I spent a week in Jackson, Wyoming while the family went to southern Alberta, Canada. I had to attend a work conference. It’s an interesting conundrum when working remotely with a distributed company that you aren’t physically with any of your coworkers. The people you work with, you aren’t actually ever with. 10up has an annual summit to bring everyone together for a conference. 10uppers give presentations to each other for a couple days, participate in a hack-a-thon, team building activities, celebrations and company awards (The Uppies).
A huge perk to working remotely is being home more and spending so much more time with my family. So, it was hard to spend the week away from them. Spending a week with coworkers and only talking on the phone or video chatting with my family is the inverse of what I’ve grown accustomed to.
I enjoyed the Jackson Hole area and when I wasn’t having altitude and/or allergy headaches, I explored a bit. I got to know a few of my coworkers too. It is nice to better know who I’m working with (and for).
The best part of the week for me though, was the excitement of the group hug when the rest of the family arrived to pick me up.
In the morning, after staying at the Old Faithful Inn, we got more familiar with old faithful by watching a couple more eruptions and visiting the education center. From there we had to get outside and went on a geyser and hot spring pool hike. It was amazing to see all the colorful pools and spring streaming geysers!
“The vivid colors of Beauty Pool’s basin and runoff channels are created by microscopic lifeforms. Incredibly, these organisms survive and thrive in an environment that would be lethal to us and most other living creatures. Scientists are just beginning to understand these lifeforms: amazingly, hot spring environments may sustain a diversity of organisms rivaling that of terrestrial rain forests.”
My favorite is at the end of the hike (of course), it’s called Morning Glory and it’s a very vibrant and colorful but still pretty small pool.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BjmAdicAcRU/
Next, we hiked back to the education center to finish some work and check on Old Faithful again. We caught the video they show after every eruption too. Highly recommend it!
Then we were off to check out the Grand Prismatic Spring! It’s very similar to Morning Glory, just lots bigger! So big, in fact, it’s kinda hard to see. I can tell that most of the famous photos are arial views. It’s just down the road a few miles but it was equally amazing!
Arial view of The Grand Prismatic Spring
Sadly, we had to head south already from there to get through the Tetons and down to Jackson hole. We’re total fans of Yellowstone though and will certainly be visiting again, hopefully with more time on our hands and an RV/camping gear. I had a work conference to attend with my new company 10up. They’re a distributed WordPress agency and it’s thanks to a company like them that we can nomad like we do! While I was in Jackson for the week, the rest of the crew went to visit family in Canada! It was a beautiful drive exiting the park and going through the Teton National Park too.
I think there were a couple other National forests or parks we drove through too, all beautiful. Here is the instagram roll from the day:
We drove from South Dakota and through Wyoming to get to Yellowstone and it did not disappoint. We arrived through the West Gate and headed right for a couple places on our short list. We had to drive a few hours through the park since it was already late in the day. It was a beautiful drive though around the lake. We came across some snow and had to get out and play a bit. There was some thermal activity on the banks of the lake too, so wild to see steam coming out of crevices in the ground! We spotted some wildlife as well, a few buffalo, deer, a bigger deer maybe elf or antelope and a young grizzly bear in the road (sorry, no bear pics this time). There were quite a few spots we had to pull off and just soak up the scenery!
We got to Old Faithful to see it erupt at dusk.
We were lucky to have made a reservation at the Old Faithful Inn though and were impressed with how fancy and unique it was!
It was great to spend the night in the park and not have to drive all the way back out! We’d probably prefer to camp there, but as we don’t have the RV (yet) or the camping gear (anymore) the inn was the option and I’m glad we went for it. A fun experience overall and so nice to see Old Faithful out the window first thing in the morning!
That is after a ceremony, so it was great to be there for the presentation which was a narration about the history of the carving and the reason each president was chosen. At the end of the presentation the lights come on and then we could see the huge carving!
Here’s a video to get a better feel for it (not my video):
We learned about George Washington, first President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, third, Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth, and Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth. Each was chosen for their mark on the country. Washington cause he is the epitome of the founding father and helped gain independence as well as formed the standard for the country. Jefferson because he was responsible for expanding the country with the Louisiana Purchase. Lincoln for keeping the country together throughout the civil war, and Roosevelt for leaving the country through development and deepening the character of the nation and started the national parks program.
