If you read our About Us page, you will already know that this is our second 300 days of traveling together…with a gap of 28 years in between. In fact, we framed our parenting with world travel. Three hundred days of travel, stop, raise 3 kids and then travel another 300 days once the youngest is launched.  Hey, it just seemed so symmetrical…

Any how, here’s how 2015-2016 looks like:

• June: Breckenridge, Colorado
• July: Longmont, Colorado
• August: Asheville, North Carolina
• Early September: Galway, Ireland
• Late September: Lisbon, Portugal
• October: Birgu and Gozo, Malta
• November: Hell if I know
• December – March: Merida, Mexico

For this, our second 300 day trip, Ron suggests that instead of moving around from place to place he would prefer to spend at least two weeks to a month in each place. In his opinion, this not only helps us get to know and enjoy a place, it also cuts down on the most exhausting part of travel – the actual travel.

There was a time when airports, train stations, and tuk-tuks were just as much fun as the the destination. That train in Burma that was a different gage from the track it ran upon, that careening bus over the continental divide in Mexico, all part of the adventure.

Um, not so much now. Why? Security. Packed planes. And  smaller seats (perhaps bigger butts?…) And, of course, our first nod to aging. Travel can be crazy exhausting.  We decided we would rather spend our time getting to know each new location well, and becoming regulars at the corner pub.

We had hoped to be using a teleporter by 2015, but alas, not yet. We are still using delayed, crowded, luggage laden airplanes. Except for our first three months when we are in cars driving between cities.

Cars. As in two. That’s right. We brought both cars with us to Breckenridge. Why?  First we DO need to get away from each other and have separate adventures to talk about. Having two cars helps. Second, Ron’s car (a 2009 Mini Cooper) is worth more at our first stop (Colorado) than our home-base so we will sell it there before heading to North Carolina. Check Edmunds and add the locations where you will be travelling to help you decide whether to store or bring along the cars.

Car storage can get expensive fast so think about how much you really need to come home to that car.  We went to Mexico for three months last year and stored Ron’s car in a cave (seriously, that’s a thing in the Kansas City area…) for about $70 a month. That about 75% of our total storage costs for all our household goods.

More on storage. We chose to sell a lot of things to get down to a 10X15 storage unit.  We shopped around and found an urban climate controlled unit at $110 month with Storage Mart.  We bought renter’s insurance that covers the contents of the unit. Check for yourself, but the insurance the storage company offered only covers up to $2500 for the total contents. (Yeah, right. That’ll do it.)

We tossed around the idea of selling everything, but decided that storing for at least a year made the most sense. I did do the research to see what replacement costs would be.  We are retired on a budget (like most folks…) and storing our stuff made the most sense. We don’t know if we will stay on the road longer than 300 days and coming home and not having to replace absolutely everything should also make the transition easier.

On the flip side, if we decide to stay on the road, we might have a hell-of-a garage sale in the Spring of 2016.