There’s a pretty natural progression of questions we get from people when we tell them what we’re doing- Why? How? How long, and what will you do when you’re done?
The last one is one we have a hard time answering, but we’ve been thinking about it a lot more in recent weeks.
Scott sighed in exasperation yesterday, “Damn, I’m so done with this today.” We have our days when we are really ready for a little more space, but it was the first time one of us mentioned being “done.” Now, we have plans to be at Disney World in January (both for professional and personal reasons), and it wouldn’t make any sense to stop before then if we don’t have to. We have so much more east coast to see! We haven’t done Utah or Colorado yet, and we sure as heck aren’t going to do them between now and January, so we’ll have to hit them up sometime next year.
And then there’s Hawaii. I am working so hard to make Hawaii happen. Clearly we can’t drive there. It’s going to take some serious planning and saving and pitching, but I am truly hoping we can arrange to live in Hawaii for a month- staying in homes/Air B&Bs.
The kids will likely go back to some kind of public/private school next fall (road/homeschooling is a temporary thing for us, and I’ll get into the reasons for that in another post). So that gives us between now and, like, probably June or July to really figure things out. But we’ve only arranged for the dogs to stay with their foster families through March-ish.
SO. We don’t have clear plans right now, but it’s looking like we might wrap up late next spring. And then what?
No idea. Some of the options we’re bouncing around in our heads right now are buying land that we can park the RV on, then building something on that ourselves. Scott’s really quite handy (though we’d hire a lot of help, too). Or buying a super cheap fixer house and either living in it while we renovate it, or live in the RV off site while the bulk of that is done.
I kinda hate the idea of continuing to live in the RV while we are stationary somewhere for more than, say, a month. Only because the few times we’ve stayed in a spot for 2 weeks, we have really felt the itch to get the heck out after about 10 days, and it’s reflected in our moods. But, we could save a ton of money that we could use to fix up or build a house if we stayed in here for a bit longer, so we’re not ruling it out.
Where would this happen? Again, not entirely sure, but we’re leaning toward somewhere in the Texas Hill Country, or somewhere right outside of Austin.
Would this house be our next dream and forever home? I don’t think so. My big picture dream is it would become an investment property. I imagine we could rent it out, and maybe rent the RV out, and then use that income to help sustain us while we do a European or Australian tour. Just putting THAT big, wild idea out in the universe.
That’s really all we have as of now in terms of an exit strategy. And all of this could completely change tomorrow. We could end up living on a coffee bean farm in Hawaii or in the quirky town of Marfa, Texas for all I know. Both ideas we’ve at least considered while driving down the highway, wondering “what if.” Depending on your personality, either the worst or the best part of this life is all the doors it opens for you after you’re finished with it.