June 22, 2023 • 51 mins
This week on the podcast we are joined by Heath & Alyssa Padgett! Their story started with a 50-state cross-country road trip in an old RV as two broke newlyweds. After they finished that trip, they had fallen in love with travel and couldn't imagine go back to what they were doing before they started traveling, but also wanted to create value in their work and career. Over the last 8 years, they've written two best-selling books, started & sold a software business, and hosted a conference for fellow RV entrepreneurs. To keep traveling, they sold all their businesses, giving them the time to enjoy traveling with their two beautiful kiddos. They're currently splitting their time between Colorado and international travels as a family of four, and our paths crossed outside of a Starbucks in Kanazawa, Japan! In this episode of the podcast, Heath and Alyssa share a bit about their journey as travelers, entrepreneurs and parents, including why they love traveling the world by RV, how they've been able to strike a balance between working and traveling, what it was like traveling Japan in an RV, what's next for them travel-wise, and much more. Enjoy!
In this episode:
In this episode:
- How Heath and Alyssa got into travelling and RV travel in particular
- Visiting all 50 states, and the first trip in an RV
- Highlights of their first year of traveling
- Finding sustainable work while living in an RV
- Building a family and having a baby while pursuing a lifestyle of travel
- Exploring Japan by RV and how Heath and Alyssa came to that decision
- The logistical side of traveling abroad by RV
- Selling their house and what’s in store for the future for Heath and Alyssa
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello, and welcome to the WorldWanders podcast, a proud part of the
wander Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan, I'm Amanda, and we're your hosts.
We're a traveling couple and digital nomads, taking you on our adventures as
we explore locations, destinations, andcareers. Enjoy the show. Hello everyone,
and welcome to another episode of theWorld Wanders podcast. We are super
(00:25):
excited that you're joining us for today'sepisode of the show, and today on
the podcast, we are really excitedto be joined by Heath and Alyssa Paget.
Yeah, and there's a fun backstorybehind how this interview came to be.
While we were in Japan, especiallyin those early couple weeks, we're
finding Lou was waking up really earlyin the morning and I would usually take
(00:46):
her out to do something. AndJapan, I think, surprisingly isn't really
a morning place. There's a lotof people going, you know, all
over the place at all times,but lots of cafe It's also restaurants don't
open super early in the morning.And so walking around Canazawa lugging a little
baby around and I find another foreignlooking guy with a similar age toddler waiting
(01:10):
around outside of a Starbucks, andso that turns out to be Heath.
We spark up a conversation, findthat we have a ton of stuff in
common. Him and his wife Alyssa, have a really interesting backstory and doing
tons of cool stuff as a family, traveling and so I thought, we've
got to get these guys on thepodcast and dive into their full backstory,
which I'm excited to do today.Now that we're back in Mexico, we
(01:30):
caught up with them, and soHeath and Alyssa have a long bio full
of tons of interesting stuff. Theyhave written books, they've run a conference,
They've gone to all fifty states,Arvine as well as gone to Europe,
Italy, France, and most recentlyArvine and camping around Japan. So
tons of interesting travel stuff and overthe past eight years have really followed a
(01:56):
cool path to build a career,a lifestyle and a family. And so
we're excited to dive in and talkall about it today. Yeah, and
so we're going to talk a littlebit about their journey as travelers, entrepreneurs,
and parents, including why they lovetraveling the world by r V,
how they've been able to strike abalance between working and traveling, because that's
something that is a huge part oftheir story and something that they've been working
(02:16):
quite actively on over the last eightyears. And we also talk a little
bit about what it was like travelingJapan and an RV. As you guys
know, if you listen to thelast you know four episodes of the podcast
about our trip to Japan, wedid not travel Japan by RV and it
sounds super cool. We also talkabout what's next for them travel wise and
much more so. There's a lotof good stuff in this In this interview,
(02:39):
Heath and Alyssa are pretty awesome andwe hope that you enjoy it.
And just before we get into theinterview, we just wanted to make a
quick little announcement and give you guysa quick little update about the podcast.
We have a pretty busy summer aheadwith some travels, heading back to Canada
to see some family and friends,as well as a bunch of work obligations
and projects, so we've decided totake a little summer break from the podcast,
(03:02):
so we will be offline for thenext couple of months, not recording
or releasing new episodes. But don'tworry We'll be back in September with new
interviews, new episodes, and updateson travels then. So we hope that
you guys have a great summer.We are so grateful that you continue to
listen, and we hope that youenjoy this last episode before we take a
(03:23):
little pause. Ethan, Melissa,thanks so much for joining us today.
Thanks for having us guys. Yeah, very excited to talk. So the
backstarts connecting was I was out Iremember what time. It was, pretty
early in the morning in Kanazawa,looking for a coffee. I think it
was like showing up right as Starbuckswas opening, and then saw another fellow
(03:44):
traveler with kids, another dad onthe move and stuck me and I had
a great conversation there, and thatsense connected. So one of the things
that really stopped to me was hearingabout your guys's backstory, the way you
were traveling, which was like totallydifferent than the way we were traveling in
Japan. So really excited to hearabout your trip in Japan to kind of
kick things up. I'd love tohear kind of how you guys started to
travel and specifically gotten into our vtravel. Do you want to take the
(04:08):
lead. Sure, Okay. Westarted out traveling mostly just out of discontent
after graduating college and going straight intooffice life. And we went from you
know, being around friends and havingall this freedom and everything too, we
were inside all day long. Weweren't interacting with people as much anymore,
(04:30):
we weren't getting to do as manyfun things, and we were kind of
like, oh, my goodness,is this adulthood? Like is this really
what people do for forty fifty yearsbefore they retire? Because that sounds terrible,
And so we started dreaming up waysthat we could maybe take a little
break and travel, and we cameup with the idea of going to all
fifty states, and we got intoour ving simply because that was going to
(04:55):
be the best way for us tobe able to travel around the country and
see everything while still being economical,because we looked at hotels, we looked
at airbnbs and driving our car andeverything, and that was just going to
be very, very expensive. Sowe found ways that we could camp for
free and things like that, andjust really fell in love with the RV
lifestyle and the ability to get offthe beaten path and away from more of
(05:17):
the touristy areas and get outside andget in nature and see beautiful places.
I had also proposed the idea oflike an inflatable air mattress in the back
of our Honda CRB, and sobetween that and hotels and RVU as a
happy medium. Yeah, I lovethat. It's really cool to hear that
because I feel like our story reallyaligns with that in a lot of ways,
(05:40):
like just feeling this like working jobswhere we were like, people just
really do this until they're like sixtyfive, and then they retire and then
they like, quote unquote enjoy life. And that's not to say that you
can't have a career that you're passionateabout, because they feel like that was
part of our journey too. Waslike, Okay, how can we find
something that we're passionate about doing thatbrings in sustainable income while also living a
(06:00):
life that we feel excited about,which I know is a part of your
journey too. And it's just reallycool to meet people who are aligned with
that too, because I feel likeso often I'm like, am I the
only one that feels like this,Like there something I'm missing or like is
there a wire cross in my head? Like what's going on here. I
feel like that's been the continued conversationfor us throughout our marriage. I saw
(06:21):
y'all started sorry the podcast maybe inlike twenty fourteen. That was the year
we got married and started traveling,And that's just been the thread throughout life.
And now it's changed with having babies, as you guys know as well,
which is how do we continue tohave a life that we're excited about
and that you know, we're passionateabout, but also you know, do
(06:42):
things that we enjoy in our workand now throwing raising good humans with that
too. So that's kind of thequestions, the questions of our life right
now. Yeah, so you guyshave this idea of like we're going to
go to all fifty states. Whatwas it Like, I'm like storting out
the logistics, finding an RB,learning how to drive it, and then
what did the actual first trip way? It was chaotic, but we were
(07:04):
twenty three at the time, solike we were young and stupid enough and
naive enough that I was like,we're just going to throw caution to the
wind and we're going to buy thisRV off of Craigslist and hope that it
makes it across the country, whichit only broke down on us once and
that was like in our second state. So we started off on a really
(07:25):
low note of having really high mechanicbills, and then it made it the
rest of the way for us,which was amazing blessing, but it was
really just a crash course. Imean, now rving is so popular to
the point where it's hard to getcampsites anywhere, But back then it really
wasn't you know, this big digitalnomad movement that there is now, and
(07:47):
so there weren't many resources out therefor us to really learn the ropes and
figure it out. So we justdid a lot of trial and error and
trying to not crash. Yeah,at one point we were driving the Pacific
Ghost Highway and I just look atAlyssa and I kind of had forgotten about
this since you reminded me of ityears later. But I looked at her
(08:09):
and I said, hey, baby, our engine was overheating. And I
said, you know, if Ilook at you and say like we gotta
go, just you know, I'mgonna we'll open the doors and we'll tuck
and roll. In the moment,Like, looking back, I'm like,
how to have been joking. It'snot, but I don't think I was
joking at the moment because our enginewas overheating, and I mean it was
(08:30):
a twenty year old RV at thatpoint when we bought it. Because I
asked you, I was like,we're just gonna jump out and let it
fly over the edge of this cliff. And he's like, do you want
to fly over the edge of thecliff or do you want to jump out?
Luckily, it was all fine.I mean, yeah, it was
all good. I just yeah,flushed the radiator or something like that,
and it was better. So tobe twenty three again. It's like,
(08:52):
I don't know how how those wordslike left my mouth casually, but yeah,
that's so funny. And so onthat first trip, you guys went
to all fifty states or what didit look like actually crossing all fifty states?
Off? We did seven months thelower forty eight and so basically,
to give a little bit more contextthe journey, we decided we want to
(09:15):
go to all fifty states, maybefind a new place to live that you
know, it was kind of likebreak up. Our status quo is getting
married, and I wanted to dosome type of work, make some money
along the way. So I pitchedAlyssa on the idea of working a job
in all fifty states that it wouldbe a fun project. She thought it
sounded like work. And then Ifound a sponsor for that. Like I
sent a cold email to a bigjob board in the US called snagg A
(09:37):
job. They help people find jobs, and I told them what we were
doing, and we didn't have anyWe didn't have a blog or website or
social media or anything like that.And for some reason they said, we'll
give you a thousand bucks a monthand you know, pay for some of
your gas and give and send ussome film equipment to make a documentary about
this. And we had no experiencedoing that. So along the way we
were kind of doing this documentary projectas well. So we did seven lower
(10:00):
forty eight and then we flew toHawaii and then we drove the Alaskan Highway
with my parents and grandparents in atwenty nine foot RV the next summer,
So we did basically everything in ayear. Wow, that's super impressive.
