12 Things We’ve Learned While Traveling Full-Time

It’s hard to believe, but it’s our 6 month anniversary of being on the road. On the one hand, it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, but on the other hand it feels like a lifetime ago since we set off.

6 months represents 10% of our 5 year, 50 state road trip (you can read more about it here), so it seemed like a good time to sit down and take stock of our journey so far.

So here are 12 things we’ve learned from our first 6 months of full-time travel.

1) Traveling Full-Time Can Be Exhausting

I know that we’re incredibly fortunate to travel full-time and that it’s the dream of many people. That being said, it’s not a permanent vacation. In fact, it’s much more tiring than we expected.

I think a large part of this is the nature of what we’re doing. We only tend to stay in the same place for 5-7 days at a time which means:

• Moving at least once a week
• Constantly researching hotels and Airbnbs to stay at
• Constantly researching places to visit during our stay there
• Not having a set routine

Writing about our 50 state road trip for this blog means that I always have that in mind when we’re doing stuff. Making sure I have all the photos I need for a post, making notes of what we’re doing, etc. That means what would be normal vacation activities for most people becomes work for us.

All these factors make our lifestyle mentally exhausting, although it’s definitely worthwhile.

2) We Need Less Stuff Than Expected

Before leaving on the road trip, we did an extreme minimalism challenge and got rid of nearly all our stuff. Despite that, our car was jam-packed when we left on January 1 and felt incredibly claustrophobic.

Since then, we’ve purged more stuff and packed more smartly. This is what our back seat looked like on our most recent moving day:

That still doesn’t look amazing, but it’s better than it used to be, plus we hadn’t optimized our packing that day.

3) Moving Day Takes Longer Than Expected

Even though we don’t have much stuff compared to most people own, all of our belongings have to come with us every 5-7 days.

That means having to load everything into the car, unloading everything on the other end and unpacking once we’ve checked in.

Even though we try to stay fairly organized, checking out of a hotel usually takes about an hour by the time we’ve finished packing, loaded the cart (or carts!), then loaded up the car in our best Tetris fashion. It usually takes about 2-4 hours to get to our next place and we often stop along the way for lunch.

That means moving day takes up most of the day, so we’ve stopped booking two night stays in places as it’s simply not worth it.

4) Late Breakfasts Are Awesome

I’m not a morning person, mainly because I tend to stay up until 2-3am. That means I love when hotels offer late breakfasts so that I don’t have to get up as early if I want to take advantage of the free breakfast.

Most hotels tend to serve breakfast until 9:30am, although the hotel I’m writing this in only serves it until 9am (boo!) There are a few hotels though that have a special place in my heart – properties that serve breakfast until 10am or later.

That occasionally happens at weekends, although the Hampton Inn Columbia/Harbison in South Carolina served it until 10am every day of the week. Even better than that, the Home2 Suites Green Bay in Wisconsin served breakfast until 10am on weekdays and 11am at weekends.

5) I Miss A Lack Of Routine

I’m definitely a creature of habit, so no longer having a set routine has been hard. Before we started traveling full-time, my weekdays were fairly similar. I’d work from 9-5, take Truffles for a walk, go for a jog, make dinner, work on website stuff, take Truffles for another walk, then go to bed.

It’s much harder having a routine nowadays. We might be moving, there might be somewhere we need to visit in the morning or afternoon because that’s when it’s open, the weather might stop us from visiting somewhere, etc.

A lack of routine has also been bad for my waistline. I did a half marathon last November and, although it was hard work, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. A large part of that was because I had a set routine where I’d jog every other day after finishing work and increase my distance every time. Since leaving on the road trip though, my jogging’s been pretty much non-existent. I’ve gone from jogging 13.1 miles to struggling to do 2 miles on the rare occasion I make the effort.

6) Truffles Gets Cabin Fever

Lack of exercise has been hard on Truffles too. She was used to going on three walks a day in the past, but that’s often not been an option on the road trip. Or, more truthfully, I haven’t always had the motivation.

On days where we’ve spent a day or two cooped up at the hotel, cabin fever sets in and so she gets much more barky. We’ve therefore tried making a more concerted effort to wear her out, even if that means paying to go to a dog park. We’re currently in Wisconsin and they have some amazingly huge ones here, like Warnimont Dog Park in Milwaukee.

7) Food Is More Expensive

This may sound weird coming from a guy – or anyone to be honest – but I love grocery shopping. Traveling full-time unfortunately increases how much you need to spend on food.

