Prelude to our Journey

Hey There! CJ and Pablo here. Thanks for clicking into our travelogue. We’ve organized this site primarily to keep in touch with family and friends as we take a wander-about across North America. We’re hoping to experience a lot of the communities, culture and countryside the US and Canada have to offer and perhaps connect with our countrymen in a meaningful way.

We cooked up this idea about 5 years ago after doing a “proof of concept” trip for two weeks across Wyoming and Montana. After giving it a lot of thought and doing some research we decided it would be feasible to shed most of our worldly possessions, give up our house, and hit the road for a year as we pivot into retirement.

We will take a month-long test run in the southeast in the spring, then return to empty out our house, return the keys to the landlords, and set off for about a year.

We will start on the east coast at the annual extended family gathering on the Outer Banks, then head west and north. We have only the first leg mapped out – from the OBX to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). After a 5-day canoe trip, we’ll continue west into the Canadian Rockies, the Pacific Northwest and then down the California coast before heading east for Thanksgiving in Denver (hosted by eldest son, Bryan).

We planned the trip to the Boundary Waters carefully because we needed to determine permit dates and the route is densely populated, but after that we plan to carry on without long-term advance bookings, enjoying the many dispersed camping options in the West (and some B&Bs here and there). We’ll concentrate on the southwest in the winter months before heading all the way back East come June. There are many pins in the map – historic sites, great hikes, quirky spots, and friends and family to visit. We will learn our preferred pace and sketch out routes and stops for each phase as we go, so if we are calling on you, notice may be limited to less than a month out and will likely be a bit imprecise. No worries if you’re not free!