That's really cool. Yeah, well, we're kind of the other than almost
dying on the Spic Coast Highway inRV office incident. What we're kind of
(10:22):
the highlights of the trip. Abig highlight was the ending, which I
get to work. So a lotof my jobs were in quick service or
I worked on dude ranges and thingslike that at Buffalo Wild Wings and but
in Alaska, I worked a jobof the National Park Service. So they
flew us in a helicopter up toMount Dinali and we got to sleep on
a glacier overnight shadow of the parkrangers. That was a really cool experience
(10:45):
because I've never been on a helicopter. I got stay the night on a
glacier. We were so novous atcamping that we didn't even realize that we
were sleeping pads, and so wejust threw our sleeping bags in the tent
on the ice and we're like,tent camping sucks. We're just literally soaking
wet. We ended up like,were so calm, and the next morning
(11:07):
they're like, how did you sleep? I was like, honestly terrible,
and and I told them. He'slike, oh, we have a stack
of pads over here. We shouldhave, you know, given anyway,
but that was a really cool experience, minus, you know, a poor
night's sleep. One night. It'sa good story now about how bad we
are at camping. We had tolearn. I mean, yeah, I'm
sure camping now, yeah, we'velearned. I think one of the biggest
(11:28):
highlights for us though. Actually,you know, we had a lot of
cool experiences with jobs, but wedidn't at the time kind of, as
you guys have mentioned, am Ithe only ones that have an interest in
living this life? When we've toldour family and friends what we were doing,
they thought we were crazy. Imean, at the time, our
hashtag for our wedding because that waslike cute thing people did in that moment
was like breaking padget because breaking badwas a thing and we were getting in
(11:52):
the sketchy RVs. Who we're allhaving a good laugh about this, But
we didn't have anyone in our liveswhom like we kind of had support,
but not really for what we weretrying to do. In A month into
our trip, we went to aconference in Oregon called World Domination Summit,
and we just kind of happened tofind it along our route. It was
hosted by a guy named Chris Gillabout went on for ten years and it
was just kind of a gathering ofdigital nomads, entrepreneurs and things like that,
(12:16):
and we end up plugging into thatgroup and just kind of meeting a
lot of people who were living thelife we wanted to live. So basically
we had gotten a taste of thiswhole you know, hey, we're working
from our RV, we're making atiny bit of money, not much to
sustain, but we could kind ofsee a path where this would be a
really fun and interesting life that wecould live. And then we met a
lot of people there who affirmed thatthis wasn't a crazy dream, that we
(12:39):
can make it a reality. Sothere wasn't a specific instance, but it
was like it kind of let usknow that we could do this for a
while, which led us to beingon the road full time for six years,
traveling around and now getting to doit with our kids. So,
yeah, that's cool. That's actuallywhat I wanted to ask next, because
I feel like our experience has beenlike, you have this goal or this
thing you want to do, andyou set out for a certain period of
(13:01):
time and then you do it.And I feel like a lot of people
who haven't done that stuff just expectyou to kind of go back to what
you were doing before. Like youget another like full time corporate job,
you move back to where you were. But I feel like these types of
experiences so profoundly change you and theway you look at the world that it's
like, how do you go backfrom that? So it was kind of
curious, like what it was likefor you. You guys finished the fifty
(13:22):
States, like you know, whatdid you do next? Absolutely, it
drove me crazy because people will belike, when are you going to be
done with your trip? And I'mlike, no, Like, this is
not a trip. This is We'regoing to find a way to make this
our lifestyle. And that was kindof what our initial idea was with Heath
working a job and all fifty States, was we have to find a way
(13:43):
to make money. We have noidea how to do that. We don't
have like incredible business acumen. Imean we were kids. There was no
grand ideas or skills that we hadthat we felt like we could monetize at
the time. We just had thesecrazy dreams of binding a way to make
money while we were traveling, andso that was kind of our goal as
soon as we finished off of theStates, was anything we can do that
(14:05):
will pay us. We are goingto try it while we are traveling,
while we're living in the RV.And fortunately, like we just happened to
hit into this rving space at atime when rving was starting to boom and
being a digital nomad was starting tobecome more common and remote work was starting
to become more of an understood thing. And so as we grew our income
(14:28):
and realize that maybe it was sustainablefor us to keep traveling, it kind
of became just a question of like, why would we stop? Why would
we not travel if we've figured outthis key component, because I think the
work component, the income component,is the hardest thing for most people,
I mean, and specifically to thaton top of that, like what we
(14:48):
like precisely did that next year wasbecause a lot We've seen a lot of
people, you know, who saveup for a year to go travel,
and their financial runway is like I'mgonna I got fifteen grand, I'm gonna
make the most out of this,I'm gonna backpack or I'm gonna go wherever,
and do you know, however,and we had a similar kind of
like runway in front of us,and the idea halfway through the trip was
(15:11):
how do we not go get ajob. So after that first year where
we burned through gas costs US twentythree grand to go to all fifty states,
so actually not that bad. Ithink we made twenty grand that year
from just like patching together some freelancewriting and stuff like that, so we
weren't necessarily in the black, butwe could see a path where if we
kept working hard, we could figureit out. So we parked our twenty
year old RV at a little RVpark outside of Austin for three hundred and
(15:35):
sixty bucks a month that year andkind of built out some business like freelancing
clients for video because we had kindof built those skills. So let's wedding.
So we kind of spent a littlebit of time like paying down student
debt and being a little stationary thatnext year so we could not have to
go back and get quote unquote normaljobs. And that was kind of like
(15:58):
a period of hustle time and thenyou know, we're able to figure out
some things from there. But itwas a little bit of like we had
a leaking roof and thing. Itwasn't all great, but you know,
the idea was it's better than ushaving to go back to this life where
we don't get to spend our daysaround each other. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, it makes me think aboutas we're talking about. It's kind of
interesting because I feel like ours wasobviously not in the RV space, but
(16:19):
very similar. And it's kind ofthat like twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen twenty
nineteen period where like living a lifestylelike this kind of forces you to be
entrepreneurial in a way that it doesn'ttoday. Like I know, for us,
Chris Kellabo was a big inspiration andwe like took off to Southeast Asia
and we're like, you need tofind a way to make money because we're
going to be stuck here, whichis yeah. And then today it's like,
(16:42):
like you said, becomes so muchmore popular. There's so many different
more routes to do it, whichwhich is awesome for sure. I'm curious
to kind of between then and now, how much of your nights would you
say you've actually spent sleeping in anRV between when and now? Between then
and now, like, yeah,they didn't know our honeymoon to now,
(17:02):
oh well six years full time,like we were in RV full time,
so we didn't have a house,we didn't have an apartment. So that
was until basically we got pregnant withour daughter in late twenty eighteen and we
were alsa was I mean tmi,but she was throwing up in an RV
that was twenty four foot and wewere in the middle of nowhere in Canada.
We were actually we went to whatwas the Canadian grocery store where we
(17:26):
found out we're pregnant. Gosh,we were It's like the Canadian version of
Walmart. It was like something tiCanadian tire. Oh my gosh, yes,
so we're Canadian. So I know, I knew that. So I
figured you guys might know. Caianiis the best. I still feel like
when I'm in other places, I'mlike, why is there just no Canadian
tire everywhere? Well, they havelike doctor's clements, and we're in Prince
(17:48):
George. So we went to theCanadian tire. We went to see the
doctor. Yeah, so he waslike, well, you got yourself pregnant,
and so yeah, we have apackage deal here for finding out you're
pregnant and attire. And so wedrove. We drove back home. Like
Alyssa's sister was pregnant the same time, so like, let's get an apartment,
(18:11):
you know, have this baby.So we did that for a year
and then hated it in Texas andwe decided that wasn't for us, and
so we got back into an RVfor a year, which ended up being
the COVID year. And so Iguess maybe to answer your question short,
six out of seven and a halfout of the last ten years. I
mean we've also been like rving aroundthe world and done like ten different countries
(18:36):
in the past like years. Ihave to I have to break in a
Spreadsie Ran. I'm not sure,but seventy percent of the time, I
would say, yeah, a bigmajority of our marriage has been in RV's
yeah wheels the last few years.I think you did a good job answering
that question. Without having the Spreadsie, I feel like we Yeah, it
kind of pieces it together. AndI totally get like, having been pregnant
(18:56):
myself in the last couple of years, being pregnant in an RV sounds kind
of terrible. I'm like trying tomake some food or Brussels sprouts, and
this is like, I'll kill youif you don't stop cooking. This.
Oh, yeah, just like thesmells and yeah, like morning sickness and
just Amanda was asking you to openthe fridge for her. Oh, I
just could not open the fridge trimester. It was just like the smells that
(19:19):
came out of it. I waslike, I had no idea. This
fridge was so disgusting. Yeah,like I really don't want to eat.
I need to eat. I justneeded to give me the butter so I
can butter some toast to all theother things in there. LESSI would be
on a kick. She's like,are you using human? Like I threw
the human out a month ago becauseyou kept asking me that I haven't touched
(19:40):
human, but she smelled it everywhereanyway. But the last few years,
to kind of going back to thequestion, Ryan was, we have it
home now in southwestern Colorado, andour travel has changed. We haven't been
full time or being but we've beendoing these kind of extended trips camping abroad
and that's just kind of been ourmode of travel that we've enjoyed. We've
gotten used to it, and sowe've done New Zealand, France, Switzerland,
(20:02):
Italy, and a handful of othercountries in an RV with the kids.
So we just got back from Japana, New Zealand, but we actually
have our house up for sale andwe're moving out to go full time now.
So that's the whole thing we're excitedand nervous about now with the kids.
So yeah, I was gonna ask. I feel like there's like definitely
this point, like I know forus, where you're kind of living this
lifestyle, feeling more comfortable with themand it's like, oh, we're gonna
(20:23):
have a baby, and it kindof makes you rethink everything. I think
a lot of people are kind oflike we have like ten percent in Salmon
or something in us, but we'relike I need to go like back home
because I'm gonna have a baby.But how did you guys kind of navigate
that and like decide what you weregoing to do as I came to like
building a family also with pursuing thiskind of alternative lifestyle. We were already
(20:44):
we were arving in Cannon, andwe were already thinking about like do we
want to keep full timing and havea baby, And we're kind of just
thinking through that question and not reallyknowing the answer until we got the positive
on the pregnancy test, and we'relike, we're going to go back to
Texas, US, and we wereplanning on staying in our RV, like
we had a big class, aplenty of space for the pregnancy part of
(21:07):
things, and then we thought wewould travel again. But then just like
being on wheels and not being stable, I was like, I can't do
this. I'm getting motion sick walkingin this RV right now. And so
we ended up getting an apartment nearmy family, thinking well, we'll want
to be near family, we'll wantto be in one place, and then
we realized the longer that we werein one place that it just didn't We
(21:29):
just weren't happy. We weren't ashappy as we thought we would be with
those you know, early early months. And so before Ellie was born,
I think I was like eight ornine months pregnant, we booked our first
international trip as a as a family, and I remember Heath being on the
phone with Delta being like, well, like, wet, we don't know
her birthdate yet or like her name, and they're like, that's fine,
(21:52):
just call us later, like oncethe baby is born and we'll give her
a ticket then, and just kindof being wild, like oh, okay,
like maybe traveling with kids isn't isit going to be too hard?
And I think that was a bigthing for us, was getting our first
trip on the book as a familywhen our baby was still really young and
really little and we could just wearher and take her everywhere, so that
(22:15):
we could build up the confidence justthat it was possible, because it was
just this giant question mark before ofI mean your new to parenthood, right,
like you have no idea what parentingis like, maybe you know what
travel is like, but adding themtogether, we were very, very overwhelmed
at the prospects. So we gotthat first trip done pretty quickly. Actually,
(22:36):
I guess we took Ellie on herfirst like RV trip when she was
like four weeks old, her firstroad trip. But we kind of went
into it with the mentality of justtry as soon as possible and figure out
if it's something that you want tomake work for you. And we decided
we were gonna lug the strollers andlug the baby beds all around the world
(22:57):
and that it would be worth itawesome. And then was was that Europe
the first trip afterwards? Yeah,that was our first trip to Europe.
Together, right, that was yourfirst time to Europe. Ye, Yeah,
we've decided to start with Italy.I think just because of heaths obsession
with pizza. It seems like alogical first step. Yeah. We have
(23:18):
a bunch of photos of Ellie cryingwhile I'm eating gelato, like reaching for
it, but like she's not evenold enough to know, but like she
intuitively understood that this was the bestthing in the world. Yeah. Kids
know, kids are saying nature.Yeah, funny. We were in Columbia
and we're Louie ice cream for thefirst time. We got like a dessert
(23:41):
at a restaurant and she just likegrabbed the spoon and put it in her
mouth and then it was like,yes, she was like climbing on the
table, Like I feel like shebecame like a feral animal to try to
get more ice cream. Yes,I've never seen you behave like this before.
