Hi, it’s Melissa & Paul and welcome to our Travel Full Time adventure!
Where do we even start with sharing our travel story?
For as long as we’ve been together, we’ve been going on adventures, sharing them on social with our friends and now here we are traveling full time and excited to share all the behind the scenes with you.
How It Began
We started dating in 2015 and from the start, we both leaned into spontaneous adventures together.
It wasn’t uncommon for us to take off during the week for a random trip to NYC to see a broadway show or find a local festival to explore.
We both finally found our match of someone who was just as crazy for adventure!
Jar Trips
Our love for travel and adventure turned into Jar Trips, a concept that Paul introduced me to and we took to another level.
We filled up a jar with travel destinations within a couple of hours driving time and then every 6-8 weeks would pull one of the destinations out of the jar for our next adventure.
Our only rule was we could book where we would stay but no other plans.
This gave us freedom to explore the area with no plans and expectations.
For me this was hard at first (I’m the planner) and I came to really appreciate the flexibility this created..and we had so much fun along the way.
Some of our favorite Jar Trip memories included going to a Wurst Festival, crashing a local Christmas parade, and donating and participating to a Pay It Forward Festival.
Tying the Knot & Hitting the Road
We got married in 2017…what a gorgeous day!
We even continued our Jar Trip tradition by having our guests fill up our jar with new travel destinations.
Our honeymoon was a Mediterranean cruise, where we visited a ton of beautiful locations, including Rome, Santorini, and Malta to name a few.
This is really when the travel bug hit both of us and it feels like we haven’t stopped moving since.
We’ve carried the spirit of our Jar Trips with us, always making an effort to experience what’s interesting and fun in the area.
Most of our travels so far have been US based and we’re planning more international travel now that we’re traveling full time.
Our 4 Legged Explorer
We also adopted our dog Bentley, who has brought us so many smiles on our travel adventures.
Bentley has been a great travel companion, starting off on shorter trips like Gettysburg and our long road trips to the Keys for the winter.
Traveling with a dog brings a whole new level of planning and as we learn what works, we’re excited to share to help other pup parents.
On the Road & On the Web
When Paul and I first started dating, we had a successful photography business, photographing weddings and headshots.
Paul had actually reinvented himself with photography, from a successful real estate career.
My background is in psychology, where I worked one on one with people as a therapist and later on a life coach.
We evolved our business to start coaching marketing and sales to online entrepreneurs, and today this is what we do full time and allows us to work from anywhere in the world.
Our office is on Zoom and we coach online entrepreneurs how to market and sell their offers through our programs, where we coach on Zoom. We host the Online Marketing Podcast, sharing actionable marketing strategies that business owners can take action on right away.
We also have an amazing team of coaches that help our members with all things internet marketing, including copywriting, FB ads, Google ads, SEO, funnels and automations, social media and more.
We love helping people with their dreams of creating freedom in their lives, whether it’s selling their products online, coaching clients from anywhere in the world, or sharing their knowledge through courses and memberships.
And what’s fantastic is we help people all over the world (some of our clients are as far away as Singapore or Australia!)..just need an internet connection and we’re set!
Beginning Travel Full Time
We had been talking about the idea of travel full time since the very beginning of our relationship and in 2019 started preliminary plans to get started.
We sold our homes and started the process of downsizing.
But then 2020 had other plans and we made the decision to move out of our small apartment that was in a very busy area to a rental home in the suburbs.
We spent alot of time outside and in the hot tub that year!
Delayed but Determined
The pandemic brought on some new challenges that all of us weren’t expecting, but that didn’t stop our dreams of travel full time.
We just had to think a little differently. This started our new journey of snowbirding to the Florida Keys in 2022.
We packed up our car and drove to the Keys for a 3 month stay that first year and loved it so much we did it again the following year.
Our initial trip was a taste of what this slowmad life could look and feel like and we also realized we really didn’t need as much stuff as we had thought..everything we needed we packed in our car.
This got our wheels turning for travel full time.
Choosing Freedom
In 2023 we made the decision that it was time to move forward with travel full time.
So this started the process of downsizing and simplifying things in our life.
We had prepped for this before in 2019, but when the pandemic happened and we moved to the suburbs, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by stuff, all kinds of stuff!
So it became a year of downsizing.
We gave alot of things away and kept a small storage unit for sentimental items and things I just couldn’t quite give up..yet.
Although I know in time, we’ll probably thin those items out, I’ve already started to forget what’s stored in our unit!
Our Official Start
We moved out of our home December 2023, put our remaining items into storage, and our travel full time adventure started!
We decided to spend the holidays local with family and have begun to map out 2024 a bit.
But not too far ahead, we still plan to keep the spirit of spontaneity so we can still have our random adventures!
How We Plan To Travel
Our travel plan may be a little different than others.
We consider ourselves slowmads vs nomads.
A slowmad is someone who travels slow, spending anywhere from 2 to 6 months in the same area.
We like the idea of staying in a location 2-3 months, to get to know the area, live like locals, and not feel rushed.
I know there will be opportunities where we may travel a bit quicker at certain destinations, but for the most part we’re really looking forward to this style of travel.
We travel with everything in our Tesla, so packing as a minimalist is key.
This is something that I’ll be sharing along the way to help others.
I know it was so helpful for me reading blogs on capsule wardrobes and packing light and we’ll share what we’ve learned.
On the flip side, there are certain items that I just love to have on hand (hello Nespresso machine) so we’re also a bit different traveler than the typical backpacker.
So we’ll share those lessons along the way too!
Our Travel Plans
We’re looking forward to this new travel Full Time adventure together and what’s to come.
One of the most asked questions we get is how long we’ll do this.
And our answer is, we don’t know.
That’s the beauty of the spontaneity of this adventure.
We’re going to see where the road takes us. We plan to travel United States to start, visiting national parks and other places both of us have never been, and then we’ll go from there to international adventures.
