One Year Later: Turns Out, We Actually Did It

Holy Crap, We Actually Did It

When we first started talking about this idea, it sounded slightly ridiculous. Rent out our house. Work remotely, move somewhere new every month or two, and bring the bikes.

We tried to keep enough clothes, kitchen supplies, outdoor gear, work equipment, and assorted stuff with us to make each new place feel a little bit like home.

We also somehow convinced ourselves that living out of a Ford F-150 for a year was a perfectly reasonable life choice for two people in their 40s.

Turns out…it was.

Over the past year, we've called a lot of places home.

We started among the fall colors of Crested Butte, Colorado celebrating a friends birthday, before heading south to spend two months surrounded by red rocks and endless trails in Sedona, Arizona.

Then came the holidays back in Colorado, including a stint in Boulder, where 100+ mph winds knocked out the power and reminded us that even when you're nomadic, apparently you can still have household problems. Then after the holidays, we pointed ourselves south again.

Austin, Texas gave us tacos, barbecue, scooters, 20,000-step days, and the realization that despite going there for live music, we are apparently too old to wait until 10 p.m. for the headliner to start.

Then came Nashville, where we actually managed to stay awake for some music, learned to appreciate a good songwriter's night, explored waterfalls and caves, and continued perfecting our developing travel philosophy:

Just say yes.

Yes to the weird local event.

Yes to the restaurant someone tells you about.

Yes to the trail.

Yes to the spontaneous road trip.

Yes to having friends come visit.

And occasionally, yes to staying out past 10 p.m.

From Nashville, we moved on to Bentonville, Arkansas, which may have been the biggest surprise of the entire year. We went there for mountain biking and left genuinely wondering whether we could live there someday.

Then came a quick return through Colorado, a two-week Park City layover that involved an excessive amount of biking, and finally our longest stop of the adventure: Bend, Oregon.

We originally decided to spend three months in Bend because Logan was off from Oregon State for the summer, and being nearby gave us the chance to spend more time with him.

We also thought staying in one place for three months might allow us to slow down a little.

That was adorable.

Instead, Bend became three months of trying to see just how many activities we could cram into a summer while still keeping our full-time jobs.

We mountain biked.

We hiked.

We paddle boarded.

We floated the river.

We golfed.

We wandered farmers markets.

We ate at food trucks.

We went to concerts and comedy shows.

We explored mountain lakes, waterfalls, trails, breweries, restaurants, and basically anything else that gave us an excuse to leave the house.

We had friends and family come visit, which gave us an excuse to do all of those things again while giving them a taste of our lifestyle. 

There were side trips to Seattle, the Columbia River Gorge, the California Redwoods, and Mount Rainier. There was a World Cup game. There were backpacking trips. There were long bike rides, some hikes, sore legs, good meals, and probably too much ice cream.

And somewhere along the way, Bend started feeling less like a place we were visiting and more like somewhere we actually lived.

Our house was only about a mile from downtown, so we could walk or bike almost everywhere.

And that reinforced one of the biggest lessons we've learned during this entire adventure.

Where you live within a city matters almost as much as the city itself.

Bend was a great place to spend the summer. But after three months, it was time to pack everything back into the truck, say goodbye to Logan, and point ourselves north toward our next adventure.

Which brings us to where we are headed next: Victoria, British Columbia.

Yep.

Apparently Year Two is international.

Okay, barely international. But still. Passports were required, so it counts.

So… What Have We Learned?

A year ago, we really didn't know if this would work.

Would we get tired of moving?

Would finding furnished rentals be a nightmare?

Would it be insanely expensive?

Would we miss our house?

Would we kill each other after spending this much time together?

Good news on that last one.

Still married.

So after a year on the road, here's what we know.

We Miss People More Than We Miss Things

This one isn't even close.

We don't really miss our house. We don't miss most of our furniture. We don't miss the garage full of stuff. We don't miss maintaining a yard, fixing random things around the house, or wondering why Amazon just delivered another box containing something we apparently desperately needed 36 hours earlier.

But we really miss our people.

Friends. Family. Neighbors. The people you can text on a random Friday afternoon and say, "Want to grab dinner?"

That kind of community is incredibly difficult to recreate when you're only somewhere for a month or two.

We've met wonderful people everywhere we've gone. We've had friends visit us. We've gone back to Colorado. We've spent time with family along the way.

