Our Nomadic Adventures Somewhat Come to an End
For the last two and a half years, Cory & I were full-on digital nomads.
With nothing but a packed car, our dogs, and ourselves - we road-tripped to different destinations in the US, and stayed in short-term fully-furnished leases throughout our excursion.
We started in Portland, OR - worked our way to Asheville, NC, Philadelphia, PN, Richmond, VT, Springfield, MO, Denver, CO and then back to Austin, TX.
It’s safe to say that this was an experience of a lifetime. We will now be able to have friends from various parts of the world come to our wedding, stop by when they are passing through to meet the family, tell our kids the most exciting stories about “when we were young.” We have been lucky enough to be the makers of our own fate.
Would there be a few things I would change along the way? Absolutely.
Things I would Change
Pack less.
I absolutely cannot emphasize this enough. Whatever you have packed… reduce it even more. In our experience, clothes were the things that we needed to reduce. If I had to do it again, I would only pack the essentials - nothing more, nothing less.
Prepare in advance.
Throughout our excursion, we really owned the whole ‘winging it' concept. Even if we had a hard move out date, we wouldn’t start looking for our next place seriously until like 10 days out… Why did we do that?? Start looking at least 45 days out to have a stress-free move.
My Favorite Part
I loved it all - everything from the new experiences & lifestyles we lived to the road trips from place to place (God, I loved singing at the top of my lungs for hours on end). It was all extraordinary.
Cory & I did a great job of living in vastly different places to get the full experience. One thing I’m specifically proud of is living in downtown in major metropolitan areas, trying the suburb life when we’ve heard good, quaint things about it, and living in rural areas & farmhouses when the opportunity presented itself.
One of our goals was to find our forever home, and what we found was lifestyles we thrived in, locations we adored, good & bad qualities in each home we lived in, and what we want to implement into our forever home one day. We couldn’t have come to this conclusion without stepping outside of our comfort zone and trying these different lifestyles.
What I’ve Found
I found that Cory’s & my relationship is stronger than ever.
We have both have grown (as individuals & a couple) throughout these different, new, exciting, and sometimes uncomfortable experiences together. We’ve made new friends, we’ve set new boundaries, we’ve learned more & more about each other, we’ve managed emergencies & urgent situations with grace… who are we??? haha
I’ve found that there are many ways to make new friends.
When we arrived to Philly on the first day, we saw a group of people from the neighborhood sitting outside of the steps leading up to our apartment sharing a few drinks & chit chatting away. We wanted friends so badly haha. The next weekend, guess what we did… we grabbed a bottle of wine, a few cups & sat our on the stoop with one of the guys from our complex. We heard all about his life, memories from war, friends in his life… it was one of my favorite nights in the whole year of 2022.
In Asheville, we joined a sand volleyball league. Are we good at volleyball? Not really. Did we have to step out of our comfort zone to be a part of this program in hopes to make new friends? Yes. Was it worth it? Every second. I now have friends that I continue to keep in touch with & hope to see sometime this year if we make a trip out to Asheville again.
We personally love to walk.
Philly & Portland were our favorites because we loved the convenience to walk wherever we needed to go. We also found that hiking is a great way for us to spend quality time as a family, and get the dogs to be active (especially when we didn’t hav a backyard for them to play in often). So we know for a fact, we need to live somewhere that has the possibility to walk to some of our favorite places, and outdoor hiking trails just a short drive away.