Why We’re Ending Our Year of Adventure after Nine Months

Our family in one of our last National Parks, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.

When moving from our home life to our road life, we didn’t waste much time transitioning from one life to the other.

In the course of a few weeks, we bought and fixed up a vintage Airstream, overhauled our Tahoe tow vehicle, left our jobs, stored our possessions, rented our house, and disappeared over the horizon for our year of adventure to visit 52 state and national parks.

We were intentional about our quick transition. We didn’t want to get stuck in limbo between two lifestyles because doing so can be costly in time, money, and energy.

With this in mind, in October, Katie and I started exploring employment options for our return in the new year. Finding a job and setting a start date would set the tempo for everything else needed for the transition out of our nomadic lifestyle.

We quickly found several opportunities, and some of those turned out to be compelling opportunities.

I engaged in discussions with my former company about returning in an executive leadership role. Discussions turned into negotiations, and after seven weeks of negotiations, we agreed upon a deal for my return.

As part of the deal, I committed to return to work full-time in Raleigh on Nov. 28th, giving me all of December to get plans in place and off the ground to build momentum for the business heading into 2017.

As Katie and I continue to balance our occasionally conflicting goals for family, career, and adventure, we realize we must be flexible and wisely make compromises. We had to be flexible when seizing the opportunity for adventure, and now we must be flexible to seize the opportunity for advancing our careers.

So I’m going back to work earlier than expected. Katie continues to pursue several great opportunities to start in January, and in the meantime she will take the kids to Florida for the month of December to spend precious time with her parents. She’s carrying on the torch of our travels, and I’ll join her at Christmas in Florida.

I have no regrets about ending our year of adventure after nine months. Katie and I both have a sense of completeness about our adventure. We’ve had a tremendous experience with our children, and we’ve accomplished our goal to visit at least 52 state and national parks in a year.

Soon we’ll be in a more normal routine involving home, work, school, and church, and we’ll be saving for the next big adventure in 5-7 years.

We’ve compiled some stats about our trip, ranging from miles traveled, to parks visited, to money spent, check out the article Our Adventure by the Numbers for a full run down.