If you just got the song stuck in your head after reading this title—you’re welcome. 🙂

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This will be a brief update, but a necessary one, due to the fact that we are very close to our launch date and want to keep everyone apprised of where we’re at. We’re so excited to get this show on the road, and that our lives (as well as the blog) are about to get way more action-packed!

As of today, we’re merely 5 days away from beginning the big adventure. (squeal!) Andy has 3 more days of work in the office, and at the beginning of February will be working remotely and cutting his hours back to 3 days a week. When you get rid of the cost of housing, water, sewer, garbage, additional car insurance, and electricity, it turns out working 40 hours a week is no longer necessary. When we came up with this crazy plan, our primary focus was to spend less time in traffic and office buildings and more quality time together, being active outdoors and sharing new experiences. So every week now we’ll have four full off-grid days to get lost in the woods and play outside.

I will continue to work remotely on my artwork, eventually adjusting my deliverables to cater more to downloadable pieces for simplicity. I don’t want to have to seek out a printer in every town we pass through, or worry about leaving the forest and rushing to a post office to ship my work by a deadline. So this will be a nice excuse to push myself to think in a different direction and expand my portfolio. I’ll also be gleaning my inspiration from our travels, so it will be fun to see my work becoming a road map of where we’ve been! And the very best part is that our new offices will soon be located in coffee shops on the beach and lodges in the woods. Unbelievable!

Already our new lifestyle has afforded us valuable paper hat-making time. Andy gets full credit  for the jaunty feather.

This new schedule has also allowed us time to relax with friends! Scout’s a natural.

So on January 31st, the Turtle will be able to be spotted heading west toward Pacific City, where we’ll spend a week and a half dipping our toes into the new lifestyle. Andy especially loves Pacific City. It’s a great little town with a beautiful coastline, a great big sand dune that people sled and snowboard down, the cozy and delicious Pelican Brewery, and neat spots to hike around on the rocky ledges with great views of the ocean.

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From there, we’ll head north up the Oregon coast, taking our sweet time and stopping to check out places of interest. I made a Google map to mark our route, and dropped pins on the map to indicate restaurants, attractions, and RV sites with hookups. I’ve been ordering brochures and doing lots of research on places we’ll want to see, and with the map pre-pinned we’ll be able to decide to either stop or not as we drive along.

 

As we traverse the Olympic Peninsula, we’re planning on hitting every waterfall listed on the “Magical Misty Tour” brochure. There are a lot of them!

After we reach Port Townsend, we’ll make our way to Seattle. Both of us have lived in Seattle and we have loads of friends and family to visit, as well as restaurants where we’ll grab some old favorite bites. So— Seattle people, you’ll be hearing from us soon! I’ll make a reservation for us all at Annapurna.