2019 Travel Route & Year in Review

The end of 2019 – the end of another year, and the end of another decade.  Crazy how fast time is flying by – and a poignant reminder to make sure you’re living your life as you wish.

The year we’re wrapping up has been a good one.

We’re feeling balanced in our travels and work life, and we’ve finally caught up to our intentions of splitting our year between boat & RV.  In fact, we even added a second more nimble RV to the mix and now have our very own own nomadic feet.

We also achieved two notable milestones this year:

• After 13 years on the road, we have FINALLY crossed 100,000 RVing miles!
• We finally crossed out of the state of Florida in our boat!

Here is our 2019 interactive map:

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 (all):

• 2019 Travels:  3,876 miles
• Cumulative since 2007: 101,183

(Miles in the van for just daily driving aren’t not included, nor are ‘caravan’ miles.)

Boat:

• 2019 Travels: 593.7 nm
• Cumulative since 2017:  1,614.2 nm

Video Version of this Story:

Travel Re-Cap

The year started out in Sanford, FL – where we decided to enjoy an extended stop in a marina right smack downtown.  It was a lovely winter full of new friendships and a non-stop calendar of activities. Being close to family was also delightful. Sanford will forever be in our hearts, and is on a very short list of places we’d actually consider settling down at.

In early March, we started our cruise back down the St. Johns River – enjoying a couple weeks anchoring out and testing out our new solar installation.  We arrived to Jacksonville and took a monthly slip to finish up the project and bop over to RVillage Rally.

We then joined up with our MTOA community to attend their annual rendezvous in nearby Brunswick, GA – officially continuing our Great Loop.

We took out another monthly spot there, and serendipitously acquired a 2016 Winnebago Travato that was parked right in the lot and ready for a new adventure.

We continued our cruise northward enjoying a leisurely pace up exploring the lowlands to Charleston where we enjoyed a monthly stay right downtown – with visits from both my mom and Chris’ parents

Just as we were considering continuing north or sticking around another month – my mother had a medical diagnosis. We decided to backtrack south, store the boat and take the van to be with her.

After she was on the mend, we headed back to the boat to prepare for Hurricane Dorian and then evacuated inland in the van.

All turned out fine, but already being hauled out – we opted to stay that way for the remainder of hurricane season and go get Zephyr out of storage and back on the road again.

The van was proving mighty comfortable so far – so we continued on and decided to visit Chris’ folks in the St. Louis area before they headed south for the winter.  We enjoyed a few stops along the way to visit friends.

We stayed a couple weeks in Chris’ parents basement (which is really more like a luxury suite) waiting out the rest of summer weather in Texas, before repacking the van and heading towards the bus.

October was spent reconnecting with family in Texas and getting Zephyr out of storage and caught up on maintenance.

Now with Chris’ grandma placed on hospice (who we had just spent time with in St. Louis), we elected to get a monthly spot in Fredericksburg, TX so we could be at the ready to travel back when the time came.

We enjoyed being parked in the middle of Texas Wine Country, got used to bus life again, and attended the RV Entrepreneur Meetup with also happened to coincide with the premier of the The RVers TV Show in Discovery Channel.

This also allowed us to spend Thanksgiving in Texas with family, including my mom who flew out to be with us (even spending her first night ever in an RV – traveling with a guest cottage is pretty cool!).

At the end of our month and Chris’ grandma still hanging on – we opted to catapult ourselves to our lot in Benson, AZ at the SKP Saguaro Co-Op. It was a quick paced convoy so we could get settled in before needing to travel back to St. Louis for services.

And that’s where the end of the year finds us – at our lot in Benson where we’ve been busily getting our new casita outfitted, getting Zephyr still caught up on projects due to long term storage and immersing ourselves in our new winter community.

We’re almost caught up to being back to boondocking capable – and intend to head out into the desert to bring in the new year with our Xscaper’s community.

Life Balance

It’s been a really good year of enjoying time with loved ones and with each other. Fully embracing a slower pace of travel in our boat and bus had enabled us to spend more quality time exploring locally while still getting work done.

And while now managing 3 independent nomadic vessels – a boat, a vintage bus and a van – might seem daunting, we think the mix is going to work out really well.

The van provides an incredibly nimble way to travel over a distance, and we can putz around in our other homes. So maybe our crazy idea of a fleet will turn out to be not so crazy after all.

Work: 2019 Overview

Running the Mobile Internet Resource Center continues to be our primary work focus – one we continue to love.

At the beginning of the year we launched a complete overhaul of the site which has provided a new better foundation to organize our content and keep it current.

We have an incredible team that helps us with all of that – because it turns out this is a full time job not for us, but multiple people. With 5G and low earth satellites on the horizon – there is no end in site of this industry slowing down anytime soon.

At the end of this year, Chris and I just completed filming our very first video course on the subject of mobile internet.

We broke it down into 45 individual videos that flow from one to the next – ramping up from understanding your unique needs, the challenges of mobile internet and an overview of the options in cellular, Wi-Fi and satellite.

It’s now in production (we hired that part out.. see, we’ve gotten wiser over the years) – and we aim to launch it in early 2020 as soon as it’s done.  You can learn more in our Mobile Internet University, and even sign up for notifications when it’s ready.

It’s been a long time project in the works to find the right balance of information that isn’t too technical nor will it become too obsolete too soon.

2020 And Beyond

Kyle & Olivia over at Drivin & Vibin recently did a decade recap of RVing – in which they pointed out we’ve been sharing on YouTube as RVers longer than most.

Crazy to think we’ve been nomadic YouTubers since 2009 and even a couple years long sharing here on the blog.

It’s been an interesting journey for sure. Sharing has definitely enabled many things that would not be possible otherwise, especially so many incredible friendships.

We intend to keep sharing when we have spare time – when it’s fun for us. And in that vein, we’re considering our travelogues for 2019 caught up with this post. Maybe I’ll find time to create individual posts, or maybe I won’t.

As far as our travels in the year ahead – just as we had no idea how this year would turn out, we’re setting the same intentions for next year too.

Other than aiming to get back to boat life by this spring, it’s anyone’s guess where we might end up.

So, we’ll look forward to our 2020 recap to see how it turns out, and will share bits along the way.

Thank you for coming along virtually on this adventure –
we so enjoy sharing this space with you!

Wishing you ALL the best in 2020!

Our past year end wrap-ups:

2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,
2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018

Our Other Year End Content:

• A Decade Connected: A Look Back At The Evolution Of Mobile Internet
• Monthly Cost Log: Just updated to reflect 2019