theboonedoggle

When we tell people about extended travel (with or without kids) we get a lot of comments about how they can’t imagine the complexity of planning something like this.   The truth is that these type of trips are extremely easy to plan — that is, as long as you do as little planning as possible …. or as your personality allows.   We both love the adventure of ending up where we might least expect.  When we first started dating, our favorite thing to do on the weekends was to get in the car and just drive.  No reservation.  No destination.  We would put on some good music, pick the highways and roads on a whim and end up somewhere—sometimes nowhere—in California.  When we were tired of driving we would roll into a random hotel (way before yelp and reviews) and get a room.  Sure sometimes it turned out to be crappy and sometimes we would get into a town where no hotels had rooms.  But that was part of the adventure! This was basically our around-the-world trip.  We booked a fl

(Anyone else a Tim O’Brien fan!?) Living and traveling with a minimalist is not always easy, but let’s just say that I knew from the start—15 years ago now—that checked luggage was a non-starter with this guy.  To put things in perspective, his weekend bag doesn’t just fit in the overhead bin, but also under the seat in front of him. “If there is a washing machine where you’re traveling…” Over the years we have adopted a packing routine:  I pack for me and the kids within a reasonable limit (still no checked bags EVER); he rolls his eyes and then we move on with our lives.  When we first started planning this trip his ideas were much different about how much we would bring, but I think the list below represents a good compromise.  Still, I’m sure that as soon as he actually sees all of the crap that he has been forced to carry there will be hell to pay. Clothes wise, packing for 3 months—or a year for that matter—is generally the same as packing for a single week vaca

A month ago, I randomly met an old friend of Todd’s who followed this blog in 2009/2010 when we traveled the world for 14 months.  Quite naturally she noted “aren’t you glad you took that big trip, because you can’t do that now with littles ones!”  Yet here we are, on a nearly 3 months-long trip across Europe with 3 children under the age of 6.    When I tell people that I am taking the summer off to travel with my family the most common response I get is “wow, you are so fortunate that you can do that!”  However, I believe “fortunate” mischaracterizes our situation.  The truth is we are no more fortunate than any of our peers; but we do make a different set of choices:  primary, we choose to live and travel SIMPLY.  And so I am restarting our blog to share our current journey in figuring out how to keep travel a major part of our lives - both financially, and with 3 little kids.  If nothing else, we hope that sharing these details both inspires people and removes the mis