2017 Travel Route & Year in Review

Let’s face it, 2017 has been one heck of a memorable year!

Year end is a great time to be a bit retrospective and try to summarize the past 12 months in one spot.

Usually we wrap our years up with a route of our travels that shows us flinging ourselves across the country. And if you judged 2017 by our map alone, it doesn’t look like we did much. We barely left the state of Florida.

Thankfully, adventures are not all about the miles!

We kept a map anyway, and here is the 2017 interactive version:

The map is created by a WordPress plugin called Nomad World Map. It allows us to easily tie locations, dates, future plans and blog posts together as we go – creating a much more interactive experience. Use the arrows to scroll to different locations and/or click on the points – you can then view the blog post that goes along with the stop.

You can check out all of our past years and our current travels on our Travel Map page.

Year End Mileage Stats:

RV:

• • 2017: Travels: 1061 + Evacuation: 1130 = 2191 miles
  • Cumulative since 2007: 95,833

Boat:

• 2017 Travels: 485.4 nm
• Cumulative:  485.4 nm

First, here’s a quick 18m video recap of our year:

A Year of Change

2017 is the year we embarked on our biggest change to our travels yet. Since 2006, we identified as full time RVers, taking some side trips along the way.

We love RVing, it’s been an incredibly comfortable and enjoyable lifestyle for the past decade. But at heart, we are nomads.

We never set out to be constrained by one modality of travel and this was the year to shake it up.  Next up was cruising, and the The Great Loop seemed like a great adventure to tackle.

We wanted to stay domestic for easy access to friends & family and internet connectivity.  As boating newbies, protected waterways called us more strongly than the big wide open ocean.

We but didn’t want to pursue the Loop in a single year, which is common for those approaching it as a singular experience. We want to slow things down and really explore the places we visit.

So our journey will look more like several years of seasonal extended cruising generally following the Great Loop path.

Once it gets too cold as we head north, we’ll put our boat in storage and return to our beloved vintage bus conversion parked in the warmth of the south.

We spent all of 2016 researching & shopping – ending the year having just seen Y-Not in person. We moved aboard in early March.

But shopping and buying a boat is just the beginning of the transition, we knew we had a lot of learning ahead of us.

Travel Re-Cap

We spent January and February meandering around the state of Florida in our RV, snagging last minute cancellations at state and Army Corp of Engineer parks while we navigated the boat buying process. We filled in with boondocking in wildlife refuges when parks weren’t available.

It was quite fun, and we got to visit all new to us parks.

A campsite provides a yard you dock your RV into.

Oscar Scherer SP

Jonathan Dickson SP

Free boondocking!

Zephyr – our 1961 GM 4106.

Myakka River SP

Wildlife Refuge

We initially had the boat delivered to Burnt Store Marina in Punta Gorda, FL – where we started the process of figuring out boat life.

We hired a training captain, and quickly got ourselves comfortable docking, pumping out, anchoring, general maintenance and cruising. We took frequent practice excursions in Charlotte Bay, from afternoons at anchor to overnight trips.

Even though we are sailing off into the sunset aboard Y-Not, we have no intention of leaving Zephyr behind.

Chris’ Turn at the Upper Helm

Anchor Training

Helm Training

Kayaking around Pelican Bay

We’ve taken the boat out many times…

As lovely as Burnt Store Marina was, after 6 weeks we were pretty bored with the isolation of the location. We were surprised with how quickly we felt we had some semblance of sea legs. At the end of April we officially started our Great Loop adventure by making our first repositioning.

A final sunset from Burnt Store Marina – It’s been a fine first marina!

We started the Great Loop in April 2017.

Ding Darling Anchorage

Dolphins!!!

Chris flying his drone (you can also see our bridle in this shot)

Yours truly taking the helm!

Our first leg of the Great Loop – Burnt Store Marina to Fort Myers.

Our anchorage at Pelican Bay – close to the kayak entrance to the park. (Drone shot – did I mention we just got a DJI Mavic Pro?)

Approaching a bridge

Manatee begging for dinner

We took a week to make the 49nm journey to Legacy Harbour Marina in Ft. Myers (anchoring along the way). In May, we moved the bus into storage with a week long cross state adventure.

Sebastian Inlet SP

Myakka River SP

Kissimmee Preserve SP

We had only intended to stay in Ft. Myers for a month.

