The Traveling Lifestyle

There are big differences between traveling as a lifestyle and traveling on vacation. The first thing about vacations is that they are much shorter, a week or two, usually. My lovely wife and I have been on the road for a month and half already. We have many more weeks to go.

Living on the road, eventually you have to do the laundry. That's not the sort of thing people on vacation tend to do. Laundry can wait until they get home. With us, it doesn't matter if we are in a vacation spot or not, the laundry still needs to get done. As I write this I'm wearing dress pants and a paint stained shirt. Yep, it's laundry day!

Budget is an issue. On vacation, blowing the budget is almost part of the tradition. After all, when is the next time you'll ever get to do what you are doing? If it takes more money to experience everything, what the heck? When living on the road, we do catch some special things, but the budget matters. We are going to need enough money to go the distance.

We also tend to avoid the big tourist traps. As often as we've been to Florida, we've only been to Disney World once. That's back when the kids were little -and we were on vacation.

This holiday weekend the campground is full. People will be trying to squeeze as much activity in the few days allotted to them. By Tuesday, the campgrounds will be half empty again. The people left will be the long term travelers. Few of us are going to party hearty, as that's not sustainable on the long run. For us, it's all about the long run. Frankly, there's a lot less pressure when you don't have to experience everything in a few days. Sometimes just sitting together with new friends having great conversations is good enough.

-Sixbears