As we were heading towards Wyoming from Indiana, we noticed signs to the Badlands, and having heard about them and looking up details as we approached we decided on a small detour to check it out. We were happy to present the rangers with our newly printed 4th grader pass which got us in free! We were pretty immediately impressed with a great overlook as we made our way to the information center, so we had to get out!
We were struck with blasts of wind as enjoyed the canyons and cliffs.
Then we saw something coming over the hills behind us, like a brown cloud and then we realized it was a sandstorm! So we ran to the car. Most of us made it in time, the rest of use was picking sand out of our hair and beards the rest of the day.
We checked out the Ben Reifel Visitor Center to learn all about the history of the area and participate in the Junior Ranger program. We were thoroughly impressed. We’re really glad that we stopped in to see the Badlands National Park and happy to report the badlands are a good time.
Sharing news with people of our nomad plans is interesting… For the most part, people are amazed at first and supportive that we’re following our dreams and express some sort of “I’m so excited for you” or “I’ll live vicariously through you” and “Please, share lots of pictures!”. Usually it’s positive and supportive.
We’re not looking for approval or permission. We are excited and feel like we’ve done our research. Some people have expressed disapproval in our life choices though. It’s too bad that the naysayers can be so loud sometimes. We’ve been told that it will be too hard, that we’re being irresponsible, foolish, immature, selfish, blinded, that our children will suffer from our poor decisions, that we will suffer from our chronic instability, etc. Crazy to think that just because we want to be location independent, people will say these kinds of things about or to us.
We’re big fans of the author and speaker Brené Brown. Her thoughts helped us through that. Following a famous quote from Theodore Rosevelt, she compares life to an arena, and when you’re in an arena you likely won’t have support of the whole crowd, but if you’re careful about who you listen to, you will find supporters who are cheering you on.
I understand that there will be challenges to our nomad life, but there are challenges in any life style. We do know we will miss being around family a lot and anticipate that will be among the hardest parts. The world is only as scary as we let it be though, it is also an awesome place. We know others are sad and anxious for us, but understand that we’re not jumping into this with no plan or consideration. We are excited and enthusiastic, and we will certainly adjust as we gain experience and learn lessons. This adventure will no doubt be hard, we get that, it is also scary. But that’s not our focus, we’re being careful and doing our best to be smart about it, but I’m sure we’ll make mistakes and have hard days, but in those times we’ll need love from our supporters, we hope you are among them.
We said goodbye and left home to start our nomad adventure!
Sell stuff, check
Get rid of rest of stuff, check
Sell house, check.
Pack up, check
Drive off into the sunset, check
We left Georgia and drove all the way to Indiana in a day to visit more family. Then a few more days on the road through Illinois, Iowa, South Dakota and Wyoming. As a family we’ve made road trips a tradition and have had a big trip across the states every summer for the past few years. We’re happy to be able to continue the tradition this year and incorporate it into our nomad life. In fact our road trips are what inspired us with the idea of living on the road full-time. We love to travel that much. The past couple years we’ve been aspiring nomads and been researching and putting things into place to make it a reality.
I’m lucky enough to be able to work remotely and we put it to the test while I worked from the passenger seat of the minivan! I’m pleased to report that it works pretty well. I turned on the hotspot on my phone (it’s not too expensive), I wouldn’t use it for video conferencing, but for my needs, it was alright. A few places were a bit spotty with connection (looking at you South Dakota), but most of the time I don’t need constant connection for the work I do, so we we’re just fine. I just need to push code up every once in a while and send/receive messages.
It did get tricky a few times however when the bright sun was coming down it was hard to see the screen! We had to get creative a few times to roll with it. It also gets pretty warm to sit in the sun in the car with a laptop on your lap for hours on end, so I’d recommend taking advantage of the cooler parts of the day to work from the passenger seat. If we can figure out how to work from the freeway, we expect to be able to figure out how to work from various countries and time zones too.
Driving across country gave us a good excuse to make some stops we haven’t been able to work into other trips. With Jackson, Wyoming as our destination for a work summit we would be so close it made perfect sense to hit Yellowstone Park on the way and the route went pretty close to some other landmarks too, like Mount Rushmore so we made it a weekend whirlwind through National Parks.