Legacy Harbour however turned out to be exactly the urban marina experience we had been dreaming this new lifestyle would afford us.

We ended up sticking around for 3 months (one of our longer stays ever!) enjoying a sweet corner slip along the Caloosahatchee River walking distance to everything – shopping, dining, theatre and city life.

But we didn’t just let barnacles grow – we continued our practice by taking day cruises, caught up on maintenance and tackled upgrades.

A little cruise to Sanibel Island with my mom!

Incredible fireworks view from our boat!

Lock practice

Ft. Myers

New Front covers.. looking snazzy!

Bistro with a view!

Downtown Ft. Myers

Sweet corner slip

Fabulous location

Centennial Park

Centennial Park

Edison Ford Statue

Preparing for engine maintenance

When early August rolled around, we were tempted to stick around another month or two – but figured we should get on with this cruising thing.

We opted to head down to the Keys, spending about two weeks anchoring our way down into the 10,000 Islands and Everglades. We were feeling in our cruising groove.

People, this is pretty… but can we go for a walk, please???

Drone Shot

Anchorage bliss… but frequent wake from passing boats, and tidal current swings.

We used our drone to scope out the ideal place to drop the anchor – so we could clearly see the shallows.

Drone shot: West Pass

Toasting an awesome day

We love the slow pace of travel.. we can sometimes even dine while traveling!

Sunsets

With the peak of hurricane season upon us, we knew we were at risk anywhere within our comfortable cruising range. But when Irma set her eyes on south Florida, our resilience was put to the test.

We’d not only be dealing with a hurricane, but one of the largest in history that had BOTH our homes within its potential path.

We prepared Y-Not as best we could to leave behind in Marathon, FL and evacuated by bus to Alabama. As Irma’s path solidified to having a direct strike in the Florida Keys, we fully expected to have our new dream sunk.

We actively track storms to stay ahead and ready.

Stay Safe

Evacuation by bus

Irma coming over the Keys.

Returning to Y-Not

Overlay of the Boot Key Harbor mooring field map to the post-Irma fly over. So sad how many open balls there are 🙁

Cleaning debris out of the water and encouraging seagrass to “move along”

The view across the way – somehow, every boat on the Burdine’s side of the basin did well.

Salvage operations – drone shot

We’re still in a bit of disbelief that Y-Not survived relatively unscathed – when nearly 80% of the boats around us didn’t fair nearly as well.

We stuck around Marathon helping with recovery and volunteering, until it felt safe to try to exit and attend to the few minor repairs we needed and proceed with some planned upgrades.

Only to hit a submerged channel marker literally on the exiting channel from the Keys.

How we ended 2017 – on the hard under the Miami Airport flight path

Chores while on the hard

Running gear repairs underway.

Our starboard prop and strut unattached – so thankful the bolts sheered. Or else it could have ripped a gapping hole in our hull!

Perhaps if our day hadn’t started with a dead generator, this day might have turned out very differently overall…

And that’s how our year ends – having just spent 5 weeks ‘living on the hard’ right under the Miami airport flight path having repairs done and attending to some upgrades (posts coming soon).

Our transition to boating has definitely not been without challenges. And we’re still here, excited to continue this adventure.

Work-Life Balance

A constant struggle for us is a work-life balance – trying to enjoy our adventures, while still bringing in income and serving our community.

Work

In 2016 we had made RVMobileInternet.com our professional focus. Our goal is to create unbiased resources to help our fellow nomads make informed choices that best meet their mobile internet connectivity needs.

That decision has definitely paid off. Our content continues to expand as does our membership that supports all of the effort.

Which has allowed us to grow our team to spread out the workload and cover topics not in our personal wheelhouse.

And quite frankly, we wouldn’t have stayed sane these past few months without them.

With our personal shift to boating we have been undergoing a gradual subtle re-branding to become simply the Mobile Internet Resource Center – for US based RVers, cruisers and nomads.

We’re proud of what we’ve created, a perfect meshing of our passions for technology, mobile living and helping.

And we love that it’s all community funded and we’re able to provide a ton of free content. We took a big step recently by removing all 3rd Party advertising better aligning with our personal values.

Life

That life part? Well our life balance is seriously out of whack after these past few months. We’ve done our best to integrate in some short side trips to see family, friends and get away. But we’re overdue for a break.