Imagine, Like I feel like drivingin Europe seems chaotic, kind of
(24:03):
hard. Driving an RV in Europeseems like next level. What was it
like kind of planning that out gettingover there and making those first European RV
trips happen. So the caveat ontop of that was most of the rentals
in Europe. I think they're trendinga little bit more automatic, but a
few years ago they were still predominantlymanual. And I've never driven a manual
(24:26):
of my life. And so Ihad a friend meet up with me one
day before he booked our RV whichwe were going to be driving for a
month, and we drove around forfifteen minutes and as jeep, and he
showed it to me, and Iguess I thought that that was enough experience
to go driving the Italian Dolomites.So we picked our RV up in a
grocery store parking lot just outside ofVenice, and our friend Peter and John
were with us. They had theirown rig, and so he gave me
(24:48):
some tips that day. So wedrove around for maybe twenty minutes maybe,
and then we immediately drove into themountains of northern Italy. And but it
worked out like Peter was a professionalbus drus driver in New York City and
he taught bus drivers, so he'sa really good driving teacher. If there
is any scenario in which I hadHeath on his first day ever driving a
(25:11):
manual in the steep mountain curvy roadswould be okay, we've got a driving
instructor literally with that. Yeah.So it was hard because there are very
small villages, as you guys knowwhen you're driving through some of these European
spots and you know, you're readingthe signs and it says it's a little
overwhelming because you're trying to understand thisdifferent language and everything else. And you
know, some of these city centersyou can't take large vehicles into. You
(25:33):
have to have a tag if you'redriving into the city center. And so
we messed up and drove into acouple of those that we weren't supposed to
and ended up working out fine.I stalled out on a mountain side and
I because I down shifted instead ofup shifting or vice versa. I don't
remember, but either way, Istalled it and so he had to like
run to the RB. There's awhole other reason why we enjoy traveling with
(25:56):
friends, and sometimes, like whenyou're pushing your comfort zone, it's like,
oh, it's nice that we hadpeople to help um. So once
you get the hang of that,I feel that was kind of like jumping
into the deep end, like thefirst time I ever had coffee. I
just drank it straight black, andI was like, this is terrible.
And then I went to Starbucks andhad like a you know, cinnamon of
cinnamon dulce latte and I was like, oh, this is incredible. Like
(26:18):
this is wondering anyway. So thatmaybe a terrible comparison, But the point
is we jumped into like a harderscenario of learning Emmanuel doing it in the
mountains and small villages, and Ithink Italy is one of the harder countries
we've driven in just because the medievalyou know, the architecture sold But like
after just going to Japan, whichwas the easiest country we've ever driven in
(26:40):
Campervan and New Zealand's way. NewZealand is easy too. But you really
jumped in there the fact check me, didn't you. Sorry, that's my
job. It's true, it's true. But yeah, Italy was challenged,
but then it got a lot easierand now there are a lot more automatic
vehicles on the market. That wasprobably way too detailed of an answer,
Ryan, Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, and then you kind of
(27:03):
I think maybe we'll go into Japanbecause I'm really curious about that as like
us just finishing a trip in Japan. How did you get guys decide like,
hey, we wanted to Japan,we wanted to do it at an
RV and what was that process likefiguring it out? Imagine for us,
the thought of driving in Japan islike a bit scary because we can't have
it, can't even like kind ofunderstand the sign so they're just like the
shapes and squiggles. Yeah, talkus through the whole japantra. Yeah,
(27:26):
Well, first of all, itfeels like you're driving in Mario Kart because
of all the signs on the roads. It looks, you know, like
Mario Kart. But honestly, maybefour or five years ago, we saw
a photo of a Japanese camper andthey I think it was when we were
in Italy. So I remember talkingto John and Peter about us all going
April twenty twenty, and they basicallylook like large go karts, and I
(27:48):
just thought that sounds like a lotof fun, and so that it kind
of just played that seed of itwould be a fun adventure to do,
and that's just been our mode oftravel and I think one of the reasons
why we enjoy it some countries,especially if you're going into cities, like
when we've we've done one wave rentalswhere we've started in like Paris or dropped
off in Rome and we'll just kindof bookend our trip with Airbnbs, and
(28:11):
like the cities we want to walkaround, but a lot of times we
like meandering through some of the smallertowns and just being able to park and
walk around, and that's what weenjoy versus spending like more time in the
cities. And so that's why wethought about doing it in Japan, is
like going to see Fuji and someof these smaller villages that you know,
(28:33):
we're a little bit further away.Like we looked at two routes from Tokyo
to Kyoto, and one was goingthrough a handful of large cities, like
mostly driving through their highways and theirtoll roads, which they're a lot of.
And then there was another one thatwent up through these smaller kind of
like post towns. I don't knowif you guys got to go to any
of those, but they're like reallywell preserved. One was called mccoma Juku,
(28:55):
and and I don't think we wouldhave went there had we not done
it, and in our you haveto have a car, you have to
have a vehicle of swords or geton like one of those tour buses with
three hundred people type of thing toget there. And so those are some
of the places we were really excitedabout going to, and a RB just
made a little bit more sense forus. And we love, you know,
being able to have our space withus and the kids, and you
(29:17):
know, having the same bed tosleep in every night, especially with kids
is so so valuable for us,Like to be able to feel like the
kids have their own space and somethingthat they recognize versus us changing hotels every
two three nights and dragging suitcases allthe time. Like that's been a really
big when I think for us forchoosing the RV as a way to get
(29:40):
around countries, because they've got everythingright there all of the time. Yeah.
But also like when we met upwith you guys and what was the
temp Kanazawa, Like we had jumpedin a hotel for the night because it
was raining all day and it's asixteen foot camper. So we're like,
I don't want to be in thesixteen foot camper while it's raining with our
two kids, let's go get hotel. So I'm not married to that as
a mode of travel, you know, So we'll jump in and out as
(30:03):
it makes sense to Yeah, forsure, yeah we should. Just like
I think clarify too. I thinkwhen you think camper r V, you
think big car. For these Japaneseones are small, like smaller than like
ours, the kind of small suvlike total for sure, it's definitely smaller
than the SUV that we have inthe States. Yeah, So we rented
(30:23):
a car to drive to the DenverAirport when we were going to Tokyo,
and it was a minivan and justfor kicks, I measured like I measured
it and it was a foot Ithink longer than our RV in Japan.
And the smallest vans in the US, like if you're familiar with the camping
market in the US, are maybethe Travados or things like that that from
(30:44):
Winnebago, the sprinter bands, thoseare kind of in the low twenty feet.
So even your vans in the USare way larger than the camper that
we had. So even going throughI accidentally got derailed one day drove through
downtown Tokyo when we were leaving andyou know, went through like big cities
and I could park in a parkingspot and it really wasn't very stressful at
(31:04):
all driving a car. And wefelt from a cultural perspective that you know,
at least all the people we werearound on Japanese roads were way nicer
than other countries we've been at,where like if you make a mistake,
someone's honking at you, flipping youoff or whatever. I don't think I
got honked at the entire time Iwas in Japan, and I'm sure I
did something wrong. Yeah, Imean that just makes my heart warm because
(31:27):
it's like so Japanese. It's theentire time here there. Yeah, we
were like what's happening? It wasprobably like a courtesy honk, like someone
let them pass or something. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
I feel like one of the thingsthat would be really interesting to hear
about when it comes to RV travelwould be a little bit around kind of
like the logistical side of things,like when it comes to what you need
(31:49):
for driver's licenses, maybe insurance,if that's a consideration. Do you guys
it was booked through like the samecompany, how do you find like the
RVs you want to book with allthat type of stuff. Most of the
time when we rent in RV,insurance is all included. So we've used
the same company twice and Europe andwe've used this. We've used Wilderness twice
(32:10):
in New Zealand, and for Japan, we just Google search until we found
a company that actually had availability duringcherry blossom season. That was surprisingly,
surprisingly difficult. But our big thing, not for Japan specifically, but for
Europe, where you're crossing multiple borderspotentially and there's so many places you can
(32:34):
drive, is trying to find arental company that has one way rentals.
So that's what we've done when we'vebeen in Europe, so we've been able
to go so many more places,and we went from Paris all the way
to Barcelona and crossed across six countryborders over the course of a month last
fall. So that's like our biggestpriority when we're looking at a rental company
(32:57):
is if we have that option sothat we can cover more ground and see
more things that way. But theinsurance is always taken care of, and
it wasn't until Japan that we neededto get an international driving permit, which
was surprisingly easy. It was liketwenty dollars and we mailed in a form
and that was it and took myphoto at Walgreens. Yes, yes,
(33:17):
you did up to take a photo. And the company that we've done anywhere
one way rentals in Europe is calledAnywhere Campers. They've been really good.
We've booked through and reserved through thema couple of times. And in Japan,
we posted in that there's a Japandiscussion Forum Facebook group that we were
part of. There's like one hundredthousand people and they're asking tens of questions.
So a lot of people were kindof concerned or wondering about like how
(33:39):
expensive tolls and things like that were. We drove a big loop starting in
Tokyo. We went to Fuji,we went to around the Kyoto area up
to Kindazawa, which is you know, if you're you guys are familiar now
in Japan, but it was agiant circle. So and so that was
just over two weeks, and wedrove a lot of miles and you're always
on toll roads. Ever clipped theavoid tolls on Google Maps and it was
(34:01):
two hundred and fifty bucks, andwell, you know, many kilometers we
did roughly. I know we wroteit that written down, so okay,
I wanted to say it was liketwo thousand, but it might be mixing
up New Zealand. The point was, it wasn't very unaffordable, and I
think we paid like eighteen hundred dollarsfor our rental, which worked out to
maybe one hundred and thirty to fiftybucks a day US. I don't remember
(34:22):
for two weeks. Yeah, sorry, we don't have all these in front
of us, but it wasn't astronomicalas the point. Yeah, yeah,
considering I mean, we just dida similar trip but staying in like hotels
and airbnbs and stuff. And Ifeel like the cost of like just I
would say it was probably around thatwhen you average everything out, maybe a
little bit more, maybe closer totwo hundred. So yeah, it seems
(34:42):
like a good a good option.And I also love what you guys were
talking about just with having kids,and I feel like, you know,
this was a really interesting trip forus with Japan because I feel like Lu
kind of went from being like reallyvery much a baby to kind of entering
toddlerhood. And we didn't bring ourtravel curup with us because we wanted to
do everything really lightweight because we knewwe were taking Chinkinsons and we would have
(35:02):
to carry everything, including you know, her, And so I found for
the first time like, oh,we get in an Airbnb and I could
tell she was like, oh,what is this space? Like what is
this bed I'm sleeping sleeping in?Like it was different. So I think
having kids are a bit older thanher, it definitely makes sense to you
don't have to do as much ofthat, like here's our space for tonight,
Here's where we're going to sleep,you know, like make sure they're
(35:25):
comfortable. It's like you just getthem comfortable once and then you're just in
that space they can kind of youcan all set up and just be there.
But that sounds great. And asyou guys know, life with kids
is fluid, and we feel likewe've been trying to dial in what life
looks like and how work and travelall fit into kids. And I feel
like by the time we get somethinga little figured out, they change and
(35:47):
so are Like one of our lasttrips last year, we did two months
almost in Italy because we love itand so we keep going back and we
didn't do the RB that time,like we had an airbnb we were in
for a month and then we didhotels and bounce on to Paris in London
and I did remember like almost throwingmy back out because we had a travel
bed or something and we didn't bringa stroller, so because we thought our
three year old would walk more andthat was done, so I carried her
(36:10):
and no remember it. We likeliterally ran out of arms space. We
just left our car seat at ahotel and yeah, we did. We
just left it. We're like,we physically are unable to travel with this
anymore, and we just left it. Yeah, and I was also doing
a gravel bike thing, so wehad like anyway, the point was we
we've done and kind of went backand forth on both modes of travel,
and you know, we do keepcoming back to the RV. But yeah,
(36:32):
we're going to Portgal this fall forthree months and we're going to just
be in like our own airbb spacebecause we're going to be stationary. So
yeah, we're not like married toour V life. We just do enjoy
it as a way to like getaround and explore a place. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, we were talkingabout it. I was like I think
that would be lots of places,but especially in Japan, like a really
cool way to get around and seethe country, especially like and you've got
(36:55):
to do like a bullet train onetime to be like this is super cool,
but then you are really kind ofstuck on like you know, the
big cities that type of thing,and being able to see smaller towns.