We’re lucky to be able to take advantage of the Every Kid in the Park program, where since we have a 4th grader we get free admission into all National Parks for the year! We’re trying to hit as many as we can on our quick road trip before we leave the country, but as we have 4 kids, we’ll roughly have a 4th grader every other year for a while, so we can hopefully take advantage of the program more in the future. If you have a 4th grader, fill out the form on the site and bring it (and the 4th grader) to any National Park and you’ll get a pass for admission which is good for each and every National Park! We’ll try to follow up with a post for each park.
We’ve had many questions about what we’re doing with our cell phones and plans while we travel the world. The standard response most nomads have had to do is get an unlocked phone and purchase a sim card (usually prepaid) in each country as they land and pay as they go. That sounds doable, but also sounds like a hassle to find a decent and competitive phone company and sim card on arrival before being able to use my phone. Luckily for us though, we have an international friendly cell phone plan, from Google. I’m including a link below to get a discount if you want to sign up.
A couple years ago we switched from Verizon to Project Fi. It’s literally the only bill we’ve continued with since selling our house. We no longer pay for water, trash, electric, gas or internet. We cut the cable over a decade ago, and have never had a phone phone.
Project Fi is a mobile virtual network operator by Google, providing phone, messaging and data services using both Wi-Fi and cellular networks belonging to Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Three. We have a two phone plan with decent Moto x4 phones and are paying $35 for unlimited talk/text and then exactly how much data we use (at $10/GB). We’re pretty light on our data and only use around 2GB/month together. Project Fi automatically switches between networks depending on signal strength and speed. It automatically connects to Wi-Fi hotspots with data encryption through an automatic VPN. Phone calls transition between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. With all networks combined, Project Fi covers 170+ countries around the world.
The nice part is that international data is the same price as domestic, 10$/GB. Plus I can use my phone as a hotspot and use date on the go to get my work done. (I publish this very post from the passenger seat of the van as we drive through Iowa using my hotspot). They’ve recently added a feature so that if we use a bunch more data than usual (over 10GB), they’ll cap our bill at $100. We do need to pay for international phone calls though (texting is still free), but since the plan uses wifi for calls when it’s available, we’ll be able to place free calls from home or anyplace with wifi! There are likely other competitive plans that could be set up by purchasing a sim card in each country, but it will be great to hit the ground with everything ready to go wherever we go.
Here’s the code to get $20 Fi credit when you start a phone plan with Google’s Project Fi. Redeem it here: https://g.co/fi/r/D2R0FJ
If you’re interested in switching or trying out Project Fi follow the link and get $20 credit (full disclosure, we’ll get the same $20 credit if you sign up). You don’t have to be a nomad or even an aspiring nomad to sign up for a great cell phone plan!
We’ve spent the last week overwhelmed daily with all that needed doing and all the emotions that came along with it. With the last push to let go of things and all the last furnishings in our house, organize what we weren’t getting rid of and taking anything we couldn’t sell to donate to friends and family and strangers. Selling our house to a great family and saying goodbye (for now) to the best neighbors we could have asked for.
We moved more than we intend to store in our parents basement (letting go is hard!). Then we also did our best at packing the van for a 6 week road trip followed by the flight that will begin our international nomad adventure. We brought bag after bag and box after box to the driveway and had to get creative in packing the trunk and every available space in the Honda Odyssey like Tetris masters. All the while knowing that we still have more stuff than we’d like. All our American consumer and preparedness training makes it really hard to leave anything behind though. We had to repeatedly tell ourselves that we can buy things as needed. That is such a different way of life and philosophy than we are used to. We usually buy in bulk and for long term, but we have to flip it and only buy what we need and only when we need it, and then only expect to keep it while it’s needed and useful.
