And.. We’re Off! Back to Nomadic Life and General Life Catch Up

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been meticulously preparing to store the boat, and head off in the van for an opened ended road adventure.

It’s been a lot of sorting through closets, drawers and odd storage places we’ve been stuffing stuff for the past 16 months of being homebased in Sanford.

Our boat had become like any home – every nook and cranny filled.

The van also needed some small upgrades for an extended trip, including some tech upgrades before we could depart.

And finally it all came together – our life, for the first time in over a year – moved back into intentionally being nomadic, instead of homebased.

We pulled away from our beloved Sanford, leaving Y-Not in the hands of many watchful dockmates and local friends – to explore the road for a while.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions lately, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to bring everyone up to date.

Here’s the video version, or see our answers below:

Are We Still Intending To Loop?

We bought our boat over 4 years ago with the intention of doing the American Great Loop – a circumnavigation of the eastern part of the US. We never intended to do the Loop in the typical 1-year pace – that’s just too much travel time for us to also work full time.

And, we like a slower pace of travel anyway.

We started our journey in Punta Gorda, FL in 2017 and made it as far north as Charleston, SC in 2019.

Life (ie. a family medical issue and a hurricane threat) had us turning back south and storing on dry land until we returned in spring 2020.

Yes, the Loop is still our long term intention.

But it’s not a goal nor a finish line. We’ve just generally fallen in love with the extended cruising lifestyle – moving our waterfront condo to new towns to explore and partaking of more affordable monthly marina rates right downtown.

With Canada’s borders not opening until next month (just announced!) and now in the peak of hurricane season, it just doesn’t make a ton of sense for us to set out in the boat now.

So we’re taking a van trip instead to mix it up, leaving Y-Not in just about as safe a spot as can be in the southeast – 40 miles inland in Central Florida.

When we return, we’ll likely resume cruising. Maybe even popping over to the Bahamas first before turning northward up the coast?

Maybe we’ll eventually complete the Loop. Maybe it’ll be five years, ten years? Maybe we won’t. We’re not tied to any particular outcome.

Do We Still Have the Bus?

Oh Zephyr, how we miss you. We stored our bus in late January 2020 at our co-op park in Benson, AZ before returning to get Y-Not out of dry storage. Back then, COVID was just ‘that virus over in China’ – not a full scale global pandemic.

While we knew returning to Sanford was for at least a few months, getting back to Arizona just never felt feasible this past year.

The peak time for winter temperatures coincided with peaks in the pandemic. And our vaccination coincided with peak times in summer heat.

So it’s been a year and a half since we’ve seen our bus – another unintended long term storage. We have had friends checking on her at our co-op – but we do need to get back and attend to her.

Returning to Arizona later this fall is one potential destination of this van trip.

What are your Van Trip Plans?

Basically, the plan is to meander and follow serendipity. We’ve left out without reservations too far in advance, intending to snag nights here and there, last minute cancellations, Harvest Hosts and other overnight stays.

The van is very nimble, and the lithium setup in our new Travato GL gives us a lot of flexibility for running the AC off battery so power isn’t as much of a concern.

We’re heading north, likely exploring the East coast – maybe up into the mountains along the Blue Ridge Parkway? We’ll probably end up in the northeast and maybe bouncing around visiting friends. With Canada opening up next month, maybe we’ll cross the border and end up in Michigan, and then down to visit family in St. Louis?

All and all, we intend to stay within a couple day drive of Florida through peak hurricane season – just in case we need to get back to Y-Not. So our planning will be based around the tropics.

Maybe we stay out a few weeks? A couple months? Rest of the year?

We don’t know. We’ll do what feels right.

Are You Attending or Speaking at Any Events?

RV and boat events are ramping up and underway, and we’ve been getting a lot of questions as to if we’ll be going to them.

And… nope. We’re just not ready to return to large group events quite yet.

Heck, even without the pandemic – large events are really outside our comfort zone.

We’re pretty extreme homebodied introverts who don’t thrive in large groups. And traveling around a schedule is stressy for us. Add on to that, being known we’re pretty much always being approached as ‘celebrities’ non-stop at events, which is just weird for us (we more identify as dorks with an iPhone).

We rarely get the things we crave out of such events – new connections. And we often leave feeling absolutely drained after so many short light encounters that are filled with expectations that we can never meet (that we’re always 100% charming, that we love having our brains picked, etc).

But we do LOVE meeting people and making friends. We just prefer it more at a dripped pace of smaller and deeper encounters where we can get past the pleasantries. Not drinking from a firehose.

And.. we’re off!

So.. that’s that.  We’re off on the road. I’m not sure how much time we’ll have to share the individual adventures. Heck, we’ve been doing van trips a couple times a month and haven’t really been documenting them.

Producing travelogue videos & posts is just a heck of a lot of work, especially with the hyper mobile pace we’ll be keeping and us fighting over the one good workstation in the van.

And, we are still working full time and creating sometimes 3-5 videos & stories a week over at the Mobile Internet Resource Center.

But we will try to get in some more topical posts as we go, and have time and energy. And maybe some bigger wrap up posts if feasible.

If you’re wanting to follow along with the travel side more in real time, Instagram and Facebook are your best bets. I usually keep those up. And when we have good bandwidth, we might do some impromptu YouTube Live Events – so do keep subscribed and notified on our channel.

And if you do see us coming your way, do reach out! We’re open to driveway surfing invitations, tours of cool things, going on a hike / bike, safe outdoor dining or just general hanging out with new fellow vaccinated friends.