But if there is one thing that could eventually pull us back toward having a permanent home base, it probably won't be the house.

It'll be the people.

Exploring New Places Is Still Awesome

The novelty hasn't worn off.

That's probably the biggest reason we're still doing this. There is something incredibly fun about arriving somewhere and knowing absolutely nothing.

Where's the grocery store? Where do people ride bikes? What's the restaurant everyone loves? What's happening this weekend? Where's the best trail? Where do locals hang out?

And then slowly, over a few weeks, the place starts becoming familiar.

You stop using Google Maps every time you leave the house. You discover the trail nobody told you about. And suddenly you're not really a tourist anymore. You're temporarily local.

Then, just about the time you get comfortable…

We pack the truck again.

Finding Places to Live Is Surprisingly Easy

This was one of our biggest concerns before we started.

Turns out, there are furnished rentals everywhere.

Airbnb, Furnished Finder, Facebook groups, local rental sites, word of mouth—we've used a little bit of everything.

And when you're flexible on exact dates, you have even more options.

We also discovered that owners are often pretty happy to have a boring professional couple in their 40s, who work remotely, don't smoke, aren't throwing parties, and mostly want somewhere to sleep between bike rides.

Who knew being middle-aged could finally become a competitive advantage?

Walkability Is Now Near the Top of Our List

Sedona taught us this first.

Austin reinforced it.

Nashville showed us what happens when we don't have it.

Bentonville reminded us.

Bend confirmed it.

We want to be close to the action.

Not necessarily downtown. But close enough that restaurants, trails, coffee shops, parks, breweries, markets, and community events are accessible without getting into the truck every single time. When you're living somewhere for a month instead of visiting for a weekend, location changes the entire experience.

A slightly worse house in a great location wins over a beautiful house 20 minutes outside town.

Bring Your Own Sheets

Seriously. If you're thinking about doing something like this, here is some extremely specific advice:

Bring your own sheets. Bring your own towels. Bring a good kitchen knife. Bring a box of your favorite spices. Maybe your pillow.

Those things sound ridiculous when you're packing. They don't sound ridiculous when you're three weeks into a rental trying to slice an onion with a knife that has apparently been used to cut rocks since 1997.

We started this adventure wildly overpacked and have slowly eliminated things along the way.

But the sheets? The sheets stay.

It's Surprisingly Affordable

This one surprised us. We assumed living this way would be significantly more expensive than living at home. And in some categories, it absolutely is.

But overall? It's been surprisingly manageable.

Now, there is a giant asterisk here:

We're renting our house in Colorado.

That obviously changes the math considerably. But because we're staying places for a month or longer, we're generally paying monthly rental rates rather than vacation-nightly rates. We're not paying utilities at home. We're not buying furniture or home improvement stuff. We don't have a lot of the little expenses that come with maintaining a house.

Which brings us to perhaps the most unexpected financial discovery of the year…

Amazon Basically Forgot We Exist

Our random purchases have fallen off a cliff. Because every time we think about buying something, we have to ask:

Do we really want to carry this to the next place?

It's amazing how quickly that kills an impulse purchase. At home, buying something meant clicking a button and finding somewhere in the basement to shove it. Now it means clicking a button and then physically hauling that thing across the country for the next six months.

Suddenly we don't need it that badly. Minimalism through inconvenience.

Highly effective.

We Definitely Eat Out More

Okay, so maybe some of those Amazon savings are being redirected toward tacos. We eat out more than we did at home. Partly because every new city has new restaurants to explore. But mostly because when it's 6:30 p.m. and you've spent the evening hiking, biking, paddle boarding, wandering through a market, or doing whatever random activity you discovered that day… Going home to cook chicken and vegetables doesn't sound nearly as exciting as:

"Hey, there's apparently a great little restaurant three blocks from here."

And suddenly we're ordering appetizers. Again. We have accepted this flaw in our travel model.

Local "What's Happening" Lists Are Gold

One of the best tricks we've learned is embarrassingly simple. As soon as we get somewhere new, we find the local events websites, newsletters, Instagram accounts, blogs, and community calendars.

Then we subscribe.

Farmers markets, Concerts, Festivals, Art walks, Outdoor movies, Food events, Bike rides, Random community celebrations we don't understand but attend anyway.

Those lists have led us to some of our favorite experiences because they help us stop traveling like tourists and start figuring out what people who actually live there are doing.

And that is almost always more interesting.