Did you ever play detective as a kid? You created a story and headed off on a mini-expedition to solve the mystery. Translating your travel goal into reality starts by playing detective. You define the right questions then you begin answering them.
Why?
First, you want a targeted approach to working through the necessary steps to make your dream a reality. The path to reach any goal is filled with potential roadblocks. With clear direction, you’ll know whether to navigate around them or ignore them all together.
Second, when you clearly define your Why and your Goal, you won’t waste time and effort spinning around distracted by shiny options that aren’t part of your plan.
Third, having a clearly defined Why and Goal, that you can easily articulate to everyone who cares about you, increases your success in helping them accept your travel goal and support you.
We’ll talk more about each of these as we look at top-level questions to ask yourself.
One of the simplest methods is to start defining the big picture (macro) and work your way down into what will have day-to-day impacts (micro).
Remember, you’re not looking to define all of the travel you’ll likely be doing. Instead, you’re focusing on your primary travel that will be replacing your stationary life. You’ll probably still be taking side trips or vacations during your extended travel.
Let’s start by looking at some examples.
Example 1
You want to be travel to foreign countries and explore sites off the beaten tourist paths
You love the water & warm weather
You want the comfort & familiarity of your own home
You love learning new skills
Once you reach a destination, you might take off in a rental car to explore the country for a few days.
Travel Goal: Primary mode of transportation is a new/used blue water sailboat + dinghy to travel internationally. If you haven’t sailed before, you’re ready to take on the challenge of gaining the necessary certifications. Additional regional exploring (especially landlocked areas) as budget and time permit using local transportation.
Example 2
You’re on the quest for endless summer weather, but want the comforts and familiarity of home
You want slow travel for months at a time exploring the country moving every two to three weeks
You want to visit friends and family around the country for longer stretches of time than you’d typically consider staying in their homes as a guest
You plan to spend the colder winter months either in your own home or in a very southern location
Travel Goal: Primary mode of transportation is a new/used RV + tow vehicle or conversion van staying in campgrounds, RV parks, or boondocking. Additional travel is by airplane or car during stationary months.
Example 3
You know you want to move somewhere new, in your home country, but you’re not sure where
You’ll be working remotely and need strong internet, access to an airport for work trips and frequent visits from family and friends
You want to travel and explore until you find your new spot to put down roots
You’re a city/urban lover who doesn’t mind camping occasionally, but needs the hum of the city to thrive
You have no idea how long you’ll be traveling. It could be 3 months, it could be 3 years.
Travel Goal: Primary mode of transportation can be your current vehicle or a Class B/conversion van RV (for those short weekend trips exploring new locations) and staying in rentals/house sitting.
However, if one factor changed – potentially living in a foreign country – this Goal would include the option for air travel as the primary mode of transportation.
Your Goal doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be clear in order to navigate the extensive preparation stage. Honesty is critical when figuring out your realistic travel goal. You also want to be efficient with your time and energy. Focusing on learning to sail and gaining the necessary certifications to become a captain is a completely different process than learning to drive an RV or navigate international airports signed in a foreign language and entry visa mazes.
Foreign or Domestic?
This one’s pretty straight forward, but just to get you started…
Do you crave the challenge of eating different foods, hearing new languages, and constantly stretching your understanding of the world by experiencing new cultures and perspectives on life?
Do you want to focus on exploring your home country’s hidden gems and out-of-the-way spectacular nature (e.g. a temperate rain forest in the US) or follow an explorer’s path or taste your way through a region’s delicacies?
Which Basic Mode of Transportation?
There are four basic modes of transportation: airplane, train, boat, and road vehicle. Ruling out any of them as your primary mode of moving from place to place will help narrow down your options.
The United States relies heavily on road vehicles and airplanes. There are long haul passenger trains (Amtrak), but few people rely on them for extended travel. European extended travelers, however, frequently utilize trains and buses. For the sake of this discussion, let’s focus on the United States, but the same process applies to wherever you are. Know the common forms of transportation and choose from them.
Airplanes – Fast once they’re in the air, but the ground process often includes delays, overbooked flights, travel to and from the airport, and getting through security and immigration (if you’re headed out of or back into the country).
