“Man Plans, and God Laughs” has never been more true than it is during the Corona Years. Still, we have started making plans for our travels next year. Keep reading for the main bullet points.
The Plan
What we are planning to do for the next X years is to spend 6 months at home and 6 months on the road. Due to Corona we will be starting in Europe, most likely spending a month in each country that we visit.
We also have plans, once we are allowed back in the US, to spend two six month blocks traveling to all lower 48 States. That will require a decent amount of planning, but since overseas travel is even more complicated than staying in Europe we have time to plan and dream.
We are also hoping that we can save up the money so that we can do a World Voyage with Cunard. We are taking a Cunard ship on vacation next year, which is part of the reason for the delay in starting, and we would like to take that to the next level in the future.
The Questions
Why wait?
There are a couple of reasons that we are waiting to start our journey. First one is our home base. We still have a couple of bigger projects that we would like to finish up before we start leaving for half the year.
The second problem is school. We are trying to make it as easy on the kids as it can be so we are going to let them finish out this school year with their classmates and friends. Either at the beginning of next school year, or maybe a little bit later, we will take off.
The third problem is money. We are close, but we want a little bit more in saving before we go. We don’t have a set sum that we need, but it should be more than we have now. Money will be a big focus during our travels anyways and we want a big enough cushion to fall back on in case we are WAY off on how much we need.
The fourth reason for waiting is vacation. I know, this seems a bit counter-intuitive, but we have been planning a vacation to the States with the Queen Mary 2 for years. We want to be able to take that vacation without home schooling, without home office, and without any of the potential worries and struggles of living that semi-nomad life.
One month per country?
It isn’t going to be vacation, since we will still have school and work, so we need some stability while on the road. One week in a country is too much moving, but 3 months is too much because we won’t be able to see anything.
Granted, one month isn’t enough time to see everything that a country has to offer. Unless you’re talking about Lichentstein I guess. We aren’t saying that once we spend our four weeks in Italy we will never go back again. I would like to start our travels in Tuscany because it is a different country but still could be considered close to home in case things really don’t work out. That doesn’t mean we won’t spend another month some other time in southern Italy or on one of the Italian islands
Europe and the States? What about …?
Hold on there tiger! We are just getting started. Europe is still fairly close to our comfort zone and home base. The States is where I’m from and where Anya also feels very at home. We are using these two to figure out how this whole thing works.
It honestly isn’t out of the question to spend six months seeing all of the Canadian provinces. Or maybe spend some time in Australia as well.
To put it bluntly, we know about the security situation in Europe and the States. We know our way around and we know how to quickly find out what is allowed and what isn’t. As we move outside of these comfort areas we want to do more research before we rent an RV in South America to travel around and then learn that you can’t park the RV anywhere and we need a hotel every night anyways. Things like that.
When do we leave?
Right now the plan is to leave sometime after we get back from vacation at the beginning of September. We might push it back a little bit so that we aren’t driving through the Alps to get home in the middle of winter, but we still have just over nine months to get that figured out. Stay tuned to see how much this plan changes as we move closer to lift off and let us know in the comments what you think about this plan. Realistic? Are we completely forgetting something? Not possible at all?!? Let us know!
