Tips 1 and Tips 2. We use two small boats extensively and offer reviews
of both our Porta-bote and our Hobie Tandem Inflatable Kayak.
As our traveling lifestyle has progressed and we have drifted away from
our former, more conventional, daily patterns, we have found ourselves
wandering off the well-worn paths of other travelers. So, when a friend
sent me a heartfelt email entitled, "The Road Less Traveled" (after he
had read my notes about why we are pursuing this dream), it seemed
appropriate to adapt that phrase for the top of this web page.
The self-reflections that conclude Robert Frost's famous poem,
written so many years ago, ring true for us today:
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
Here are a few more of our favorite photos...
This website is the result of many happy hours of labor.
If you find the information here to be as useful and enjoyable as a
travel magazine or book you might buy, we would very much
appreciate a contribution. A visit to one or more of our sponsors'
websites on the sides of each page is another easy way to show
your appreciation.
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