I remember hearing a few other people say things like they were taking a year off and traveling and thinking, “Well, that must be nice…some of us have to work!”. Nothing really changed there for us, as we will still have to work, but a few things lined up just right. With the housing market having our house maybe selling for way higher than what we bought it for, it seemed like we could potentially sell our house and use half of the gain to travel for the year and save the other half to get a house on our return. It all hinged on the selling of our house. We decided (not quickly) to go for it. If we didn’t sell our house, we would at least have gotten rid of a lot of junk, cleaned up our house and would still be in a better place. The market made me nervous because we had to make the profit we needed to split into our “travel” and “save” piles and that meant selling for the prices that were happening in September, 2022. But it was February, 2023 and the snow just kept coming! Finally we got it ready and on the market in March. To our surprise and delight, we had offers within the week- multiple and above asking- and some allowing us to stay through the school year (until June 15 was my preference). Eventually, it all came together -not easily and not without some work- (think roof, septic and well inspections that had us needing a new roof and some delays in all of it) and we had to start thinking about the reality we had just created.
Thanks for writing this. You’re a very good writer and I look forward to reading more about your adventures.You and your beautiful family will create an epic story.
I have always enjoyed reading true life adventures…Travels with Charlie,;The man who walked across America. Authors like Edward Abbey &Sigurd Olson. Again I look forward to reading more.
Thanks Steve! And thanks for the book recommendations, I will check them out.