Boats – Beyond the Great Loop and the great lakes, you’ll be cruising along the coasts, using the Panama Canal to switch oceans, or crossing seas to foreign countries. Coastal cruising (close to shore/shallow waters often teal in color) can be in motor or sailboats. Blue water cruising (away from shore/deeper dark blue waters) is typically sailboats (monohulls, catamarans and trimarans) with inboard engines.
Boat ownership is necessary for living aboard. The initial investment, insurance and maintenance can be pricey. Consider buying used.
RVs – Full-time or extended living RVs are not the same as those manufactured for recreational use four to six times per year. They can be as streamlined as an Airstream trailer or the size of a passenger coach bus. What distinguishes a full-time use RV from a vacation unit is the fit and finish as well as the on board amenities like four season insulation and enclosed undercarriage to protect water and waste tanks.
If a full-sized truck can access the road, so can a full-sized RV. Depending on the length, weight, and height, your state laws might require a specific type of driver’s license. You may also be restricted from certain highways due to the rig’s overall length, weight, or height. You can travel on interstates and most local roads.
RV Ownership is necessary for full-time living. The initial investment, insurance and maintenance can be pricey. Consider buying used.
The reality is that you might find yourself selling your boat or RV and purchasing a different one mid-travel as your approach changes and evolves. That’s normal, it happens all the time and isn’t a reflection of how well you were prepared. As people gain confidence and skill they naturally want new challenges or set different goals. I know people who’ve started out in vans, switched to air travel and are now based in one location (a house) taking short trips by boat. Others have started out RVing to slow travel their country or continent and a few years later bought a boat and headed overseas.
The question is where do you realistically want to start.
How Fast or Slow Is Your Overall Traveling Pace?
How does the pace affect your Travel Goal? Why is it important to figure this out ahead of time?
Many people start out traveling quickly. They’re so excited to finally start their adventures, like a coiled spring that’s been released! They take their jam-packed, see everything, experience everything vacation-mode pace and apply it to long-term travel. They schedule a couple of days at each location, then move on to the next stop. We even know families that started out driving overnight to get to the next place to maximize their short time exploring.
Virginia’s Historic Triangle is densely packed with historical sites. When we visited the area, we based ourselves in Williamsburg. We started with Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living history museum in the world, and spent ten days taking it all in. Some days we were there for hours. Other days we only entered to grab lunch, catch one of the performances then headed off go-carting! We spent another ten days visiting Jamestown and Yorktown.
In an online group someone asked how they could see all three locations in a day and a half. The knowledgeable response? “With fast sneakers…you’ll be running the entire time!”
Knowing our family’s Why (RVing with an educational focus on history and civics), and our overall natural travel pace, we planned a very slow pace at this location. It was the best way to set our kids up to be successful and give them the best chance at retaining what they’d learned.
However, after the first three months, most realize they need to slow down, adjust their overall pace and modify their expectations. It becomes a necessity, especially if they’re traveling with younger kids. They’ve found their natural rhythm travel pace.
Places and experiences become a blur without rest and ‘home’ days. Introverts need time and space to recharge. Large laundry items need to be cleaned, rigs and boats need maintenance and upkeep. You’ll need time to keep in touch with family and friends beyond a quick call at the end of a busy day. Unless you’re accustomed to keeping a constant fast pace in your current life, extended fast travel will wear you down quickly. It’s incredibly exhausting for your brain to constantly be in a state of learning, problem solving, planning and experiencing.
Your short-term pace can change based on where you’re going and what you’re doing. Some experiences require more days than others. You might plan a short stay followed by a longer stay with built in rest days. It’s rare to hear people say they needed to speed up their original pace. It’s common to hear people say they needed to slow their original pace.
Knowing and keeping the pace that works best for you and your traveling companions is an important part of extended travel.
Understanding the importance of pace ties directly to how you answered your Why question?
The Bottom Line – Know that your overall traveling pace will change over time as you settle into your natural traveling pace. That process can take up to three months. It’s helpful to factor that into your discussions and planning.
