Our Big Adventure

Let’s get straight to the point: we’ve sold our home and have set out to travel around the United States. 

Crazy? Probably. 

Adventurous? You bet. 

Us? Hell freaking yeah. 

Those are the types of questions we’re aiming to answer on this blog, so keep reading and we’ll give you all of the details. As a bit of a spoiler, and as an answer to that last question, the answer is an emphatic YES!

So let’s get rolling…

What exactly are we doing?

If that wasn’t clear already, we’ve sold our home and started traveling. As I write this on Friday, October 22nd, our initial plan is six months. Could be shorter, could be longer. Who really knows? But we did a bit of a trial run in November 2020, temporarily relocating to Perdido Key, Florida for three weeks before spending a week in New Orleans. We were eager for a change of scenery and were about to head into a long winter smack dab in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. While we obviously didn’t sell our house for a trip like that, it was the first step toward building up to something like this. 

We loved it so much we started throwing around the idea of doing something bigger. It started innocently enough as a “what if?” question from Amanda, the kind of topic you might discuss while laying in bed at night and dreaming up the wildest dreams. Funny enough, it quickly snowballed into us making the decision to sell our home and travel.

In terms of locations, we’re still hashing out all of the details. However, we do have the first two destinations mapped out. The first is Sunset Beach, North Carolina. The second is Seacrest, Florida. The rest of our journey is up in the air, but we’re seeking out warm-weather destinations during the winter months. 

We’re excited, we’re undoubtedly a bit anxious, but we’re ready to jump right in and go on the adventure of a lifetime! 

-The timing is right

Luca is our only child at the moment, and he’s only two years old. While he was at daycare before the pandemic, and he’s been back in daycare for the last 5+ months, he’s not of school age. We feel like he’s not going to miss out on much of anything development-wise, and we are always working with him on his ABCs, counting, colors, and everything he should be learning at his age. Once kindergarten hits, a trip of this nature is likely off the table.

We also have the good fortune of having “access” to Adam’s brother, Chubbs. Chubbs is 30 and is the kindest, happiest guy you’ll ever meet. Everybody who meets Chubbs loves him. He lost his job due to the pandemic and we employed him 4-5 days a week from about August 2020 through May 2021, with his main duties being to watch Luca. Chubbs has lived with Adam’s parents most of his adult life, as he is differently abled, and they gave us the green light for Chubbs to join us on our extended travels. Without him, this whole plan is out the window, so this is yet another of a billion reasons why Chubbs is a godsend. 

Let’s not forget the role the housing market plays in all of this. Saying it’s been a seller’s market in 2021 is an understatement. We had lived in our house more than six years. It was never going to be our forever home. The house certainly needs some major upgrades. We were able to snag a decent profit, so we decided to take the money and run with this adventure.

We’ve discussed our options if we’re still in an extreme sellers market once this journey comes to an end and we aren’t able to find our forever home at a suitable price tag. Both sets of our parents have offered us a place to stay in their respective homes, and we’re also OK with renting a house or apartment temporarily. The stars have certainly aligned for us to go on this adventure, and we’re going to take advantage of it.

-Pandemic has led to ability to work remotely

For all of the stress and hardship that have come with the Covid-19 pandemic, we have always looked for silver linings. Whether that’s being able to enjoy more family time, finding new hobbies and activities to take part in at home, or relishing in the fact that we don’t have work commutes, there’s always been little things here and there to be thankful for. Being grateful goes a long way after all. 

One of the biggest silver linings has certainly been the ability to work remotely. We’ve both been working from home since March 2020. While we certainly miss certain aspects of office life, especially seeing coworkers, the pros have definitely out-weighed the cons from our perspective. If we want to work in our pajamas, we can. If we need to run a quick errand over lunch, no biggie. The freedom to work from anywhere has been a game-changer, and it allowed us to go on our trial run trip to Florida and New Orleans in November 2020. 

Adam’s work adopted a permanent work-from-office in February 2021, and Amanda got the green light from her boss not long after. That signified another box we could check off, one step closer to this becoming a reality. 

Yet, we wanted something bigger. An extended trip beyond just the one or two weeks we’d normally have with a vacation. Again, the November trip to Florida and NOLA was a great start, an appetizer if you will. But we’re ready for the main course now. And this is it. This is our big adventure. We can’t wait to see what else is out there. 

Seeing that things still aren’t back to normal across the globe Covid-wise, and the fact that working overseas would be really tough with our time-sensitive jobs, we unfortunately can’t make this an international trip, but there are still a lot of places we have yet to explore within our own country’s borders here in the United States.  

-Tomorrow is never guaranteed/family health

Life is short. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. That’s an oversimplified way of stating things, but it’s definitely a driving factor for us taking this trip. And it should be a big reason for you too!

We’ve had our fair share of family health tragedies/scares/problems just in the first four months of 2021. Amanda’s 37-year-old cousin died of complications due to Covid. Adam’s 27-year-old cousin was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. 

And closest to home I guess you’d say, because it happened within our home, but we had a major health scare with Luca in February. He suffered a febrile seizure due to a spiking fever caused by an adenovirus, which caused him to stop breathing and turn blue. Adam performed CPR and he started breathing again before the paramedics arrived. Thankfully, he’s doing great now, but there’s no doubt it was a traumatic experience and continues to cause great anxiety, especially any time he has a fever. 

Add in Adam’s pulmonary embolism from May 2016, and you can see why these events prompted us to take a step back and examine the big picture. It’s offered us some much-needed perspective. You never know how long you have on this earth, and we want to try to squeeze every bit of happiness and adventure out of it. 

Can you do this too?

YES!! Do the stuff that scares you. Live life, you only get one of them. 

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