And Japan has incredible nature, likeso we need beautiful spots which are hard
to get to if you can't drive. When I think one of them,
sorry, oh no, I wasjust gonna say and and and you know
(37:16):
for someone that has kids as well, Like some of our favorite experiences were
we stayed at some campgrounds outside ofMount Fuji and like the way that they're
set up, are these giant fields, not really like hookups, and you
know RVs that you see in America, it's ninety percent people in tents and
maybe five ten percent bands if that. But you know, our first night
(37:38):
camping there, we got in theRV and it was dark and we hadn't
really gotten the space, and youknow, everyone was hungry. It took
longer it was raining it at Tokyo, and we're like, this was a
terrible decision, like we should notbe all in the sixteen foot camper band,
Like there's no toilet on board,it's like an emergency toilet that's a
whole other thing. And so thatfirst night we're like, this was a
(37:58):
stupid, stupid idea. And thenof course, like we all got a
night's sleep, and then we wokeup the next morning to this amazing view
amount Fuji, and there were allfamilies around us in this little campground area.
So everyone's like in this big circle. There's a fire up in the
middle, and for like five hours, our kids played with so many other
children, like they were playing witheach other's toys. Like at the end
(38:20):
of it was one of those thingswhere we exchanged information with one of the
families because they want to go travelin an RV in the US one day,
and they're like, we'll see youagain. And so that was something
that was really fun and cool forus, as I felt like we got
to interact, you know, ina fun environment with some people. Like
another night we camped at a cafewith a family who owned the cafe and
also lived there on site, andlike by that evening, I was like
(38:42):
digging up bamboo shoots with the ownerand like we went and boiled them together.
And so I feel like there weresome fun experiences that we had because
we decided to be in an RVthat we probably could have had otherwise,
but maybe we wouldn't have, yeah, for sure, And I think too,
I'm glad that you brought up justlike I feel like sometimes, especially
those first nights are arriving in anew destination, there can be a lot
of discomfort, and I think thatthat's not what we see on social media,
(39:06):
right. It's not often what we'reseeing online with travel, because in
most cases it's like, you know, you wake up, everything's fine,
you have a great experience, thenthat's what you're sharing, right. But
I think part of the reality ofthis lifestyle and just traveling long term in
general, is like having those like, oh crap, what have I done?
Moments? Like why are we here? I know we actually had that
when we went to Columbia in January. It was the first big trip we've
(39:29):
taken since the baby, and thefirst night we arrived in our airbnb,
it was smaller than it looked inthe photos, first of all, and
we were spending like close to amonth there, and the neighborhood beside the
building we were in was having aparty. I guess we arrived at like
the neighborhood anniversary and the party wentuntil six am the next day, and
(39:50):
like, thankfully our daughter slept fine, like her white noise machine and like
the air con, just like shejust passed out and went to sleep.
But Ryan and I were both likewhat the heck? And we were like
what have we done? This isterrible And it was just like one bad
night. It was like our tripwas amazing. We had an excellent time
in Colombia. Would definitely recommend itall the things, but just the first
night was like we're like should wemove airbnbs? Like should we go to
(40:13):
a different location? Like just this, like we've made a mistake kind of
like what you were talking about,Yeah, get that. Yeah, I
say. There's just in regards toI feel like there's as you. I
feel like, especially as we travelaround you go to big cities, you
notice like a lot of big citiesare kind of becoming more and more like
each other, like you've got similarstuff and chains all the type of thing,
(40:34):
and especially just traveling with kids nowand like there's more engagement with other
people, but when you're in ahotel, you're in an AIRBNBA, it
can be kind of you're like alittle bit more on your own. And
like like you said, being inthose campgrounds getting to know people, like
it's such a social there are alot more social context and there's also this
like really unique kind of like RVculture in different countries, Like there's caravan
culture in the UK and rving andthe States, and like I'm sure Japan
(41:00):
it has like its own kind ofculture around that. So it's like a
really cool interesting lens to like connectwith a different country and see a different
place. Yeah, I would agreewith that. So I know you mentioned
going to Portugal, but yeah,talk us through, Like you guys are
selling your house, making a bigmove, Like what's the future looked like
for Heath and Melissa and family.We got back from Europe mid October,
(41:22):
and we were here in Colorado forthe whole winter, and we were inside
and it was cold and it snowedso much this year that we just kind
of looked at each other. Bythe time I think the end of February
rolled around, and we hadn't bookedanything for Japan or New Zealand, and
we're like, we have to getout of this place. We have to
(41:45):
I don't care where we go,we have to go somewhere anywhere. And
that's what pushed us to book ourmost recent trip to Japan and New Zealand.
But as we were prepping for thattrip, we kind of just started
asking the bigger question of well,we're here for almost six months straight and
we didn't super enjoy it. Dowe really want to have a house,
(42:07):
Like if we're not going to enjoyit for half of the year, and
we really love Colorado in the summerin the fall, but winter's long winter
is long out here in the mountains. And the more we started having that
conversation and talking through it, we'relike, you know what, let's move
out of the house and let's givethis to another family for a bit and
(42:28):
figure out if we're ever going tobe house people or if we're just going
to keep traveling full to time.But for us, the biggest concern,
because we are both working while we'retraveling, is child care. Like that's
the hardest thing for any digital nomadfamily, I think, but especially if
both parents are working or are wantingto work and so we found a program
(42:50):
called Boundless Life, if y'all haveheard of it. Found them on Instagram
a while ago and had like anexploratory you know call with one of their
sales rep. I guess you wouldcall them to hear more about their program.
And they have like four locations aroundthe world right now, and they
put your kids and their school programs. They have like a Finnish education center,
(43:13):
and then they have a coworking hubfor the working parents like us,
and they find you an apartment ora house to live in. And the
more we were talking to this woman, we're like, this is exactly solving
all the pain points that we've experiencedwhen we've been traveling as a family.
This is giving our kids community,this is giving us community. We can
(43:34):
still run our business, the kidscan have friends, and we can have
some kid free time like they evendo like date nights and stuff like that.
And so we're like, we're listeningthe house for sale. We're going
to go to Portugal in the fall. Their program, like the fall semester
starts the first of September. Sowe're just soaking up our last few months
(43:55):
in Colorado as normal home dwelling people. And then we're gonna hop over to
Europe and not deal with the VSAMS. So we're going to do their Bali
location and head over to Asia thenfor the winter, and that's as far
as we have our lives planned.No, it's amazing some of our friends
(44:15):
when we can talk about this offlinetoo. Some of our friends are doing
their Italy program right now, andI know they did their Portugal one last
fall, but I don't know ifthey're doing it again, So I'll find
out. Yeah, let us knowwe need to. They're they're awesome.
They're life full time travelers too withyoung kids. I'd love to hear about
you guys's work stuff. I knowwe kind of talked about the early days
of work, and I know fromlooking through your website and stuff, you
(44:37):
guys have books and a blog andvideos and all that type of stuff.
I know you guys have like builtand sold companies, But would love to
hear a little bit about what youguys are doing to finance everything. Yeah,
I'll try to give like a sixtysecond over with you guys, So
sixty second every time we open ourmouths, I feel like we just keep
talking forever. So after we gotoff the road. That first year,
(45:00):
our frame was trying to sustain ourselves, so we built the skills in video
and we started doing freelance. Videographyis kind of our primary income, and
some freelance writing, but we startedgetting clients. We're shooting everything from weddings
to like promotional website videos or onlinecourses. Online courses was something we worked
with creators and authors and things likethat. So we did that for a
(45:22):
few years. While we were kindof paying down that and along that kind
of similar path, we were stillcontinuing to write and build a blog.
I started a podcast called The RbianEntrepreneur, and so I was interviewing people
like this on how they made theirlife work. And we ended up turning
that into a conference. I thinkour biggest you read, like four hundred
plus people that came to that event, and we did that. We're to
a lot of big companies. Alyssapublish a book on kind of top questions
(45:45):
people had asked about living in anRV that ended up doing really well,
and so that for a while sustainedus completely, just like book sales,
and we were able to eventually afterfour years, transition away from client work
entirely. And the idea was like, now we can kind of own our
time and instead of having a bunchof minibosses with clients, we can do
(46:05):
like whatever work we want. Andso for a list of that was writing,
and for me that was I wantedto start a software company. So
I started Campground Booking, which isa booking site for campgrounds, built it
for five years, and sold itto Camping World. And then I feel
like that is most of the stuffwe've done. And then we realized how
many years it took us to buildeach different business that we had started.
(46:29):
As we were traveling, we're like, building something new takes a lot of
time. Why don't we just buyan existing business, which is what we
did in December. So we wereable to buy the income with a blog
that's on renovating RVs and kind ofmore interior design of RVs, which is
something that we both love but areterrible at. We're not renovators at all,
(46:54):
but we can look at pretty picturesall day long. And so that's
been our most recent endeavor is we'vebought this blog and we're trying to I
don't know what we say ten exitin two years and make a return on
our money. But the frame haskind of been like we've oscillated between these
modes of working really hard, tryingto create something for ourselves and also,
(47:15):
hey, let's just past off ofbook sales and some affiliate income and travel
the world. And I feel likewhat we're kind of trying to do now
again is blend those things. Sofor the last two months we didn't work
on the site while we were traveling. We have an editor and a VA
who kind of does some things forus, and we're not trying to grow
something to lots of employees or makethe biggest company in the world, but
(47:36):
trying to build something that you know, we enjoy, but that can sustain
travel for us as well, ifthat makes sense. Yeah, I know,
that's really cool. Yeah, it'sreally awesome to hear that. And
I feel like it's like it's amazingto find that balance of kind of like
I mentioned at the beginning, likedoing something that you're really passionate about and
then also being able to live alife that you're really passionate about and really
(47:58):
excited about and just kind of havethat one thing because I feel like so
many people live like for after workor on the weekends or holidays, vacations,
and being able to like have alife where you can spend time with
your kids, especially while they're sosmall. It's like, you know,
it goes so fast and we justdon't get this time back with them while
still being able to do stuff thatyou guys are excited about. It is
really cool. That's the idea ofthe hope. Yeah, for sure.
(48:22):
Well it sounds like you guys havedone a really great job with it.
It's it's really inspiring to hear thanks. I mean, y'all too. We
met you in Kanazawa, Japan.So I also think it's really funny that
it's like the dads that met eachother with like the babies were sitting Okay,
Ryan glossed over this, but Ithink there's the funniest way I've ever
ended up on a podcast. Likewe're sitting outside waiting for the coffee shop
(48:44):
to open with our babies, andwe're like, yeah, we're you know,
I feel like we're just based offthis interaction. We probably have quite
a few things in coffee, Likewe're both clearly non Japanese, like we're
here, we're waiting for coffee.Everything that's okay. Sidebar actually closed every
overything you don't. It's such aeasy world problem to have, but it's
(49:07):
like our kids are waking up atfive am every morning, and other countries
are not as convenient as like theUS and Canada where thinks you're open all
the time. And so anyway,that wasn't my only time to like wait
for a place to open to geta cup of coffee. Frint here who's
in Mexico, she's from New Zealandto lives in Australia. We're actually just
talking about that with her. Thecity we live in kind of has the
(49:28):
same thing where it's like tons ofcafes but they all open at like eight,
ten or eleven, and like anew cafe will open, you're like,
sweet, this is awesome. Itopens at eight two and you're like,
you guys, so much more coffeeif you just like yes. I
think eight is a stretch though,too, because I think there's a lot
of them that are like nine orten. Like the city we live in
(49:49):
is like sleepy, like sleeping intolike ten am, and I'm like,
our daughter is like ready for anap by then. She's been up for
like four four hours probably it's likenap time. But we it was nice
because when we arrived in Tokyo,we had the jet leg and so I
think she was waking up at likeI remember it was like four fifty am,
and I'm like, this is agreat city to be doing that because
(50:09):
Tokyo actually does have a lot ofstuff open. Like we're like, great,
let's go hit the fish market atfive am. Yeah. I walked
through the kind of Zawa fish marketI want to say before like it was
actually up and I was like,oh, just walk around and see them
setting up. This is fun.Yeah, yeah, for sure. Awesome.