If you’re traveling primarily by airplane, your budget will likely take a huge hit if you’re moving quickly for too many months in a row. Save flying to three different countries in three weeks for places like Europe with inexpensive short-hop airlines.
If you’re traveling primarily by boat, it’s a bit different as the wind and weather have a huge impact on your pace of travel. However, you’ll still be choosing a boat based on how fast you potentially want or need to travel (performance) vs. how comfortably you want to live (cruising). Every appliance adds weight which slows down the boat. Boat design translates into performance potential. Fortunately, you don’t have the same time consuming setup issues as RVers. When was the last time you saw someone spend an hour leveling their boat on a water incline?
If you’re traveling primarily by RV, the pace will often determine which rig setup you purchase. Fast travelers tend toward shorter rigs that can go anywhere including off road. Slow travelers tend toward longer motorhomes, travel trailers and fifth wheels, set up a ‘base camp’ and take car trips to explore. Why? It all comes down to how much time you’ll spend setting up and packing up at each location, how much stuff you like to regularly use (e.g. outside furniture and grills), how easily you can access destinations, and how much space you want inside for rest and for stormy days. These aren’t hard-and-fast rules, just realistic generalizations.
How Much Time Will You Have to Travel?
A six-month sabbatical is very different than knowing you’re heading out for an unknown length of time. Likewise, traveling every summer for three months is very different than living full-time on the road. Different scenarios translate into different questions that have to be answered and different decisions that have to be made both ahead of time and while you’re traveling.
Why do you attempt to answer this question in the planning stages?
We’ve met too many people who’ve regretted some of their initial major decisions because they didn’t stop to think about how long they might be traveling. This includes decisions about mail handling, routine medical care, voting, which RV they purchased, which boat they purchased.
Your sibling is happily handling your mail while you travel for the summer. Now it’s autumn, they’re ready to have you handle your own mail, but you want to continue traveling. Do you have a backup plan?
If you thought you might be gone as long as a year, would you switch doctors now to one who’s already setup to happily handle phone call questions and tele-medicine appointments from an out-of-state patient? It’s surprising how many doctor’s offices say they’ll take your call, but when you need them, they require you to appear in person. You explain that you’re out-of-area and they tell you to head to the nearest urgent care facility. It’s not their fault. They thought you were going on a typical vacation. They’re not prepared to work with patients who do extended travel.
You don’t need to know exactly how long you’ll be traveling. That’s impossible for anyone to know and you’ll drive yourself bonkers trying to see into the future. However, you can make an educated guess based on what you do know.
If factors change down the road, you’ll now be aware of their potential impact and can make faster decisions. They’ll be small impediments rather than full-on road blocks.
If you think you’ll be traveling somewhere between three and six months and you know it can’t exceed one year because of a hard and fast deadline, that’s good enough for making most decisions.
However, if you think it could be as short as a few months, but as long as a few years, that’s too wide of a gap to be certain that all of the decisions you’ve made for the shorter time frame will still work for the longer time frame. In that case, lean toward making your initial decisions based on the longer time frame so you won’t find yourself having to stop mid-way, make new decisions (which can require a more complicated process to implement) and then continue. If in the end it turns out to be the shorter time frame, there’s no penalty. If it’s the longer time frame, you’re ready to keep traveling!
Analyze Your Own Experiences
What insight can you gain by analyzing the travel you’ve already experienced? Think about the pain points you experienced (e.g. sea sickness or fear of flying). Would you want to experience those pain points regularly? Do you think you can learn how to better navigate those pain points in the future or will they forever be difficult?
Be ruthless when you analyze former travel experiences. Be objective.
Remember that vacation trips are filled with expenses in addition to your regular monthly expenses. You rent a car while also paying for your car and insurance at home. You pay for a hotel in addition to your mortgage and house insurance. You rent scuba equipment as it’s easier than bringing yours from home. All of your meals are eaten at a restaurant. Objectively, you now know that basing an extended travel budget on a vacation experience makes zero sense.
Be objective. Keep asking questions until they reveal a truth.
It’s not productive to conclude “we had so many challenges on vacation we’ll never successfully travel long-term.” What does that actually mean?