We have twinges of survivors guilt and try to remain grateful for the gifts we’ve been given. While we’ve had a tough year, so many have had it worse.

Having just been freed of the boat yard, we’re now pressed right up into our winter non-boat travels and committments.

We end the year exhausted, drained and mentally depleted with a lot on our plate ahead.

Social Media

Long time followers know social media is a definite love/hate relationship for these introverts. We do love sharing and we love getting the opportunity to meet up with you along our travels.

This year we fully separated out our work life (mobile internet) from our personal social media life fully making Technomadia our hobby.

We also have firmly adopted a 100% no tolerance attitude towards negativity – critical comments are just simply deleted.  These have both helped tremendously.

Integrating in boating has brought a new audience (hello!) and we’re thankful for our long term followers who have stuck around appreciating this space is about our lives, not a specific travel style.

We’ve also dipped our toes into trying to share our boating adventures in more produced travelogue videos. Feedback is they’re enjoyed. But egads, has it upped the amount of time we spend on this sharing hobby of ours.

We have some decisions to make as to how we best proceed to balance our own personal enjoyment of life and sharing in a world that increasingly expects higher quality content as so many are have taken social sharing to a pro-level.

Creating a more closed community over on Patreon however was probably the best social media decision we made this year. Our focus is not funding but having a safer space to share the daily ups and downs with people who connect with us as fellow fallible humans. It’s been such a welcomed relief from the sometimes harsh public eye. We’ll be putting more attention there in the coming year.

Year of Milestones

We have a couple of big life milestones we acknowledge this year:

We got Married! 

After 10 years of traveling together and exploring our life commitment to each other – we decided to make it legal. In a private ceremony shortly after moving aboard Y-Not, we tied the knot at sunset.

While it doesn’t really mean much to us personally and we don’t refer to each other as ‘husband and wife’ – we figured with marriage equality now a reality, we shouldn’t feel like we need to intentionally exclude ourselves from the legal benefits that protects our intended life partnership.

And the parents seemed to approve.

Early Retirement Now Within Grasp

I always assumed I’d HAVE to work all of my life and retirement was a pipe dream for our generation.

We’ve both always saved, invested and remained consumer debt free. RVing for a decade has allowed us a much lower cost of living than our previous stationary lives. And we’ve maintained our previous income levels.

Apparently when you combine all those things, the seemingly impossible sneakily becomes reality.

We sat down with our financial planner a couple years ago and realized that not only would we be able to retire one day – we could retire now in our mid-40s. It would require living minimally or at least keeping some small income flowing. But it was well within grasp.

While the numbers don’t lie, it didn’t feel quite real. We opted instead to keep working a bit longer at full career level, and pursue adventures like boating. We also continue to build our nest egg to keep flexibility for future life choices and obstacles. But it’s really hit home this year that working is now a choice for us.

It’s an incredibly freeing feeling and we have no intentions of stopping working anytime soon. But we do need to integrate in a little more fun and a little less work.

2018 And Beyond

We end 2017 exhausted and really craving some serenity. But we have a daunting-feeling couple of months ahead of us.

First, we have an overdue re-write of The Mobile Internet Handbook that is in progress to be published by end of January. We’ll be taking a bit of a self-imposed online break in the coming weeks to focus on that.

We also have a pre-planned RV trip to Texas to present at The RV Entrepreneur Summit in late February. We’re very much looking forward to reconnecting with fellow nomads, as we feel a bit out of the social circuit. We’ll enjoy a 4-6 week road trip around the event and then leave the bus in storage.

When we return to the boat in March we’ll pick up our cruising pace with a goal of being out of prime hurricane areas by peak of season.  We anticipate that unknown location will have an actual ‘winter’ to contend with and we’ll be back in the bus by late fall ending the year in the glorious desert southwest.

But.. who knows how the year will actually play out.

All we can do is set intentions and listen to serendipity. It’s what we’ve done all along, and so far, it’s steered us well.

Our past year end wrap-ups:

2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016

Our Other Year End Content:

• Mobile Internet 2017 Year in Review (Over at RVMobileInternet.com)
• Monthly Cost Log: Just updated to reflect 2017

Note: Usually we also post our Favorite Campgrounds of the year – this year, we’re going to skip due to a mix of boating and RVing experiences and just a lack of time. But you can view our past years favorite campgrounds if you like.