Well, really appreciate you guys's time. If people want to catch up
(50:30):
and follow what you guys are doingonline, where are the best place to
do that be just path and Alissadot com or heath them Alyssa on Instagram
or where we've been sharing some YouTubevideos as well under heath them lesson so
perfect. Awesome. Yeah, we'llmake sure there's links to all of that
and just yeah, thank you guysso much for your time, and hopefully
we can just keep in touch andmaybe we can meet up again somewhere else
(50:52):
in the world. Yeah, yeah, probably awesome. Thanks for listening to
this episode if you want more,and make sure to check out the World
Wanders Insider, available on patre atpatreon dot com, slash the World Wanderers.
For show notes, head over tothe world wanders dot com. Find
us on social media at the WorldWanders Podcast and join the private Facebook community
at world Wanders, a community fortravelers. You can always get in touch
(51:15):
with us at info at the worldwanders dot com. And if you enjoyed
the show, don't forget to subscribeand leave a review. It really helps
us find new listeners. See younext time
Hello, and welcome to the WorldWanders podcast, a proud part of the
wander Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan, I'm Amanda, and we're your hosts.
We're a traveling couple and digital nomads, taking you on our adventures as
we explore locations, destinations, andcareers. Enjoy the show. Hello everyone,
and welcome to another episode of theWorld Wanders podcast. We are super
(00:25):
excited that you're joining us for today'sepisode of the show, and today on
the podcast, we are really excitedto be joined by Heath and Alyssa Paget.
Yeah, and there's a fun backstorybehind how this interview came to be.
While we were in Japan, especiallyin those early couple weeks, we're
finding Lou was waking up really earlyin the morning and I would usually take
(00:46):
her out to do something. AndJapan, I think, surprisingly isn't really
a morning place. There's a lotof people going, you know, all
over the place at all times,but lots of cafe It's also restaurants don't
open super early in the morning.And so walking around Canazawa lugging a little
baby around and I find another foreignlooking guy with a similar age toddler waiting
(01:10):
around outside of a Starbucks, andso that turns out to be Heath.
We spark up a conversation, findthat we have a ton of stuff in
common. Him and his wife Alyssa, have a really interesting backstory and doing
tons of cool stuff as a family, traveling and so I thought, we've
got to get these guys on thepodcast and dive into their full backstory,
which I'm excited to do today.Now that we're back in Mexico, we
(01:30):
caught up with them, and soHeath and Alyssa have a long bio full
of tons of interesting stuff. Theyhave written books, they've run a conference,
They've gone to all fifty states,Arvine as well as gone to Europe,
Italy, France, and most recentlyArvine and camping around Japan. So
tons of interesting travel stuff and overthe past eight years have really followed a
(01:56):
cool path to build a career,a lifestyle and a family. And so
we're excited to dive in and talkall about it today. Yeah, and
so we're going to talk a littlebit about their journey as travelers, entrepreneurs,
and parents, including why they lovetraveling the world by r V,
how they've been able to strike abalance between working and traveling, because that's
something that is a huge part oftheir story and something that they've been working
(02:16):
quite actively on over the last eightyears. And we also talk a little
bit about what it was like travelingJapan and an RV. As you guys
know, if you listen to thelast you know four episodes of the podcast
about our trip to Japan, wedid not travel Japan by RV and it
sounds super cool. We also talkabout what's next for them travel wise and
much more so. There's a lotof good stuff in this In this interview,
(02:39):
Heath and Alyssa are pretty awesome andwe hope that you enjoy it.
And just before we get into theinterview, we just wanted to make a
quick little announcement and give you guysa quick little update about the podcast.
We have a pretty busy summer aheadwith some travels, heading back to Canada
to see some family and friends,as well as a bunch of work obligations
and projects, so we've decided totake a little summer break from the podcast,
(03:02):
so we will be offline for thenext couple of months, not recording
or releasing new episodes. But don'tworry We'll be back in September with new
interviews, new episodes, and updateson travels then. So we hope that
you guys have a great summer.We are so grateful that you continue to
listen, and we hope that youenjoy this last episode before we take a
(03:23):
little pause. Ethan, Melissa,thanks so much for joining us today.
Thanks for having us guys. Yeah, very excited to talk. So the
backstarts connecting was I was out Iremember what time. It was, pretty
early in the morning in Kanazawa,looking for a coffee. I think it
was like showing up right as Starbuckswas opening, and then saw another fellow
(03:44):
traveler with kids, another dad onthe move and stuck me and I had
a great conversation there, and thatsense connected. So one of the things
that really stopped to me was hearingabout your guys's backstory, the way you
were traveling, which was like totallydifferent than the way we were traveling in
Japan. So really excited to hearabout your trip in Japan to kind of
kick things up. I'd love tohear kind of how you guys started to
travel and specifically gotten into our vtravel. Do you want to take the
(04:08):
lead. Sure, Okay. Westarted out traveling mostly just out of discontent
after graduating college and going straight intooffice life. And we went from you
know, being around friends and havingall this freedom and everything too, we
were inside all day long. Weweren't interacting with people as much anymore,
(04:30):
we weren't getting to do as manyfun things, and we were kind of
like, oh, my goodness,is this adulthood? Like is this really
what people do for forty fifty yearsbefore they retire? Because that sounds terrible,
And so we started dreaming up waysthat we could maybe take a little
break and travel, and we cameup with the idea of going to all
fifty states, and we got intoour ving simply because that was going to
(04:55):
be the best way for us tobe able to travel around the country and
see everything while still being economical,because we looked at hotels, we looked
at airbnbs and driving our car andeverything, and that was just going to
be very, very expensive. Sowe found ways that we could camp for
free and things like that, andjust really fell in love with the RV
lifestyle and the ability to get offthe beaten path and away from more of
(05:17):
the touristy areas and get outside andget in nature and see beautiful places.
I had also proposed the idea oflike an inflatable air mattress in the back
of our Honda CRB, and sobetween that and hotels and RVU as a
happy medium. Yeah, I lovethat. It's really cool to hear that
because I feel like our story reallyaligns with that in a lot of ways,
(05:40):
like just feeling this like working jobswhere we were like, people just
really do this until they're like sixtyfive, and then they retire and then
they like, quote unquote enjoy life. And that's not to say that you
can't have a career that you're passionateabout, because they feel like that was
part of our journey too. Waslike, Okay, how can we find
something that we're passionate about doing thatbrings in sustainable income while also living a
(06:00):
life that we feel excited about,which I know is a part of your
journey too. And it's just reallycool to meet people who are aligned with
that too, because I feel likeso often I'm like, am I the
only one that feels like this,Like there something I'm missing or like is
there a wire cross in my head? Like what's going on here. I
feel like that's been the continued conversationfor us throughout our marriage. I saw
(06:21):
y'all started sorry the podcast maybe inlike twenty fourteen. That was the year
we got married and started traveling,And that's just been the thread throughout life.
And now it's changed with having babies, as you guys know as well,
which is how do we continue tohave a life that we're excited about
and that you know, we're passionateabout, but also you know, do
(06:42):
things that we enjoy in our workand now throwing raising good humans with that
too. So that's kind of thequestions, the questions of our life right
now. Yeah, so you guyshave this idea of like we're going to
go to all fifty states. Whatwas it Like, I'm like storting out
the logistics, finding an RB,learning how to drive it, and then
what did the actual first trip way? It was chaotic, but we were
(07:04):
twenty three at the time, solike we were young and stupid enough and
naive enough that I was like,we're just going to throw caution to the
wind and we're going to buy thisRV off of Craigslist and hope that it
makes it across the country, whichit only broke down on us once and
that was like in our second state. So we started off on a really
(07:25):
low note of having really high mechanicbills, and then it made it the
rest of the way for us,which was amazing blessing, but it was
really just a crash course. Imean, now rving is so popular to
the point where it's hard to getcampsites anywhere, But back then it really
wasn't you know, this big digitalnomad movement that there is now, and
(07:47):
so there weren't many resources out therefor us to really learn the ropes and
figure it out. So we justdid a lot of trial and error and
trying to not crash. Yeah,at one point we were driving the Pacific
Ghost Highway and I just look atAlyssa and I kind of had forgotten about
this since you reminded me of ityears later. But I looked at her
(08:09):
and I said, hey, baby, our engine was overheating. And I
said, you know, if Ilook at you and say like we gotta
go, just you know, I'mgonna we'll open the doors and we'll tuck
and roll. In the moment,Like, looking back, I'm like,
how to have been joking. It'snot, but I don't think I was
joking at the moment because our enginewas overheating, and I mean it was
(08:30):
a twenty year old RV at thatpoint when we bought it. Because I
asked you, I was like,we're just gonna jump out and let it
fly over the edge of this cliff. And he's like, do you want
to fly over the edge of thecliff or do you want to jump out?
Luckily, it was all fine.I mean, yeah, it was
all good. I just yeah,flushed the radiator or something like that,
and it was better. So tobe twenty three again. It's like,
(08:52):
I don't know how how those wordslike left my mouth casually, but yeah,
that's so funny. And so onthat first trip, you guys went
to all fifty states or what didit look like actually crossing all fifty states?
Off? We did seven months thelower forty eight and so basically,
to give a little bit more contextthe journey, we decided we want to
(09:15):
go to all fifty states, maybefind a new place to live that you
know, it was kind of likebreak up. Our status quo is getting
married, and I wanted to dosome type of work, make some money
along the way. So I pitchedAlyssa on the idea of working a job
in all fifty states that it wouldbe a fun project. She thought it
sounded like work. And then Ifound a sponsor for that. Like I
sent a cold email to a bigjob board in the US called snagg A
(09:37):
job. They help people find jobs, and I told them what we were
doing, and we didn't have anyWe didn't have a blog or website or
social media or anything like that.And for some reason they said, we'll
give you a thousand bucks a monthand you know, pay for some of
your gas and give and send ussome film equipment to make a documentary about
this. And we had no experiencedoing that. So along the way we
were kind of doing this documentary projectas well. So we did seven lower
(10:00):
forty eight and then we flew toHawaii and then we drove the Alaskan Highway
with my parents and grandparents in atwenty nine foot RV the next summer,
So we did basically everything in ayear. Wow, that's super impressive.
