What Have We Been Up To For The Past Year?
I have decided I wanted to start a blog to encourage myself to write about this special time in our lives. I want to cherish and remember these adventuring years. Documenting with a blog feels like the perfect way to do so and be able to share our adventures with others.
What are we doing and why?
Anyone following Tyler or me on social media may have wondered where we are living and what we have been doing for the past year or so. We, along with our dog Bailey, have been digital nomads for the past year, traveling around the U.S., taking in the beauty, while working remotely from furnished rentals.
Two main considerations brought us to the adventure we are on now: 1) we have a goal to see all of the U.S. National Parks together, and 2) we really weren't certain where we wanted to settle down long term. In 2020 we started dreaming up a plan of traveling full-time for a year or two, or until we felt ready to settle down. In May 2022 we made that dream a reality!
How we got started and how we make it work:
We bought a house in Lynchburg, VA, with the goal of furnishing the house with all our belongings and renting the house out on Airbnb while we traveled. This prevented us from needing to rent storage space or sell all our belongings while we traveled. We pay a wonderful manager who handles the property for us. She lists the property and ensures its upkeep and cleanliness for guests.
We also sold both of our cars and bought a minivan with stow-and-go seats and plenty of room to bring what we needed with us. We named the car Mille after the Millennium Falcon, hence the name of this blog. Mille has been a trooper; she has already been across the country twice, to the lowest places on earth, and to the top of Pikes Peak, 14K feet above sea level. She has also been piled in and driven so many friends that we have met up with across the country through National Parks and on weekend adventures.
Tyler and I are both blessed with jobs that allow us to work 100% remotely. I work as a Senior Paid Search Marketing Manager and Data Analytics Liaison, and Tyler works as a Video Editor. We both work East Coast hours, which means we get up fairly early when we are in Mountain or Pacific Time. However, this also gives us several hours of daylight to adventure and explore once we are done with work for the day. We typically plan our long traveling days between locations on the weekends, but we will also take time off for more intentional road trip periods.
By the numbers:
In our travels so far, we have visited 23 U.S. National Parks, 19 cities, and 20 states. We have had 11 home bases where we have stayed for a week or longer. We have seen so many breathtaking views and eaten so many delicious meals that it is a bit overwhelming to keep track.
Tyler and I love to play a game on our long car rides where we rank the things we have seen and done and the places we have stayed. Our rankings change every time we play the game, but it's a great way to remember all that we have experienced.
Listed below are our current national park rankings. Before this full-time traveling adventure, we had been to 4 National Parks together, so our rankings are from 1 to 26.
Mille has driven us all over the southern half of the U.S. We just reached the northern half of the U.S. this May and plan to explore the North this summer. One of my personal goals on this journey is to avoid the cold, so summer is the perfect time for me to see the northern states.
Below is an overview of the path we have taken and the cities and states we have seen:
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