Year One of Homelessness (OR, Unburdened by What Has Been)

AI’s approximation of our route from end of March 2025 to end of March, 2026.

This week marks the anniversary of selling our home in LA, getting rid of most of our stuff and launching the Great American Road Trip (GART). I wrote a little bit about this in the 1 year retirement anniversary post last summer, but we kind of really like having very little stuff. We’re still finding that to be true now that we’ve spent a full year as homeless nomads, although occasionally it can be frustrating when an Airbnb doesn’t have something we consider essential for a properly stocked place. For example, we stayed at a place in Tucson that had a BBQ - great! Let’s fire it up and BBQ some meat! OOOPS - no tongs?!?!? WHAT? We ended up buying them and leaving them as a gift for the next guys. There was also the place that had zero hand towels. And the place that didn’t have any mixing bowls (making a salad was a little rough). I give you these examples so you can understand that it’s working REALLY WELL to have less than an SUV’s worth of stuff as we travel through our feckless life.

We recently learned that our plan to pop by my mom’s house to pick up something we need for a special occasion also totally works. A dear friend is getting married? Grab Craig’s suit and one of Dina’s dresses (which actually fit better now from all the hiking!). Need to go to a fancy reunion event? Grab that stuff at the next “doctor week” in LA! While looking through a couple of the boxes this month, we also each found some t-shirts that we had forgotten we stored. They were in too good a condition to dispose of, but did not make the cut to take on GART - perfect timing to replace clothing that had recently worn out!

When we return the wedding finery to their boxes in LA, we have a small number of “things” that we plan to drop off. Things we thought were going to be used on our travels, but were not - OUT! These are things that we don’t want to throw away (like a small game console), but the rule is that if we don’t use it, it’s out. There’s also a rule about not adding new things unless something else is removed from the truck, so this pre-unburdening is a good thing. Who knows what we will decide to add to the space that is now empty? 😂

To those who regularly ask - we still think we won’t do this forever, but for now, still two thumbs up! And in the mean time, we are evaluating the places we stay for potential settling down.

Best and Worst: We also thought it would be fun to give you a Best and Worst list from the past year.

Worst drivers: Miami by far - and that’s saying a lot coming from LA drivers. Virginia was also not so great.

Best food: New Orleans/Miami

Best Craig’s Test Kitchen dishes - chicken tikka masala, hot and sour soup and chili verde. My job as taster is the best. I also want to give an honorable mention to his new cole slaw recipe - there was some serious optimizing going into its development and it was totally worth it.

Best hotel chains for one night stays: Hampton Inn - Good value for the price, especially when all you are looking for is a stopover that is clean, comfortable and an easy place to park (you do have to be careful that it is not one that is too old - some of them have not been properly kept up to date). They also include free breakfast, but that was only ok.

Most disappointing location we stayed: Sedona. Perhaps our expectations were too high.

Unexpected (good) surprise: Random kitshy or interesting motels/hotels that we found on the road to somewhere. I particularly liked one we stayed at when passing through New Mexico on our way to New Orleans. It was obviously a remodeled motel, but it was very comfy and they had added a small restaurant with surprisingly good food. We also had to pass though the Jersey Shore on the way north to New Hampshire and found this weird hotel that was just four floors between a garage and apartments. They had a really cool pool deck, where we spent a bunch of time at the bar while the area was hammered by a storm.

Unexpected (bad) surprise: The place we rented for thanksgiving weekend was … let’s call it “not clean.” We’ve had a lot of great experiences and a small number that were less great than we were hoping. We will say that we are grateful that the bad experience was not too bad of a fail.

Checked off the bucket list this year:

• Enjoy Latin American food in Miami

• Visiting one of the Keys

• Doing the Great Lakes

• Visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame

• Visiting the UP of Michigan

• Seeing a football game in Lambeau field

• Attending a Spring Training baseball game

• Checking out Roswell

• Living like locals in New Orleans

• Hiking into Carlsbad Caverns

• Putting a dent in completing the list of National Parks visited

• There was probably more, but I can’t think of it now. We were very productive despite having no goals.

New Expressions Developed for the New Lifestyle:

This does not suck.

Not bored yet.

Happy Monday, our new favorite day of the week.

Our year 2 planning is off to a great start …. Stay tuned!