You overspent on your vacation?
Your current monthly expenses are too high to comfortably vacation the way you want to regardless of where you live?
You’re actually frustrated by how exhausted you were from that vacation’s pace?
You missed your routine back home?
You want to be able to bring your own scuba equipment with you when you travel?
That’s how you keep asking questions to reveal truths. You went from some vague frustration bubbling up to revealing that you missed your home routine and that scuba diving with your own equipment is important to you (translation…boat or RV life looks promising)
Be objective. Be specific. Put options in categories.
This exercise is about letting hindsight remove emotions so you can looking at things as logically and realistically as possible. Even if that’s not your strong suit, don’t worry, some factors will still be obvious and others will reveal themselves over time.
The realities of air travel are a constant regardless of whether your travel for work, fun or as a primary mode of transportation. Driving an RV to your next destination or driving to work doesn’t change the fact that driving on I-95 means dealing with perpetual construction. Recognizing constant factors will help you paint a clearer picture. If a pain point is a constant, it isn’t likely to change just because you’re now traveling. In fact, if it’s a more regular part of your travel, it’s likely to become a bigger negative factor. Is there a viable workaround (e.g. taking alternative roads to I-95) or no (e.g. hiring a private jet)?
Identify pain points that you’re not willing to deal with. If you always get sea sick despite trying every option to prevent it, a boat as your primary mode of transportation in now firmly in the “no” column. If you hate driving on the commuter filled highways outside of larger cities (e.g. the greater Washington DC area), you can still have RVing in the “yes” column. You’ll also want to add “park rig outside of larger cities and only travel in by car or public transportation” to the “yes” column.
Next, examine what you love about your current stationary life. Do your kids love sleeping in their beds every night? Do they love camping out and roughing it? Do any of you need a lot of alone time during the week? Does your huge kitchen, with room for everyone to join you while you cook, make you happy? Add these clues to your columns.
Then factor in what you dislike about your current stationary life. Does your house size require more hours per week of cleaning than you care to spend? Do you dislike the proximity of your neighbors? Are you a city person stuck in the country or vice versa? Do you wish you could live by the beach? Add these clues to your columns.
Talk to and Learn from Others
Head to the nearest marina and start chatting with people who own their own boat. If the slips are behind locked doors, find the harbormaster (in an onsite office) and ask if there’s anyone local you could talk to. Tell them why you’re interested in learning more about the lifestyle. Find out what’s realistically included in living in that style of boat, daily chores, maintenance, etc… Talk with people who own monohull and people who own catamarans.
Ask questions, be a sponge.
Head to nearby RV parks or campgrounds in the late afternoon/early evening when people are most likely to be outside and eager to chat. Strike up conversations with people who own fifth wheels, motorhomes, and vans. Find out what’s realistically included in living in that style of RV, daily chores, maintenance, etc… If the rig has an Escapees or Xscapers sticker on their rig, or if it has a South Dakota license plate, chances are good that they’re long-term or full-time RVers. They can be a goldmine of information. If they’re not home, note their site number and leave your contact information with the office staff to pass on to them. If they’re interested in talking, they’ll call you.
Ask questions, be a sponge.
Check your local news sources for any upcoming talks by international travelers. Ask around in local online groups. Someone in your area is already doing what you’re considering.
Remember YouTube has a wealth of information from full-time and part-time travelers using every possible basic mode of transportation. Focus on those who full-time travel for the clearest information.
Online Groups
As part of your research, join online groups to learn more about the realities of extended travel using different modes of transportation. There are groups for RVers, blue water cruisers, and nomads who rely on airplanes, trains, and buses as their primary mode of transportation. Every group I’ve ever joined has welcomed people just learning about the lifestyle. Take the time to read through past posts before you jump in and ask questions. You’ll be more knowledgeable and you’ll be asking better questions.
One caveat, you’ll need to be picky about who you listen to within the groups. Don’t assume that the title and description is still the primary focus of the group’s active members. It’s the members, what they’re doing and their WHY that matters. As in any group of strangers brought together by a common interest or shared lifestyle, motivations and experiences vary widely and influence perspectives. This lifestyle and its members reflect real life.