We are going to Fiji though and have a list of things that are needed for life there. Then we arrive in Australia mid-July, which is winter, so we have coats as well as swimming suits and everything in between. It’s not as easy to pack light when we go Nomad because we are feeling like we want to bring all we will need as to be ready for the many scenarios we will encounter. As nice as it would be to have everything we will need on the journey, it’s not practical to carry that much stuff through the airplanes and transfers and trams and trains and ferries and Ubers and taxis and rental cars and buses which we’re sure to be utilizing. We will have to learn to do without or buy it there. It’s surreal to drive off with all the things we’ve kept for the journey in one vehicle and actually be setting off! We’re driving the family minivan with my keychain, with the van key being the solo key left on it. No more office key, that was my last job and I gave it back on my last day, my car has been sold, the house has been sold and my church key has been returned since someone else will be needing it soon. I’ve had many keys to lug around and the responsibilities that come along with each, it’s kinda nice to be free of that. Soon we’ll sell the van too and be on our own feet and whatever vehicles we hire/rent.
Driving off from our last local family gatherings into the sunset was hard. To know we won’t see the familiar faces in person for a good while was sad. We have plans for keeping in touch with video chats, but those are never quite the same. I said goodbye to my 4 sisters and their families, my parents and the slew of 16 nephews and one niece. The kids enjoyed some serious playtime with cousins before some goodbye hugs. Then the next day was goodbye to mom’s brother and sister and parents and more cousins and more hugs! It will seriously be hard to be far from the little cousins and we’ll miss seeing them grow! We won’t be gone forever, we’ll be around again one day, but we’ve got the itch pushing us on.
More like: Closing time, You don’t have a home and you can’t stay here.
Day one on zillow
It’s really real now that we’re gearing up for our house closing! It has been a very fast whirlwind and we’ve been able to do a few surprising things with selling our house. We went from trying to rent the house Monday, to listing it as for sale by owner on Zillow and facebook on Wednesday night (technically Thursday morning), to frantic cleaning and showings on Thursday and Friday to holding an open house Saturday and Sunday. But before we even held an open house we received an offer Saturday morning. The offer came from one of the first people to see the house but we decided to go with the weekend and see what happened. After the open house, and with some negotiations, the updated offer was the best one so we went for it!
We had some requests after the inspection and we were able to do those without too much trouble, work or money. We had to water seal a wall in the basement and fix some wood paneling cracks, service the AC, bring some shoddy contractor work in the attic up to code and replace some questionable support beams in the basement. We are now preparing to be out of the house this week!
Wrapping up the yard sale with not much left!
All in all, the process has been exactly one month from posting the house to moving out and closing! It’s been a wild ride and super busy, the month has gone so fast and we have had so much help from family and friends. I honestly don’t know how we’ve sold our house and finished liquidating our possessions and continued our preparations for world domination… er world travel. It’s been a busy month with posting the house for sale, showing the house, discussing with potential buyers and their realtors, selling our things via facebook sales, holding a big yard sale, lemonade stand, picking out and organizing anything we wanted to keep but not bring with us, donating van loads of stuff at thrift stores, neighborhood sending off parties, passport appointments, contractors in the house, had two birthdays in the family, doctor appointments, dentist appointments, eye doctor appointments, mechanic visits, trying to keep up with homeschooling, ending our soccer season with our last games and throwing team parties as team mom and coach, end of year ballet recital, buying plane tickets, selling cars, visiting with friends and family before we leave, and a full-time job (at least I don’t have a commute), etc, etc… We even had to feed all four kids every day, right!?
Jim Gaffigan sums it up nicely.
Closing on a house is stressful at any time, I’m sure, I don’t know first-hand because this is my first time selling a house. But I can imagine it stressing me out. I feel like we’re approaching the tipping point though. We’ve so far been working hard to reach our end goal – nomad life. The benefits to that life and rewards are what draw us to it, but we have yet to realize any of them. They are still just dreams, even though we’re working hard to make them happen, we’re not experiencing them just yet. We have had all the stress and doubts and work involved in getting to them, liquidating our belongings, selling the house, prepping for the lifestyle change and more, all the stressful parts. In all that, we’re doing our best to take a minute and say a proper goodbye to the house we’ve called home for so long. We’ve lived here for exactly 10 years. All our kids have grown up here and learned to walk and talk within these walls. We’ve grown as a family and grown closer, we really believe that this adventure will continue to grow us even closer. It is really hard say goodbye sometimes, but we will have to remember our new family mantra: “Home is where your pillow is”. We’re taking the home with us, but leaving the house. We’re anxious to turn the page on the stress and take a little breath, but not until the weekend!
