What one may think our nomadic lifestyle is like: carefree, wandering the planet with just the essentials, seeing beautiful things, and experiencing life to the fullest. Full of adventure, travel, no stress, no responsibilities, nothing tying us down. Freedom.
What our nomadic lifestyle is actually like: Trying to find the balance between travelling, working, and stability. Figuring out where to put all our things – whether it’s packing and taking them with us, or storing them, we end up with stuff all over the place. Feeling like we just put down some little roots in a place with people that we love around us, just to uproot and move again. Missing friends that we’ve left in places we used to live. Being far away from family – thank goodness for phones and internet! Not having a guest room for people to come visit us. Unable to plant a garden, or needing to leave beloved plants behind when the wind blows us to a new place. Trusting that we will always have or be able to find a place to live. Realizing that home is really a feeling when we are together. “Home is whenever I’m with you.”
This post was written 20 days before the beginning of a big road trip that will take us from Homosassa, Florida, where we have lived since the end of November 2021 (with only brief travels to Africa, Costa Rica, Montana, Colorado, Iowa, New York, South Dakota, and some states in between) to Montana for the entire summer. We have plans to return to Citrus County, Florida in October before jet-setting to Thailand for another anticipated adventure, but as of right now, are not sure what our dwelling place will look like when we return. We have secured a site at the location we’ve loved living at for the last 2.5 years: Nature’s Resort, but the idea of towing our 20’ camper to Montana and back in five months is daunting, and not our ideal plan.
Maybe we’ll purchase a larger camper, one with two toilets (please!) and space for an office/guest room that is separate from the living and bedrooms. If so, we’ll need help towing it – which we have had several friends offer their big trucks for this purpose (THANK YOU!!!), but first we must find one and buy it. When you’re planning to pack everything, you have with you into storage/two cars and a camper, it’s a challenge to also consider purchasing another dwelling for the future.
We have looked at homes all over Citrus County in the years we’ve lived here, trying to establish a more permanent/stable dwelling place for us, but have not found what we’re looking for. We are also open to rentals, but so far those have not proved to be affordable. We love the place we are currently staying in but can’t afford to pay for it while we’re not here, and it will (most likely) be otherwise occupied when we return. We trust that the Universe will provide, as it always has, and we have been so fortunate not to experience homelessness. We are open to tiny homes, modulars, mobile homes, block homes, basically anything that provides the roof over our heads that we need to survive as human beings.
Sara and I were reminiscing about the first place we rented together, in Fort Collins, Colorado, on the West side of that beautiful city, near the reservoir and the open space that used to be home to the CSU Rams football stadium. We fought for that to remain open space while we lived there and are grateful that it has remained so for the wildlife that roam those parts of the land. We had one side of a two-bedroom, one bathroom duplex with a fenced-in backyard, corner lot with yards on all sides, a one car garage, and we stayed there for seven years. We were content. And then we started looking for something to call our own and were discouraged. Pre-COVID, even with well-paying full-time jobs, we couldn’t afford anything decent in the area. So, when COVID hit, the whole state, country, world, shut down and I became a remote worker (or digital nomad as some like to say), I was ready to travel, explore and find a place with less snow/winter, where maybe we could more easily afford to live the way we wanted to.
What ended up happening, when Sara quit her job as an essential worker (veterinary technician), we moved to Missoula, Montana to live with her mom who had plenty of space for us and all our stuff. One long winter there was enough for us and so we bought our camper and moved into it full-time, spending the summer in West Yellowstone, Montana, with Sara working as a hiking tour guide. When the summer started to chill into fall, and we had to keep water running so our pipes wouldn’t freeze, we knew it was time to find a warmer climate and Florida welcomed us with open arms. Sara got a job working as a manatee swim tour guide, and I followed with remote work and camper in tow, as well as a budding coaching and teaching business to complement the energy healing work I do.
Living in Citrus County, Florida was a huge change for us, but we grew to love the lifestyle here so much that we stayed for two summers, even though our original intention was to be snowbirds – traveling back and forth each spring and fall – what we are coming to do for the first time this summer. We also see now how towing a camper back and forth across the country is not our most favorite thing to do, or very sustainable, hence the ideas of more permanent housing, or a separate camper.
Thanks for listening to all of this, and if you or someone you know happens to have a dwelling in Citrus County, Florida that needs two kind caretakers to live in it, please let us know! We would be grateful, and we always strive to leave everywhere we live a little better than how we found it. References available upon request. 😊