For example, online RV groups and forums have experienced a different challenge in recent years. The pandemic and it’s economic impact created a dynamic still in transition. Many people opted out of their former living situations, purchased inexpensive RVs and moved into RV parks/campgrounds. The parks/campgrounds were happy to have residents as tourists suddenly stopped traveling. Now that the pandemic shutdowns are over and vacationing has resumed, the RV parks need to return to their former business models, but not everyone in their parks has a new place to move on to. These are members who’s Why isn’t extended travel. While they do know about living in an RV for an extended period of time, their challenges are often different as they might not have had the luxury of time to make their decisions or the financial means to purchase the best rig for their needs. They might also be facing pressures from the RV park/campground to find a new place to live.
That noted, there are so many people already living this lifestyle who are happy to share knowledge with anyone in the research stage.
There are some fantastic online forums that we’ll be highlighting.
The Bottom line – go be a sponge and we highly encourage you to leave any group that isn’t t supporting you in your process of becoming an extended traveler and beyond. Remember, it’s about ‘goodness of fit’.
When we first began talking about full time RVing, I had three years of sporadic online research under my belt…a huge advantage.
Dave had a rough budget in mind, wanted a new rig and headed off to an RV show. He kept calling me to discuss floor plans.
Meanwhile, compiled from reading the wisdom of 20+ year full-time RV veterans, I had a list of must haves that included boring things like: – diesel pusher (climbing mountainous areas) – 6 speed Allison transmission – air brakes – not new (didn’t want to spend a year basically stationary while in and out of the dealership with first year fixes) – 10+ yo higher-end motor home brought within our financial reach through depreciation
We purchased our rig directly from the former owner. Within a month of getting on the road, Dave was telling our story to people, thrilled that we’d purchased based on the list. We still own that RV.
Lisa @ travelandlearn
What Do I Do With These Clues?
It’s time to take all the clues you’ve uncovered and make sense of them. They may not make sense to you yet, but by laying them all out in front of you, you’ll start to see the patterns and the patterns will paint the picture. At the very least, you’ll know what you don’t want and sometimes those are the most helpful decisions!
For example, if you choose domestic RV travel, but love your kitchen island and everyone hanging out together too much to give it up, I would recommend looking at a fifth wheel pulled by a large pickup truck. Your love of having everyone in the kitchen area while you cook will potentially outweigh any extra time spent setting up. Your cooking happiness might outweigh any additional expenses operating a large pickup truck to tow your fifth wheel. You can adjust to a slower travel pace to allow more opportunities to cook full meals and reduce your fuel consumption. Other options are a motorhome with living area slides on both sides or a large van and renting homes or house sitting.
If you know you want to buy a boat, but also want to live without the inevitable listing under passage, focus on catamarans, not monohulls.
To prevent yourself from circling the same questions making zero progress, write down your decisions in whatever format works for you. You’re simply making decisions and basing the next decision on the previous decisions. If any decisions change, you know what’s affected and where to pivot.
You can create three lists – Yes, No, and Maybe. You can create a mood board of images that are Yes and one that are a no. Whatever works best for you.
Remember – defining your travel goal is about finding the truth you can sustain over many months or years, not creating a fairy-tale version. If you aren’t sure what it’s like to use airplanes for transportation, book a weekend round-trip flight with everyone you’ll be traveling with to experience the airport process, flying, living in a rental home, etc…
Do the same thing for RV or boat travel. Rent a boat. Rent an RV. Test the waters. Do this as many times with as many different styles of vehicles as you need in order to make clear decisions. Spending a few thousand dollars in rentals to be certain vs buying a $50,000 mistake you’re struggling to sell is a smart investment in your time and money.
Go through the motions in a real-life scenario. Focus on the every day aspects like setting up and packing up, grocery shopping in a new-to-you store laundry navigating a new location.
Think of this as your data gathering stage..it’s detective time. You’re investigating realistic options as you create a real-life version of the travel goal of your dreams.
The more real-life information you have before making your decisions, the more realistic and successful your decisions will be.
