Family RV Adventure Announcement!

Anyone who’s known me for more than about 5 minutes knows that I’m not a homebody. Travelling is my thing, and being in the same house for the last 8 years is starting to feel a little… suffocating. Who am I kidding? It’s felt that way for the last 5 or so years. If you’ve met my family, you know that family adventure travel is also our thing. And though we had a blast on our bicycles in 2016, our next adventure will be a Family RV Adventure! And a BIG one, too 🙂

 

We recently acquired an awesome 2000 Triple E RV. It’s a big (as I call it) “bus” that fits the 5 of us perfectly, and will be  our home for the next year. Yep, you read that right. My awesome husband, my awesome kids and I are heading out for a 1-year adventure in our R.V. We’ll be touring all over Canada and the U.S., seeing sights, meeting people we haven’t seen in a long time, and generally making memories that our children will remember for a lifetime.

I am ecstatic to be packing up my house and can’t wait to head out on the road. Part of the reason this is possible is because of freelance writing. Dan (my husband) will be taking a one-year sabbatical, and I’ll continue to work while we’re on the road. I now have a few clients on retainer, and I continue to pitch publications here and there. And the amazing part? I work fewer hours and get paid more than I ever did while working a brick-and-mortar job. You just have to know who and how to pitch, and you can definitely make money as a writer. There’s actually several ways to make money with your writing. But I digress.

 

We’ve been packing up our house for the last few weeks, getting ready for our big adventure. We’ve also been purging like crazy. I think everyone should plan a big trip like this, just to get rid of all the junk in their house they don’t actually need. We’re pretty simple people when it comes to “stuff,” but it’s amazing what you accumulate over the course of 8 years, when you’ve got the space. I’m actually looking forward to living in small space that’s easy to clean and where you don’t have room to collect “stuff.” 

We’ll keep homeschooling on the road, but our roles will reverse: Mama will be working for pay while daddy homeschools. We’ll go by trial and error to see what kind of work schedule works for us and still allows us lots of time together to tour the places we visit. For now we’re figuring that I’ll work in the early morning/early afternoon, and we’ll get the whole afternoon and evenings together. But again, it’ll be trial and error. We’re so excited to teach the kids while we show them a little slice of the world.

Here’s our planned route!

Our plan is super flexible, but we’ll be leaving Kingston between August 26th and August 28th, and  heading east to Newfoundland. Our plan is to be in Newfoundland by mid-September, where we’ll visit my “cousin” and family, who now own a restaurant in Cambpellton. I put “cousin” in quotes because he’s not really my cousin. But our parents have known each other since they were about 8 years old, and his family welcomed us in their home when we first immigrated to Canada. So we’re pretty much family. I look forward to seeing them and to checking out this awesome restaurant they’ve owned for over a year now.

After Newfoundland, we’ll head south, and our goal is to avoid winter this upcoming year by travelling through the southern U.S. during that time. We’ll then head up the East Coast, with some backtracking for some national parks. Then we’ll travel east back to Ontario.

 If there’s something you think we should definitely check out, let us know in the comments below.