Who are we?
Nice to meet you!
Name: Randy
Age: 59
From: Johnstown, Pa
Occupation: Retired
This is my first attempt at creating a blogging website. At first I was very intimidated, but thanks to some wonderful encouragement from my wife Michelle, a $44 annual domain fee, and some very instructive Youtube videos, here it is!
If you have any suggestions to make this blog site more helpful and informative, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thank you for visiting!
Nice to meet you!
Name: Michelle
Age: 45
From: Perth, Australia
Occupation: Retired with Randy
Michelle is/was the driving force behind our travels. I wouldn’t have done it with her, and I couldn’t do it without her.
Nice to meet you!
Name: Roxy
Died: August 25, 2022
From: Martinsburg, WV
Roxy was the best travel dog ever! If she was here, she would say, “Hey people! What are you waiting for? If I can travel, so can you!”
Our Story
My name is Randy. My wife (Michelle) and I have been traveling full time for almost 3 years. We had always dreamed about traveling full time after our retirement, and in fact the only question we really had was, “Where will we go and how will we get there?”
We started out thinking that we would like to do full-time RVing, but after a few years of research, we finally decided against that because of the overall cost. Besides, as it got closer for us to retire, the prices of RVs, and everything that would go along with full time RVing kept rising to the point where we felt that owning an RV might cause us more stress than we wanted in our retirement. So we regrouped, and came up with another plan!
We knew that we would need to do quite a bit of downsizing in order to make our plan work. About 2 years before our retirement, we started having garage sales to get rid of things, with the goal of selling our house and moving into an apartment within 1 year. I’m happy to say that we met this goal!
Needless to say, we downsized quite a bit to move into our new 2 bedroom apartment, but we still had quite a ways to go to get to where we needed to be. So we downsized again, and again over the next year, so that by the time we retired we could fit everything we owned into our car (to include our Golden Retriever, Roxy).
We wanted to take a road trip around America first, so we headed to Florida. Our plan was to stay in AirBnbs for one month at a time, slowly making our way from Florida, to Washington State, to California, Arizona, and finally back to Florida. We spent about 8 months on our trip, with Roxy in the back enjoying every minute of our travels!
We stayed in St. Petersburg, FL – Lansing, TN – Stillwater, OK – Boise, ID – Whidbey Island, WA – Pioneer, CA – Tucson, AZ – Sarasota, FL, and finally to Key Largo, FL, where we ultimately sold our car to continue with the next phase of our plan.
The next part of our plan may appear to some people as “extreme”, but it made sense to us and so we made it happen! After selling our car in Florida, we put our dog on an airplane, put ourselves on an airplane, and moved to Ecuador! We had heard how inexpensive it was to live here and that the quality of life is pretty good. Our plan was to live in Ecuador for at least 2 years. Our dog, Roxy was 12 years old. We expected her to live for at least 2 more years and so we intended to live here until she passed on, and then we would go other places.
However, Roxy got cancer 8 months after we arrived and we had to have her put down. We had her cremated and then we spread her ashes in the Pacific Ocean. She always loved the water! Our apartment overlooked the ocean and had a balcony where Roxy liked to sit and watch the waves coming in, and now she is part of it and can go anywhere she wants. (She always loved traveling!)
After Roxy passed away, our lives were empty. We moved from our apartment because it was too hard to stay there. Everything reminded us of our dog. We traveled to Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for a few months before returning to Ecuador for a short time. Then we took a Transatlantic cruise from NYC to Rome Italy, spent 6 weeks in Croatia before returning once again to Ecuador.
We stayed in Ecuador for 3 months in order to close out our bank accounts, relax a little, and to enjoy some final experiences in one of our favorite countries. We left Ecuador on the 1st of December and are now back in Asia.
We fell in love with Asia last year. When it was time for us to leave at the end of our stay last time, both of us felt a sadness, and a longing to come back. We’ve been back now for about 3 weeks and we are absolutely loving it!
While we were still in Ecuador for those last 3 months, I used that time to build this blog because I want to share our experiences. I also want to provide helpful information to anyone who might be thinking of doing what we did.
If you want to “retire and go places”, or if you simply want to “go places” it’s my hope that this blog will be helpful to you. If you ever have any comments (constructive please!) or questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.
I suppose one question that might be on your mind is “Do you have any regrets about doing what you did?” The answer is NO! We have loved traveling and really don’t have any desire to move back to the U.S. (At least not any time soon). We would do this all over again because we’ve learned so much and have met so many great people along the way. That’s why I want to share this with you. If you are on the fence about traveling, let me put your mind at ease. It’s freaking awesome!
Have a great day everyone!