In just about a week, we will be ending our glorious winter in St. John, US Virgin Islands and returning to our little Oliver Travel Trailer parked in Florida. As the day has grown nearer, we’ve had quite a few folks ask us :
Why on earth would you want to leave St. John? You seem so happy there!
Yes, St. John is awesome and has been the perfect place for us to be this season.
Its constant tropical breezes sure beat the heck out of the cold winter endured throughout most of the US. The lovely clear water is so inviting for swimming and snorkeling. There’s endless hiking opportunities. We’ve begun to feel a part of a community by making local friends. There’s ample internet, abundant live music and made-on-island microbrew.
It is indeed a paradise, and we’d recommend this place to anyone. And we’d be tempted to return in the future.
But we are nomads. We crave change in location, change in scenery, change in community and change in opportunity.
Five months has been the longest we’ve been still since before we set off nomadic. And for sure, it was a much needed change of pace after the bouncing around we did last year. We’ve been able to focus deeply on several work projects. We’ve been able to enjoy some much needed solitude. We’ve enjoyed spreading out a bit in our huge 400 sq ft treehouse digs here.
But it is time for change. It is time to embrace whatever adventure is next for us.
And as perfect a fit as St. John has been for us these past few months, we’re not on a mission of finding our ideal place to eventually settle down.
Our nomadic journey is one we intend to make last for as long as it feels right to us – we want to explore all the world has to offer. We want to impact positive change on the world. In nearly 5 years of full time travel, we’ve barely begun that journey. And we certainly can’t do that by sitting on a little tropical island, isolated from much of the world.
Adjusting the pace as we need to keep nomadism sustainable will be a constant variable – sometimes we may only be in a location for a couple days, and sometimes for several months. Just because we may slow down from time to time, does not mean that nomadism has become unattractive.
Not only do we crave a change of scenery, we crave changing up the pace too.
And besides.. not everywhere is perfect all the time. Soon it will be hurricane season. Seems like a great time to leave and discover what is our next perfect place.
Wow Cherie, when we end up leaving Roatan, can I just copy and paste this into my blog? Seriously, it is exactly what I want to say.
The thing about leaving places we love, they’ll always be there to come back to!
We seem to be in very similar places.. both in scenery/climate and in mindspace 🙂 So many of your posts recently I would say the same the same thing about.
Trippy! 🙂
That looks like a great place to be
That water looks so inviting… it WOULD be really hard to leave. 😛
The water is unreal here.
We spent three weeks at one amazing campground on a recent trip. It had everything and it was paradise. The snorkeling was the best I’ve ever done. We found ourselves almost stuck there it was so good. Eventually you have to leave paradise because there are more incredible to find!
It’s awesome when you find a little slice of heaven, and you have a choice to stay there for a bit 🙂 But there’s always something more out there…
Yes it would be difficult to leave your little paradise! Can’t wait to see where you go next.
We’re looking forwarding to finding out where next is too 🙂
We just renewed at our current campground for a week and they asked if we’d like two more weeks as well. Our answer? We haven’t decided yet. 🙂
At some point we’ll need to start moving north as it will get too hot for us here in Arizona but we don’t know when we’ll leave or what route we’ll take. Ah, the freedom of living in an RV.
It is wonderful, isn’t it? No matter where you end up, you’re always home.
So have you decided on that next step yet? Waiting for more serendipity?
Other than bouncing around Florida for the month of April… nothing else has been decided 🙂