Finding Family Adventure in the Face of Failure
{PARTS OF THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN ROOTLESS LIVING MAGAZINE ISSUE 5 FALL 2020}
“I can’t believe we get to live here.”
The words slipped from my lips the other night while standing on top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park watching the sun set over islands, mountains, and ocean waves. When darkness came, we hopped into our truck for the short drive back to our Airstream, put our boys to bed, and drifted off to sleep with hearts full of wonder. While this might happen once in a lifetime for most people, as full-time travelers working near Acadia for the summer, we get to experience it as often as we like all summer long, and we’re beyond grateful.
If you had asked us about our full-time travels last summer, though, this would not have been our story. Our circumstances were the same – living by Acadia in our Airstream for the summer – but our hearts were not as full. We were too busy itching for more. After six years of traveling full-time around the U.S., we were anxious to have a new kind of adventure and looking for a big change.
Many people call families like ours change-junkies, and we can’t deny the label.
It’s one we’ve carried for over 16 years.
Shortly after getting married and having our first baby in 2004/5, we packed our belongings into five suitcases and moved across the globe to live in Sydney, Australia. A year and a half later, with another baby in tow, we moved back to the States and tried to settle down. Five years and three moves after that, we gave into our travel bug and bought our first RV, determined to try full-time travel and worldschooling.
Pretty quickly after hitting the road, we knew we had found our thing, and we loved exploring national parks, boondocking, and crisscrossing the nation with every bone in our bodies . . . until we heard about the families living on boats.
“That’s it – that’s our next thing,” we thought, and we started making plans to transition from full-time camping to full-time sailing. Three years of dreaming and planning later, we purchased a Lagoon 380 S2 catamaran and put our Airstream in storage.
Just a couple of weeks after moving aboard, though, we knew we had made a big mistake.
Our years of full-time travel by camper had taught us that nothing is as easy as it seems on YouTube, so we were prepared for hard work. What we weren’t prepared for was a health challenge that meant surgery, recovery time, and emotional strain – a reality far from the boat life we’d been dreaming of.
When my husband found out he’d need surgery just a few weeks after moving aboard, we started feeling shaky about our plans. When he had the surgery, spent a couple of weeks recovering, and went back to the hard work of getting the boat ready to set sail, we were officially unsure. Then, during our first five-day sailing trip to the Florida Keys, he still wasn’t feeling his best, and we knew the timing wasn’t right for this dream.
Plenty of families overcome greater obstacles than these to live their dreams, but for us, we knew it wasn’t right.
So, we stepped back, sold the boat, and decided to go back to the full-time camping lifestyle we once loved. We were embarrassed to have failed, sad the dream was over, and nervous about facing the people who doubted us all along, but we decided we could be thankful for the experience and everything it taught us.
While some might leave an experience like that wishing they could go back in time and stop their former selves from making the mistake, we don’t feel that way at all.
We knew we would have never forgiven ourselves if we hadn’t tried it, and now that we know it’s not right for us, we’re a lot more thankful for what we have – a tiny home, a healthy family, a big backyard, and endless possibilities.
We know the key to loving our traveling lifestyle is finding what works for our family, not what people say is great on Instagram or YouTube, not what works for our friends or doesn’t make our family go crazy; it’s about finding our own thing.
Our wanderlust is still intact. I feel it every time someone mentions living in Paris or heading Down Under; I see it in my son’s eyes when he sees photos of Greece and in my husband’s smile when someone mentions New Zealand. But I also know we need a home base right now, and we need to be close to medical facilities for the next few years. That doesn’t mean we aren’t travelers or adventurers, full-timers, or whatever label we used to embrace. We know this traveling lifestyle is not all or nothing; for us, it’s about the long game – the memories we’re making, the adventures we’ll never forget, and the people we meet along the way.
When someone asks us about our traveling lifestyle, we’re quick to say that we’ve chased family togetherness through travel and found it but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to do it that way. We tried boat life and promptly came back to our Airstream more in love with camping than ever, but that doesn’t mean it’s for every family.
Traveling full-time for the past 7 years has done so much for my family.
It has taught us that life doesn’t have to be controlled by work schedules, that togetherness can mean all sorts of things, and that we often find our true passions much more easily when we’re away from traditional life. We’ll never forget these years of chasing togetherness, never forget that time we moved onto a boat, and we’ll always hold onto these years we’ve spent with our kids and each other in some of the most breathtaking places on the planet.
For me, that makes for an adventure, even in the face of failure.
UPDATE: These days you won’t find us traveling full-time anymore (home finally found us), but you will still find us chasing family togetherness and adventure.
Our hope is that by sharing what became possible for us, you’ll begin to see all that’s possible for you too.
If you love to travel,
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I’ll see you there!