On January 2, 2022, we left our house in Boulder for 5 weeks, leaving it in the good care of our friends Carolyn and Ted. Their house was incinerated in a deadly fire a few days previously, and we invited them to live in our house while we were gone. They arrived with the clothes on their backs, their cat Billy, one car and 2 laptops. The rest of their possessions were gone. https://atravelyear.blog/2022/03/04/how-did-this-all-start/?amp=1
A day after our departure towards Arizona, we decided to rent our house to them and travel until their house could be rebuilt, which we initially thought would be about a year – hence the name of this blog “atravelyear”. And so, we have traveled this year, returning home intermittently to maintain our house, see friends and family and maintain relationships before heading out on the road again.
It’s been an amazing year! The best experiences were the unplanned ones: experiences that just fell in our lap along the road, that we had no expectations about and had not researched or planned. It’s not so much that we didn’t know our eventual destinations, but we let the intermediate ones just arrive day by day and many were such lovely, amazing surprises, amplified by our lack of expectation or planning. Being outside a lot has made the year special.
But it seems that I made at least one mistake from the beginning: I should have named the blog “thetravelyears” or something like that, since the rebuilding of their house is likely take another half year at least.
We now have travel plans through at least mid-May, (Australia, New Zealand, back to Australia and then Vietnam before returning home) and then some plans into June/July. Even after we return home, we’ll still travel but will have a home base to return to. It’ll be nice to have a base!
Last week, Chris got me a fitting 68th birthday card! Seems to fit our life these days…we sometimes are momentarily confused where we are, but find that it doesn’t really matter. As of right now, we’re happy, healthy and have some great plans for the foreseeable future. What could be better!? Here’s to Year 2!
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