That's really cool. Yeah, well, we're kind of the other than almost
dying on the Spic Coast Highway inRV office incident. What we're kind of
(10:22):
the highlights of the trip. Abig highlight was the ending, which I
get to work. So a lotof my jobs were in quick service or
I worked on dude ranges and thingslike that at Buffalo Wild Wings and but
in Alaska, I worked a jobof the National Park Service. So they
flew us in a helicopter up toMount Dinali and we got to sleep on
a glacier overnight shadow of the parkrangers. That was a really cool experience
(10:45):
because I've never been on a helicopter. I got stay the night on a
glacier. We were so novous atcamping that we didn't even realize that we
were sleeping pads, and so wejust threw our sleeping bags in the tent
on the ice and we're like,tent camping sucks. We're just literally soaking
wet. We ended up like,were so calm, and the next morning
(11:07):
they're like, how did you sleep? I was like, honestly terrible,
and and I told them. He'slike, oh, we have a stack
of pads over here. We shouldhave, you know, given anyway,
but that was a really cool experience, minus, you know, a poor
night's sleep. One night. It'sa good story now about how bad we
are at camping. We had tolearn. I mean, yeah, I'm
sure camping now, yeah, we'velearned. I think one of the biggest
(11:28):
highlights for us though. Actually,you know, we had a lot of
cool experiences with jobs, but wedidn't at the time kind of, as
you guys have mentioned, am Ithe only ones that have an interest in
living this life? When we've toldour family and friends what we were doing,
they thought we were crazy. Imean, at the time, our
hashtag for our wedding because that waslike cute thing people did in that moment
was like breaking padget because breaking badwas a thing and we were getting in
(11:52):
the sketchy RVs. Who we're allhaving a good laugh about this, But
we didn't have anyone in our liveswhom like we kind of had support,
but not really for what we weretrying to do. In A month into
our trip, we went to aconference in Oregon called World Domination Summit,
and we just kind of happened tofind it along our route. It was
hosted by a guy named Chris Gillabout went on for ten years and it
was just kind of a gathering ofdigital nomads, entrepreneurs and things like that,
(12:16):
and we end up plugging into thatgroup and just kind of meeting a
lot of people who were living thelife we wanted to live. So basically
we had gotten a taste of thiswhole you know, hey, we're working
from our RV, we're making atiny bit of money, not much to
sustain, but we could kind ofsee a path where this would be a
really fun and interesting life that wecould live. And then we met a
lot of people there who affirmed thatthis wasn't a crazy dream, that we
(12:39):
can make it a reality. Sothere wasn't a specific instance, but it
was like it kind of let usknow that we could do this for a
while, which led us to beingon the road full time for six years,
traveling around and now getting to doit with our kids. So,
yeah, that's cool. That's actuallywhat I wanted to ask next, because
I feel like our experience has beenlike, you have this goal or this
thing you want to do, andyou set out for a certain period of
(13:01):
time and then you do it.And I feel like a lot of people
who haven't done that stuff just expectyou to kind of go back to what
you were doing before. Like youget another like full time corporate job,
you move back to where you were. But I feel like these types of
experiences so profoundly change you and theway you look at the world that it's
like, how do you go backfrom that? So it was kind of
curious, like what it was likefor you. You guys finished the fifty
(13:22):
States, like you know, whatdid you do next? Absolutely, it
drove me crazy because people will belike, when are you going to be
done with your trip? And I'mlike, no, Like, this is
not a trip. This is We'regoing to find a way to make this
our lifestyle. And that was kindof what our initial idea was with Heath
working a job and all fifty States, was we have to find a way
(13:43):
to make money. We have noidea how to do that. We don't
have like incredible business acumen. Imean we were kids. There was no
grand ideas or skills that we hadthat we felt like we could monetize at
the time. We just had thesecrazy dreams of binding a way to make
money while we were traveling, andso that was kind of our goal as
soon as we finished off of theStates, was anything we can do that
(14:05):
will pay us. We are goingto try it while we are traveling,
while we're living in the RV.And fortunately, like we just happened to
hit into this rving space at atime when rving was starting to boom and
being a digital nomad was starting tobecome more common and remote work was starting
to become more of an understood thing. And so as we grew our income
(14:28):
and realize that maybe it was sustainablefor us to keep traveling, it kind
of became just a question of like, why would we stop? Why would
we not travel if we've figured outthis key component, because I think the
work component, the income component,is the hardest thing for most people,
I mean, and specifically to thaton top of that, like what we
(14:48):
like precisely did that next year wasbecause a lot We've seen a lot of
people, you know, who saveup for a year to go travel,
and their financial runway is like I'mgonna I got fifteen grand, I'm gonna
make the most out of this,I'm gonna backpack or I'm gonna go wherever,
and do you know, however,and we had a similar kind of
like runway in front of us,and the idea halfway through the trip was
(15:11):
how do we not go get ajob. So after that first year where
we burned through gas costs US twentythree grand to go to all fifty states,
so actually not that bad. Ithink we made twenty grand that year
from just like patching together some freelancewriting and stuff like that, so we
weren't necessarily in the black, butwe could see a path where if we
kept working hard, we could figureit out. So we parked our twenty
year old RV at a little RVpark outside of Austin for three hundred and
(15:35):
sixty bucks a month that year andkind of built out some business like freelancing
clients for video because we had kindof built those skills. So let's wedding.
So we kind of spent a littlebit of time like paying down student
debt and being a little stationary thatnext year so we could not have to
go back and get quote unquote normaljobs. And that was kind of like
(15:58):
a period of hustle time and thenyou know, we're able to figure out
some things from there. But itwas a little bit of like we had
a leaking roof and thing. Itwasn't all great, but you know,
the idea was it's better than ushaving to go back to this life where
we don't get to spend our daysaround each other. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, it makes me think aboutas we're talking about. It's kind of
interesting because I feel like ours wasobviously not in the RV space, but
(16:19):
very similar. And it's kind ofthat like twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen twenty
nineteen period where like living a lifestylelike this kind of forces you to be
entrepreneurial in a way that it doesn'ttoday. Like I know, for us,
Chris Kellabo was a big inspiration andwe like took off to Southeast Asia
and we're like, you need tofind a way to make money because we're
going to be stuck here, whichis yeah. And then today it's like,
(16:42):
like you said, becomes so muchmore popular. There's so many different
more routes to do it, whichwhich is awesome for sure. I'm curious
to kind of between then and now, how much of your nights would you
say you've actually spent sleeping in anRV between when and now? Between then
and now, like, yeah,they didn't know our honeymoon to now,
(17:02):
oh well six years full time,like we were in RV full time,
so we didn't have a house,we didn't have an apartment. So that
was until basically we got pregnant withour daughter in late twenty eighteen and we
were alsa was I mean tmi,but she was throwing up in an RV
that was twenty four foot and wewere in the middle of nowhere in Canada.
We were actually we went to whatwas the Canadian grocery store where we
(17:26):
found out we're pregnant. Gosh,we were It's like the Canadian version of
Walmart. It was like something tiCanadian tire. Oh my gosh, yes,
so we're Canadian. So I know, I knew that. So I
figured you guys might know. Caianiis the best. I still feel like
when I'm in other places, I'mlike, why is there just no Canadian
tire everywhere? Well, they havelike doctor's clements, and we're in Prince
(17:48):
George. So we went to theCanadian tire. We went to see the
doctor. Yeah, so he waslike, well, you got yourself pregnant,
and so yeah, we have apackage deal here for finding out you're
pregnant and attire. And so wedrove. We drove back home. Like
Alyssa's sister was pregnant the same time, so like, let's get an apartment,
(18:11):
you know, have this baby.So we did that for a year
and then hated it in Texas andwe decided that wasn't for us, and
so we got back into an RVfor a year, which ended up being
the COVID year. And so Iguess maybe to answer your question short,
six out of seven and a halfout of the last ten years. I
mean we've also been like rving aroundthe world and done like ten different countries
(18:36):
in the past like years. Ihave to I have to break in a
Spreadsie Ran. I'm not sure,but seventy percent of the time, I
would say, yeah, a bigmajority of our marriage has been in RV's
yeah wheels the last few years.I think you did a good job answering
that question. Without having the Spreadsie, I feel like we Yeah, it
kind of pieces it together. AndI totally get like, having been pregnant
(18:56):
myself in the last couple of years, being pregnant in an RV sounds kind
of terrible. I'm like trying tomake some food or Brussels sprouts, and
this is like, I'll kill youif you don't stop cooking. This.
Oh, yeah, just like thesmells and yeah, like morning sickness and
just Amanda was asking you to openthe fridge for her. Oh, I
just could not open the fridge trimester. It was just like the smells that
(19:19):
came out of it. I waslike, I had no idea. This
fridge was so disgusting. Yeah,like I really don't want to eat.
I need to eat. I justneeded to give me the butter so I
can butter some toast to all theother things in there. LESSI would be
on a kick. She's like,are you using human? Like I threw
the human out a month ago becauseyou kept asking me that I haven't touched
(19:40):
human, but she smelled it everywhereanyway. But the last few years,
to kind of going back to thequestion, Ryan was, we have it
home now in southwestern Colorado, andour travel has changed. We haven't been
full time or being but we've beendoing these kind of extended trips camping abroad
and that's just kind of been ourmode of travel that we've enjoyed. We've
gotten used to it, and sowe've done New Zealand, France, Switzerland,
(20:02):
Italy, and a handful of othercountries in an RV with the kids.
So we just got back from Japana, New Zealand, but we actually
have our house up for sale andwe're moving out to go full time now.
So that's the whole thing we're excitedand nervous about now with the kids.
So yeah, I was gonna ask. I feel like there's like definitely
this point, like I know forus, where you're kind of living this
lifestyle, feeling more comfortable with themand it's like, oh, we're gonna
(20:23):
have a baby, and it kindof makes you rethink everything. I think
a lot of people are kind oflike we have like ten percent in Salmon
or something in us, but we'relike I need to go like back home
because I'm gonna have a baby.But how did you guys kind of navigate
that and like decide what you weregoing to do as I came to like
building a family also with pursuing thiskind of alternative lifestyle. We were already
(20:44):
we were arving in Cannon, andwe were already thinking about like do we
want to keep full timing and havea baby, And we're kind of just
thinking through that question and not reallyknowing the answer until we got the positive
on the pregnancy test, and we'relike, we're going to go back to
Texas, US, and we wereplanning on staying in our RV, like
we had a big class, aplenty of space for the pregnancy part of
(21:07):
things, and then we thought wewould travel again. But then just like
being on wheels and not being stable, I was like, I can't do
this. I'm getting motion sick walkingin this RV right now. And so
we ended up getting an apartment nearmy family, thinking well, we'll want
to be near family, we'll wantto be in one place, and then
we realized the longer that we werein one place that it just didn't We
(21:29):
just weren't happy. We weren't ashappy as we thought we would be with
those you know, early early months. And so before Ellie was born,
I think I was like eight ornine months pregnant, we booked our first
international trip as a as a family, and I remember Heath being on the
phone with Delta being like, well, like, wet, we don't know
her birthdate yet or like her name, and they're like, that's fine,
(21:52):
just call us later, like oncethe baby is born and we'll give her
a ticket then, and just kindof being wild, like oh, okay,
like maybe traveling with kids isn't isit going to be too hard?
And I think that was a bigthing for us, was getting our first
trip on the book as a familywhen our baby was still really young and
really little and we could just wearher and take her everywhere, so that
(22:15):
we could build up the confidence justthat it was possible, because it was
just this giant question mark before ofI mean your new to parenthood, right,
like you have no idea what parentingis like, maybe you know what
travel is like, but adding themtogether, we were very, very overwhelmed
at the prospects. So we gotthat first trip done pretty quickly. Actually,
(22:36):
I guess we took Ellie on herfirst like RV trip when she was
like four weeks old, her firstroad trip. But we kind of went
into it with the mentality of justtry as soon as possible and figure out
if it's something that you want tomake work for you. And we decided
we were gonna lug the strollers andlug the baby beds all around the world
(22:57):
and that it would be worth itawesome. And then was was that Europe
the first trip afterwards? Yeah,that was our first trip to Europe.
Together, right, that was yourfirst time to Europe. Ye, Yeah,
we've decided to start with Italy.I think just because of heaths obsession
with pizza. It seems like alogical first step. Yeah. We have
(23:18):
a bunch of photos of Ellie cryingwhile I'm eating gelato, like reaching for
it, but like she's not evenold enough to know, but like she
intuitively understood that this was the bestthing in the world. Yeah. Kids
know, kids are saying nature.Yeah, funny. We were in Columbia
and we're Louie ice cream for thefirst time. We got like a dessert
(23:41):
at a restaurant and she just likegrabbed the spoon and put it in her
mouth and then it was like,yes, she was like climbing on the
table, Like I feel like shebecame like a feral animal to try to
get more ice cream. Yes,I've never seen you behave like this before.
Imagine, Like I feel like drivingin Europe seems chaotic, kind of
(24:03):
hard. Driving an RV in Europeseems like next level. What was it
like kind of planning that out gettingover there and making those first European RV
trips happen. So the caveat ontop of that was most of the rentals
in Europe. I think they're trendinga little bit more automatic, but a
few years ago they were still predominantlymanual. And I've never driven a manual
(24:26):
of my life. And so Ihad a friend meet up with me one
day before he booked our RV whichwe were going to be driving for a
month, and we drove around forfifteen minutes and as jeep, and he
showed it to me, and Iguess I thought that that was enough experience
to go driving the Italian Dolomites.So we picked our RV up in a
grocery store parking lot just outside ofVenice, and our friend Peter and John
were with us. They had theirown rig, and so he gave me
(24:48):
some tips that day. So wedrove around for maybe twenty minutes maybe,
and then we immediately drove into themountains of northern Italy. And but it
worked out like Peter was a professionalbus drus driver in New York City and
he taught bus drivers, so he'sa really good driving teacher. If there
is any scenario in which I hadHeath on his first day ever driving a
(25:11):
manual in the steep mountain curvy roadswould be okay, we've got a driving
instructor literally with that. Yeah.So it was hard because there are very
small villages, as you guys knowwhen you're driving through some of these European
spots and you know, you're readingthe signs and it says it's a little
overwhelming because you're trying to understand thisdifferent language and everything else. And you
know, some of these city centersyou can't take large vehicles into. You
(25:33):
have to have a tag if you'redriving into the city center. And so
we messed up and drove into acouple of those that we weren't supposed to
and ended up working out fine.I stalled out on a mountain side and
I because I down shifted instead ofup shifting or vice versa. I don't
remember, but either way, Istalled it and so he had to like
run to the RB. There's awhole other reason why we enjoy traveling with
(25:56):
friends, and sometimes, like whenyou're pushing your comfort zone, it's like,
oh, it's nice that we hadpeople to help um. So once
you get the hang of that,I feel that was kind of like jumping
into the deep end, like thefirst time I ever had coffee. I
just drank it straight black, andI was like, this is terrible.