When we had a home, I’d stock up on food items when there was a deal. I’d buy discounted meat and freeze it until we needed it. I’d make meals in bulk and freeze the rest for the future. We ate out less. There was a Kroger nearby which had low prices.

When you’re moving every 5-7 days, all these become less of an option. We rarely have freezer access and even when we do, it’d be a hassle transporting frozen meals when moving. There’s no room in the car for stocking up on food in bulk, while nearby grocery stores are often more expensive than the Kroger I used to shop at. Seeing as we have limited space, I’ll often buy smaller package sizes that cost more for what you get than when you purchase larger sizes.

Even though we have a portable kitchen with us on the road trip, making a meal’s still more of a hassle than when you have a regular kitchen at home. That means there are times when we’re more inclined to eat out which puts pressure on our budget.

Speaking of which…

8) Budgeting Is Hard

At the start of every month, we publish our stats for the previous month which includes our spending. If you’ve been following those stats for the first six months of our road trip, you’ll have seen we’ve usually gone over budget.

Going on this road trip meant Shae and I both quit our full-time jobs. We’re now living on a budget that’s about 1/3 of our previous income which has taken some adjusting to. We therefore have a budget of $100 per day which has to include everything. Accommodation, food, activities, gas, cell phones – all that has to fit into $100 per day.

In April, we had a chance to go well under budget as we stayed with friends nearly the entire month. Spending less on accommodation led us to splurge though, spending far more on eating out than we should’ve.

The food was good, but it meant we didn’t counteract the months we’d gone over budget prior to that.

9) T-Mobile Has Better Coverage Than Expected

Shae and I have been on T-Mobile for a few years as it’s a great value plan. Back when we lived in Portsmouth, we had good network coverage, but I was worried it wouldn’t be so good as we traveled around the country.

It turns out that T-Mobile has invested a lot of money in recent years on improving coverage and it shows. There have been times on the road trip we’ve lost signal, but that’s usually been when we’ve been in the middle of nowhere. That’s not ideal, but it’s been infrequent and so it’s not worth us paying twice the amount with Verizon for marginally better coverage.

Besides, T-Mobile has several benefits that complement our lifestyle. Streaming music on Spotify doesn’t count towards your data allowance, so we don’t pay anywhere near as much for data as we would on another network. They offer T-Mobile Tuesdays each week which often gives Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards, free Redbox rentals, etc. That means we can often treat ourselves to stuff that our budget wouldn’t allow otherwise.

10) A Headlamp Is A Lifesaver

I mentioned earlier that I’m a night owl, but Shae’s more of a morning person. That means she’s often up before me and I’m always up later than her.

Before we left on the trip, Shae got this LED headlamp so that she could read in the morning. We’re often in hotels with only the one room, so it’s not like she can go to a separate room.

This has recently proved to be useful in the evenings too. I often work late into the night, so sticking this on my head means I can see what I’m doing without needing the desk lamp on which keeps Shae awake.

11) Local Recommendations: Often Great, Occasionally Not

We have a spreadsheet with tabs for every single state where we keep track of people’s recommendations of things to do in each state. It’s been really helpful and has meant we’ve heard about loads of things we’d have otherwise missed out on.

For example, when we visited Bark & Brew in Green Bay, the owner Tara gave us a long list of things to do in Door County. It was a perfect list for us and meant we had an awesome day out.

There are occasions where recommendations aren’t great though. When visiting the Wausau visitor center, we asked the person working there if she had any recommendations. Her suggestion for somewhere local to eat? Panera.

Now, don’t get me wrong – we love us some Panera. It’s just not quite the local flavor that we were looking for!

12) TV Sucks (But It Sucks Us In)

Shae and I haven’t owned a TV since we moved from the UK to the US in 2009. We’ve been Netflix and Hulu subscribers, so we streamed those to a computer monitor before we left on the road trip.

Living in hotels and Airbnbs has changed that as there’s always a TV available. The thing is, TV sucks. There’s rarely anything worth watching, yet somehow we still get sucked in. Marathons of Law & Order in particular – no matter which version – is something that can keep us in bed or on the couch all day.

Final Thoughts

So those are 12 things we’ve learned from traveling full-time, although to be fair we already knew number 12. We’ll no doubt learn a bunch of other things on the road trip, so we might do a list like this every six months.