The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

HOME. That word congers up different things to different people. We are currently “at home”. In February, 2010 we purchased a lovely home on 2 acres. It has a fantastic, huge, covered palapa…..the main reason we purchased this particular property, 4 outbuildings and an open floor plan. When we were on the road we truly felt like we were the best versions of ourselves, but, of course, we missed friends & family. We missed holidays at home. We missed being able to have a dinner party on the back deck. Now we are back in the life we left.

However, we long to be on the road once again. The quandry of it all is ever present.  While we reveled in ringing in the New Year in Laos we also wished we were home celebrating with friends. Participating in the Christmas Eve pageantry in Hanoi with 2 million Vietnamese, most on motos and dressed as Santa was extremely entertaining but we missed our traditional family holiday.

We spent that year dealing in many superlatives…..my birthday watching the Melbourne Cup races with friends in Australia, Thanksgiving on the beach in Bali, a very unique Christmas in Hanoi, New Years eve in Laos. We started 2008 with Valentines Day watching the sunrise over the Taj Mahal, spent Jim’s birthday floating the Nile, and woke up long before sunrise on our 18th anniversary to climb the highest sand dunes in the world in Namibia to watch the sun come up beyond the clouds. Not every moment of the trip was fireworks, of course, but we have to be honest and admit it was a damn good year!

We love our friends and family. We have a very close group of loved ones around us and appreciate them daily. But, we also want to be back out there discovering the world. I read a quote once, something along the line of wanting to travel full time if you had a second life to have here at home. How true that ideal is. Having experience both, we do want the best of both worlds!

For now, HOME is our life in Oregon. Other than family, the things we truly missed last time were  comfortable beds and the ability to cook. With our decision to drive to South America we have taken care of those two concerns. That just leaves missing our friends and family. By going slower, taking longer periods of time in different locations, we hope that we have many visitors along the way. We also plan on storing the truck & camper and flying home occasionally, all of which will allieve some of the homesickness we felt before.

At this moment we are taking advantage of what we won’t have when we leave again. BBQs on the back deck, family holidays, watching our nephews play football, and hanging out with friends. We are appreciating the gorgeous Pacific NW we call home and have spent over 30 days this summer camping in different regions.

Maddy is in heaven here, truly one of the most spoiled dogs around. She has 2 acres to patrol and call her own, a doggie door so naps can be had indoors or out, and a raised front deck to watch the day go by. She is also an excellent traveler and camper and is ever anxious to explore new horizons.

We had a fantastic garden this year, experiencing for the first time in years the joy of growing much of our own food. I had forgotten the intense satisfaction of building a raised bed, filling it with dirt, planting a seed and watching something miraculous take place.

So, the question as always is…what makes a home? As much as Jim, Maddy & I have been loving where we live, what truly makes it a home is that our pack is together. It really doesn’t matter if we live in town or in the country or, eventually, in our camper, WE are what makes a home. The things around us, while nice and having been lovingly acquired over the years, are just things. I think, perhaps, the most valuable lesson of our RTW is that we realized how little value material possessions mean to us. Will this make it easier to sell everything when we next depart? Well, perhaps, perhaps not. We are a society seduced by materialism and even while we, personally, are not great consumers, it is comforting to come home to someplace filled with familiar things. Even though we are both on board with reducing I am sure there will still be sad moments to see the items around us go to new homes.

I think HOME can be different things at different times and involves truly embracing each moment in life. Right now, we are at home here and yet all of our planning and plotting is going into making home our life on the road. They are both right at different moments in time.

I apologize to anyone who faithfully followed along on our RTW blog and homecoming only to have me completely drop the ball over the last (gasp!) 2 years. A lot has happen, and I will spend some time blogging about those events, but even more importantly, some big things are going to be happening!

This entry I’ll just do a quick recap. In late 2009, when I left off, I was back working at my old job at Grand European Tours and Jim was working in inside sales. We were making less money than before we left but our situation had improved from the life of PT retail for me and 14hr days of Schwans sales for him and, we had itchy feet. Without the means to flee the country again we decided on a plan. We would attempt to re-create our last couple of years before our RTW trip. We would buy a house, fix it up, pay off our newly accumulated debt, sell in a couple of years and take our money and run, this time having a lot more insight on how to really do a RTW trip well.

We did buy a house in early 2010, adopted the most wonderful dog in the world… a black lab mix AKA “designer dog” these days, we named Maddy but often refer to as blackdog, and moved to the country. The plan was to spend a couple of years getting things figured out and to travel around South America and Antartica, the only continents we had not yet conquered.

While celebrating our 20th anniversary on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, one of our favorite places on Earth, I suddenly had an epiphany….I turned to Jim and said “Why don’t we drive to South America instead of taking public transportation?” He replied “do people do that?” I had no idea, and even now have no idea why I asked the question or why I suddenly knew that we were destined to make that drive.

Once we returned home I started researching the subject and found out that not only had quite a few people made such a drive but a lot more were doing it as I searched. With that in mind we started searching for our ideal roadtrip vehicle. We decided on a Toyota Tundra w/ a pop top Palomino Bronco camper on the back and purchased them early this year. We’ve spent over 30nights camping in them so far and are loving life and can’t wait to get on the road full time. The two main things we disliked about our backpacking RTW was the horrific beds and not being able to cook easily. Both problems solved!

Now, we’re hitting full stride. Planning and plotting. Saving and selling. We’ll get everything updated on this blog and eventually create our own website as we now strive towards creating a location independent lifestyle. What we learned on our trip and since our return is that we are most alive when on the road, meeting people, discovering all the fascinating things this world has to offer. And, isn’t that what it’s all about!

Stay tuned for more details about our adventures the last 2 years and much more regarding the upcoming changes.

Cheers,

Rhonda & Jim