And then I went to Starbucks andhad like a you know, cinnamon of
cinnamon dulce latte and I was like, oh, this is incredible. Like
(26:18):
this is wondering anyway. So thatmaybe a terrible comparison, But the point
is we jumped into like a harderscenario of learning Emmanuel doing it in the
mountains and small villages, and Ithink Italy is one of the harder countries
we've driven in just because the medievalyou know, the architecture sold But like
after just going to Japan, whichwas the easiest country we've ever driven in
(26:40):
Campervan and New Zealand's way. NewZealand is easy too. But you really
jumped in there the fact check me, didn't you. Sorry, that's my
job. It's true, it's true. But yeah, Italy was challenged,
but then it got a lot easierand now there are a lot more automatic
vehicles on the market. That wasprobably way too detailed of an answer,
Ryan, Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, and then you kind of
(27:03):
I think maybe we'll go into Japanbecause I'm really curious about that as like
us just finishing a trip in Japan. How did you get guys decide like,
hey, we wanted to Japan,we wanted to do it at an
RV and what was that process likefiguring it out? Imagine for us,
the thought of driving in Japan islike a bit scary because we can't have
it, can't even like kind ofunderstand the sign so they're just like the
shapes and squiggles. Yeah, talkus through the whole japantra. Yeah,
(27:26):
Well, first of all, itfeels like you're driving in Mario Kart because
of all the signs on the roads. It looks, you know, like
Mario Kart. But honestly, maybefour or five years ago, we saw
a photo of a Japanese camper andthey I think it was when we were
in Italy. So I remember talkingto John and Peter about us all going
April twenty twenty, and they basicallylook like large go karts, and I
(27:48):
just thought that sounds like a lotof fun, and so that it kind
of just played that seed of itwould be a fun adventure to do,
and that's just been our mode oftravel and I think one of the reasons
why we enjoy it some countries,especially if you're going into cities, like
when we've we've done one wave rentalswhere we've started in like Paris or dropped
off in Rome and we'll just kindof bookend our trip with Airbnbs, and
(28:11):
like the cities we want to walkaround, but a lot of times we
like meandering through some of the smallertowns and just being able to park and
walk around, and that's what weenjoy versus spending like more time in the
cities. And so that's why wethought about doing it in Japan, is
like going to see Fuji and someof these smaller villages that you know,
(28:33):
we're a little bit further away.Like we looked at two routes from Tokyo
to Kyoto, and one was goingthrough a handful of large cities, like
mostly driving through their highways and theirtoll roads, which they're a lot of.
And then there was another one thatwent up through these smaller kind of
like post towns. I don't knowif you guys got to go to any
of those, but they're like reallywell preserved. One was called mccoma Juku,
(28:55):
and and I don't think we wouldhave went there had we not done
it, and in our you haveto have a car, you have to
have a vehicle of swords or geton like one of those tour buses with
three hundred people type of thing toget there. And so those are some
of the places we were really excitedabout going to, and a RB just
made a little bit more sense forus. And we love, you know,
being able to have our space withus and the kids, and you
(29:17):
know, having the same bed tosleep in every night, especially with kids
is so so valuable for us,Like to be able to feel like the
kids have their own space and somethingthat they recognize versus us changing hotels every
two three nights and dragging suitcases allthe time. Like that's been a really
big when I think for us forchoosing the RV as a way to get
(29:40):
around countries, because they've got everythingright there all of the time. Yeah.
But also like when we met upwith you guys and what was the
temp Kanazawa, Like we had jumpedin a hotel for the night because it
was raining all day and it's asixteen foot camper. So we're like,
I don't want to be in thesixteen foot camper while it's raining with our
two kids, let's go get hotel. So I'm not married to that as
a mode of travel, you know, So we'll jump in and out as
(30:03):
it makes sense to Yeah, forsure, yeah we should. Just like
I think clarify too. I thinkwhen you think camper r V, you
think big car. For these Japaneseones are small, like smaller than like
ours, the kind of small suvlike total for sure, it's definitely smaller
than the SUV that we have inthe States. Yeah, So we rented
(30:23):
a car to drive to the DenverAirport when we were going to Tokyo,
and it was a minivan and justfor kicks, I measured like I measured
it and it was a foot Ithink longer than our RV in Japan.
And the smallest vans in the US, like if you're familiar with the camping
market in the US, are maybethe Travados or things like that that from
(30:44):
Winnebago, the sprinter bands, thoseare kind of in the low twenty feet.
So even your vans in the USare way larger than the camper that
we had. So even going throughI accidentally got derailed one day drove through
downtown Tokyo when we were leaving andyou know, went through like big cities
and I could park in a parkingspot and it really wasn't very stressful at
(31:04):
all driving a car. And wefelt from a cultural perspective that you know,
at least all the people we werearound on Japanese roads were way nicer
than other countries we've been at,where like if you make a mistake,
someone's honking at you, flipping youoff or whatever. I don't think I
got honked at the entire time Iwas in Japan, and I'm sure I
did something wrong. Yeah, Imean that just makes my heart warm because
(31:27):
it's like so Japanese. It's theentire time here there. Yeah, we
were like what's happening? It wasprobably like a courtesy honk, like someone
let them pass or something. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
I feel like one of the thingsthat would be really interesting to hear
about when it comes to RV travelwould be a little bit around kind of
like the logistical side of things,like when it comes to what you need
(31:49):
for driver's licenses, maybe insurance,if that's a consideration. Do you guys
it was booked through like the samecompany, how do you find like the
RVs you want to book with allthat type of stuff. Most of the
time when we rent in RV,insurance is all included. So we've used
the same company twice and Europe andwe've used this. We've used Wilderness twice
(32:10):
in New Zealand, and for Japan, we just Google search until we found
a company that actually had availability duringcherry blossom season. That was surprisingly,
surprisingly difficult. But our big thing, not for Japan specifically, but for
Europe, where you're crossing multiple borderspotentially and there's so many places you can
(32:34):
drive, is trying to find arental company that has one way rentals.
So that's what we've done when we'vebeen in Europe, so we've been able
to go so many more places,and we went from Paris all the way
to Barcelona and crossed across six countryborders over the course of a month last
fall. So that's like our biggestpriority when we're looking at a rental company
(32:57):
is if we have that option sothat we can cover more ground and see
more things that way. But theinsurance is always taken care of, and
it wasn't until Japan that we neededto get an international driving permit, which
was surprisingly easy. It was liketwenty dollars and we mailed in a form
and that was it and took myphoto at Walgreens. Yes, yes,
(33:17):
you did up to take a photo. And the company that we've done anywhere
one way rentals in Europe is calledAnywhere Campers. They've been really good.
We've booked through and reserved through thema couple of times. And in Japan,
we posted in that there's a Japandiscussion Forum Facebook group that we were
part of. There's like one hundredthousand people and they're asking tens of questions.
So a lot of people were kindof concerned or wondering about like how
(33:39):
expensive tolls and things like that were. We drove a big loop starting in
Tokyo. We went to Fuji,we went to around the Kyoto area up
to Kindazawa, which is you know, if you're you guys are familiar now
in Japan, but it was agiant circle. So and so that was
just over two weeks, and wedrove a lot of miles and you're always
on toll roads. Ever clipped theavoid tolls on Google Maps and it was
(34:01):
two hundred and fifty bucks, andwell, you know, many kilometers we
did roughly. I know we wroteit that written down, so okay,
I wanted to say it was liketwo thousand, but it might be mixing
up New Zealand. The point was, it wasn't very unaffordable, and I
think we paid like eighteen hundred dollarsfor our rental, which worked out to
maybe one hundred and thirty to fiftybucks a day US. I don't remember
(34:22):
for two weeks. Yeah, sorry, we don't have all these in front
of us, but it wasn't astronomicalas the point. Yeah, yeah,
considering I mean, we just dida similar trip but staying in like hotels
and airbnbs and stuff. And Ifeel like the cost of like just I
would say it was probably around thatwhen you average everything out, maybe a
little bit more, maybe closer totwo hundred. So yeah, it seems
(34:42):
like a good a good option.And I also love what you guys were
talking about just with having kids,and I feel like, you know,
this was a really interesting trip forus with Japan because I feel like Lu
kind of went from being like reallyvery much a baby to kind of entering
toddlerhood. And we didn't bring ourtravel curup with us because we wanted to
do everything really lightweight because we knewwe were taking Chinkinsons and we would have
(35:02):
to carry everything, including you know, her, And so I found for
the first time like, oh,we get in an Airbnb and I could
tell she was like, oh,what is this space? Like what is
this bed I'm sleeping sleeping in?Like it was different. So I think
having kids are a bit older thanher, it definitely makes sense to you
don't have to do as much ofthat, like here's our space for tonight,
Here's where we're going to sleep,you know, like make sure they're
(35:25):
comfortable. It's like you just getthem comfortable once and then you're just in
that space they can kind of youcan all set up and just be there.
But that sounds great. And asyou guys know, life with kids
is fluid, and we feel likewe've been trying to dial in what life
looks like and how work and travelall fit into kids. And I feel
like by the time we get somethinga little figured out, they change and
(35:47):
so are Like one of our lasttrips last year, we did two months
almost in Italy because we love itand so we keep going back and we
didn't do the RB that time,like we had an airbnb we were in
for a month and then we didhotels and bounce on to Paris in London
and I did remember like almost throwingmy back out because we had a travel
bed or something and we didn't bringa stroller, so because we thought our
three year old would walk more andthat was done, so I carried her
(36:10):
and no remember it. We likeliterally ran out of arms space. We
just left our car seat at ahotel and yeah, we did. We
just left it. We're like,we physically are unable to travel with this
anymore, and we just left it. Yeah, and I was also doing
a gravel bike thing, so wehad like anyway, the point was we
we've done and kind of went backand forth on both modes of travel,
and you know, we do keepcoming back to the RV. But yeah,
(36:32):
we're going to Portgal this fall forthree months and we're going to just
be in like our own airbb spacebecause we're going to be stationary. So
yeah, we're not like married toour V life. We just do enjoy
it as a way to like getaround and explore a place. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, we were talkingabout it. I was like I think
that would be lots of places,but especially in Japan, like a really
cool way to get around and seethe country, especially like and you've got
(36:55):
to do like a bullet train onetime to be like this is super cool,
but then you are really kind ofstuck on like you know, the
big cities that type of thing,and being able to see smaller towns.
And Japan has incredible nature, likeso we need beautiful spots which are hard
to get to if you can't drive. When I think one of them,
sorry, oh no, I wasjust gonna say and and and you know
(37:16):
for someone that has kids as well, Like some of our favorite experiences were
we stayed at some campgrounds outside ofMount Fuji and like the way that they're
set up, are these giant fields, not really like hookups, and you
know RVs that you see in America, it's ninety percent people in tents and
maybe five ten percent bands if that. But you know, our first night
(37:38):
camping there, we got in theRV and it was dark and we hadn't
really gotten the space, and youknow, everyone was hungry. It took
longer it was raining it at Tokyo, and we're like, this was a
terrible decision, like we should notbe all in the sixteen foot camper band,
Like there's no toilet on board,it's like an emergency toilet that's a
whole other thing. And so thatfirst night we're like, this was a
(37:58):
stupid, stupid idea. And thenof course, like we all got a
night's sleep, and then we wokeup the next morning to this amazing view
amount Fuji, and there were allfamilies around us in this little campground area.
So everyone's like in this big circle. There's a fire up in the
middle, and for like five hours, our kids played with so many other
children, like they were playing witheach other's toys. Like at the end
(38:20):
of it was one of those thingswhere we exchanged information with one of the
families because they want to go travelin an RV in the US one day,
and they're like, we'll see youagain. And so that was something
that was really fun and cool forus, as I felt like we got
to interact, you know, ina fun environment with some people. Like
another night we camped at a cafewith a family who owned the cafe and
also lived there on site, andlike by that evening, I was like
(38:42):
digging up bamboo shoots with the ownerand like we went and boiled them together.
And so I feel like there weresome fun experiences that we had because
we decided to be in an RVthat we probably could have had otherwise,
but maybe we wouldn't have, yeah, for sure, And I think too,
I'm glad that you brought up justlike I feel like sometimes, especially
those first nights are arriving in anew destination, there can be a lot
of discomfort, and I think thatthat's not what we see on social media,
(39:06):
right. It's not often what we'reseeing online with travel, because in
most cases it's like, you know, you wake up, everything's fine,
you have a great experience, thenthat's what you're sharing, right. But
I think part of the reality ofthis lifestyle and just traveling long term in
general, is like having those like, oh crap, what have I done?
Moments? Like why are we here? I know we actually had that
when we went to Columbia in January. It was the first big trip we've
(39:29):
taken since the baby, and thefirst night we arrived in our airbnb,
it was smaller than it looked inthe photos, first of all, and
we were spending like close to amonth there, and the neighborhood beside the
building we were in was having aparty. I guess we arrived at like
the neighborhood anniversary and the party wentuntil six am the next day, and
(39:50):
like, thankfully our daughter slept fine, like her white noise machine and like
the air con, just like shejust passed out and went to sleep.
But Ryan and I were both likewhat the heck? And we were like
what have we done? This isterrible And it was just like one bad
night. It was like our tripwas amazing. We had an excellent time
in Colombia. Would definitely recommend itall the things, but just the first
night was like we're like should wemove airbnbs? Like should we go to
(40:13):
a different location? Like just this, like we've made a mistake kind of
like what you were talking about,Yeah, get that. Yeah, I
say. There's just in regards toI feel like there's as you. I
feel like, especially as we travelaround you go to big cities, you
notice like a lot of big citiesare kind of becoming more and more like
each other, like you've got similarstuff and chains all the type of thing,
(40:34):
and especially just traveling with kids nowand like there's more engagement with other
people, but when you're in ahotel, you're in an AIRBNBA, it
can be kind of you're like alittle bit more on your own. And
like like you said, being inthose campgrounds getting to know people, like
it's such a social there are alot more social context and there's also this
like really unique kind of like RVculture in different countries, Like there's caravan
culture in the UK and rving andthe States, and like I'm sure Japan
(41:00):
it has like its own kind ofculture around that. So it's like a
really cool interesting lens to like connectwith a different country and see a different
place. Yeah, I would agreewith that. So I know you mentioned
going to Portugal, but yeah,talk us through, Like you guys are
selling your house, making a bigmove, Like what's the future looked like
for Heath and Melissa and family.We got back from Europe mid October,
(41:22):
and we were here in Colorado forthe whole winter, and we were inside
and it was cold and it snowedso much this year that we just kind
of looked at each other. Bythe time I think the end of February
rolled around, and we hadn't bookedanything for Japan or New Zealand, and
we're like, we have to getout of this place. We have to
(41:45):
I don't care where we go,we have to go somewhere anywhere. And
that's what pushed us to book ourmost recent trip to Japan and New Zealand.
But as we were prepping for thattrip, we kind of just started
asking the bigger question of well,we're here for almost six months straight and
we didn't super enjoy it. Dowe really want to have a house,
(42:07):
Like if we're not going to enjoyit for half of the year, and
we really love Colorado in the summerin the fall, but winter's long winter
is long out here in the mountains. And the more we started having that
conversation and talking through it, we'relike, you know what, let's move
out of the house and let's givethis to another family for a bit and
(42:28):
figure out if we're ever going tobe house people or if we're just going
to keep traveling full to time.But for us, the biggest concern,
because we are both working while we'retraveling, is child care. Like that's
the hardest thing for any digital nomadfamily, I think, but especially if
both parents are working or are wantingto work and so we found a program
(42:50):
called Boundless Life, if y'all haveheard of it. Found them on Instagram
a while ago and had like anexploratory you know call with one of their
sales rep. I guess you wouldcall them to hear more about their program.
And they have like four locations aroundthe world right now, and they
put your kids and their school programs. They have like a Finnish education center,
(43:13):
and then they have a coworking hubfor the working parents like us,
and they find you an apartment ora house to live in. And the
more we were talking to this woman, we're like, this is exactly solving
all the pain points that we've experiencedwhen we've been traveling as a family.
This is giving our kids community,this is giving us community. We can
(43:34):
still run our business, the kidscan have friends, and we can have
some kid free time like they evendo like date nights and stuff like that.
And so we're like, we're listeningthe house for sale. We're going
to go to Portugal in the fall. Their program, like the fall semester
starts the first of September. Sowe're just soaking up our last few months
(43:55):
in Colorado as normal home dwelling people. And then we're gonna hop over to
Europe and not deal with the VSAMS. So we're going to do their Bali
location and head over to Asia thenfor the winter, and that's as far
as we have our lives planned.No, it's amazing some of our friends
(44:15):
when we can talk about this offlinetoo. Some of our friends are doing
their Italy program right now, andI know they did their Portugal one last
fall, but I don't know ifthey're doing it again, So I'll find
out. Yeah, let us knowwe need to. They're they're awesome.
They're life full time travelers too withyoung kids. I'd love to hear about
you guys's work stuff. I knowwe kind of talked about the early days
of work, and I know fromlooking through your website and stuff, you
(44:37):
guys have books and a blog andvideos and all that type of stuff.
I know you guys have like builtand sold companies, But would love to
hear a little bit about what youguys are doing to finance everything. Yeah,
I'll try to give like a sixtysecond over with you guys, So
sixty second every time we open ourmouths, I feel like we just keep
talking forever. So after we gotoff the road. That first year,
(45:00):
our frame was trying to sustain ourselves, so we built the skills in video
and we started doing freelance. Videographyis kind of our primary income, and
some freelance writing, but we startedgetting clients. We're shooting everything from weddings
to like promotional website videos or onlinecourses. Online courses was something we worked
with creators and authors and things likethat. So we did that for a
(45:22):
few years. While we were kindof paying down that and along that kind
of similar path, we were stillcontinuing to write and build a blog.
I started a podcast called The RbianEntrepreneur, and so I was interviewing people
like this on how they made theirlife work. And we ended up turning
that into a conference. I thinkour biggest you read, like four hundred
plus people that came to that event, and we did that. We're to
a lot of big companies. Alyssapublish a book on kind of top questions
(45:45):
people had asked about living in anRV that ended up doing really well,
and so that for a while sustainedus completely, just like book sales,
and we were able to eventually afterfour years, transition away from client work
entirely. And the idea was like, now we can kind of own our
time and instead of having a bunchof minibosses with clients, we can do
(46:05):
like whatever work we want. Andso for a list of that was writing,
and for me that was I wantedto start a software company. So
I started Campground Booking, which isa booking site for campgrounds, built it
for five years, and sold itto Camping World. And then I feel
like that is most of the stuffwe've done. And then we realized how
many years it took us to buildeach different business that we had started.
(46:29):
As we were traveling, we're like, building something new takes a lot of
time. Why don't we just buyan existing business, which is what we
did in December. So we wereable to buy the income with a blog
that's on renovating RVs and kind ofmore interior design of RVs, which is
something that we both love but areterrible at. We're not renovators at all,
(46:54):
but we can look at pretty picturesall day long. And so that's
been our most recent endeavor is we'vebought this blog and we're trying to I
don't know what we say ten exitin two years and make a return on
our money. But the frame haskind of been like we've oscillated between these
modes of working really hard, tryingto create something for ourselves and also,
(47:15):
hey, let's just past off ofbook sales and some affiliate income and travel
the world. And I feel likewhat we're kind of trying to do now
again is blend those things. Sofor the last two months we didn't work
on the site while we were traveling. We have an editor and a VA
who kind of does some things forus, and we're not trying to grow
something to lots of employees or makethe biggest company in the world, but
(47:36):
trying to build something that you know, we enjoy, but that can sustain
travel for us as well, ifthat makes sense. Yeah, I know,
that's really cool. Yeah, it'sreally awesome to hear that. And
I feel like it's like it's amazingto find that balance of kind of like
I mentioned at the beginning, likedoing something that you're really passionate about and
then also being able to live alife that you're really passionate about and really
(47:58):
excited about and just kind of havethat one thing because I feel like so
many people live like for after workor on the weekends or holidays, vacations,
and being able to like have alife where you can spend time with
your kids, especially while they're sosmall. It's like, you know,
it goes so fast and we justdon't get this time back with them while
still being able to do stuff thatyou guys are excited about. It is
really cool. That's the idea ofthe hope. Yeah, for sure.
(48:22):
Well it sounds like you guys havedone a really great job with it.
It's it's really inspiring to hear thanks. I mean, y'all too. We
met you in Kanazawa, Japan.So I also think it's really funny that
it's like the dads that met eachother with like the babies were sitting Okay,
Ryan glossed over this, but Ithink there's the funniest way I've ever
ended up on a podcast. Likewe're sitting outside waiting for the coffee shop
(48:44):
to open with our babies, andwe're like, yeah, we're you know,
I feel like we're just based offthis interaction. We probably have quite
a few things in coffee, Likewe're both clearly non Japanese, like we're
here, we're waiting for coffee.Everything that's okay. Sidebar actually closed every
overything you don't. It's such aeasy world problem to have, but it's
(49:07):
like our kids are waking up atfive am every morning, and other countries
are not as convenient as like theUS and Canada where thinks you're open all
the time. And so anyway,that wasn't my only time to like wait
for a place to open to geta cup of coffee. Frint here who's
in Mexico, she's from New Zealandto lives in Australia. We're actually just
talking about that with her. Thecity we live in kind of has the
(49:28):
same thing where it's like tons ofcafes but they all open at like eight,
ten or eleven, and like anew cafe will open, you're like,
sweet, this is awesome. Itopens at eight two and you're like,
you guys, so much more coffeeif you just like yes. I
think eight is a stretch though,too, because I think there's a lot
of them that are like nine orten. Like the city we live in
(49:49):
is like sleepy, like sleeping intolike ten am, and I'm like,
our daughter is like ready for anap by then. She's been up for
like four four hours probably it's likenap time. But we it was nice
because when we arrived in Tokyo,we had the jet leg and so I
think she was waking up at likeI remember it was like four fifty am,
and I'm like, this is agreat city to be doing that because
(50:09):
Tokyo actually does have a lot ofstuff open. Like we're like, great,
let's go hit the fish market atfive am. Yeah. I walked
through the kind of Zawa fish marketI want to say before like it was
actually up and I was like,oh, just walk around and see them
setting up. This is fun.Yeah, yeah, for sure. Awesome.
Well, really appreciate you guys's time. If people want to catch up
(50:30):
and follow what you guys are doingonline, where are the best place to
do that be just path and Alissadot com or heath them Alyssa on Instagram
or where we've been sharing some YouTubevideos as well under heath them lesson so
perfect. Awesome. Yeah, we'llmake sure there's links to all of that
and just yeah, thank you guysso much for your time, and hopefully
we can just keep in touch andmaybe we can meet up again somewhere else
(50:52):
in the world. Yeah, yeah, probably awesome. Thanks for listening to
this episode if you want more,and make sure to check out the World
Wanders Insider, available on patre atpatreon dot com, slash the World Wanderers.
For show notes, head over tothe world wanders dot com. Find
us on social media at the WorldWanders Podcast and join the private Facebook community
at world Wanders, a community fortravelers. You can always get in touch
(51:15):
with us at info at the worldwanders dot com. And if you enjoyed
the show, don't forget to subscribeand leave a review. It really helps
us find new listeners. See younext time
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