Well, not quite yet.
It’s ironic that the first post on our travel blog is from the apartment in Charlotte we’ve called home for almost three years, but also appropriate as we’ve spent so much time here preparing ourselves for Dec. 28 when we launch to Bangkok to start our year-long journey to Asia, Australia/New Zealand, and Central and South America.
Almost everyone we’ve talked to about our plans has asked us how we are managing to plan such a long trip and to provide a run-through of our itinerary, which are fair questions. However, the fact of the matter is our plan is to not really have any plans. Sure, we’ve done some research on certain places and have ideas on where we’ll end up, but part of the appeal of our trip is having some flexibility to stay in places we like for weeks (or months) at a time and get to know the people, cultures, and, of course, food. Inevitably our plans are going to change a thousand times and that’s completely fine (please don’t hold it against us if we told you we’d visit your favorite beach in Thailand or small town in Peru and we didn’t make it there). The world is a big place and it’s impossible to see everything – our goal is to understand how the world works a bit better outside the U.S. bubble and meet some great people along the way. We still have a lot of things we will need to finalize before our trip – phones, health insurance, and fly rods to name a few – but most of all we are super excited to get this show on the road and just figure it out when we get there.
This also feels like the right time to thank our friends and family for the support and encouragement to take this leap. Although we probably (definitely) would have done it anyways, it’s nice when the people we care about most are actually supportive and don’t continually remind us of how crazy we are. We hope to stay connected through the blog as much as possible, if for no other reason than to let people know we are still alive and well. Thanks for visiting and remember to get off the grid every once in a while.
First of many moderately insightful and mildly entertaining posts,
Alison and Brian
Beaches & Backpacks 
Good luck! Bring me back some sand from some exotic beach.
Thanks Keith, will do. Hope all is well!
This looks great guys!! Can’t wait to follow your epic travels!!
Thanks, Shimmy! I’m really looking forward to our trip but I’m definitely going to miss you all and our reunion weekends! Promise you won’t have too much fun without me 🙂
The time is now!! Can’t wait to hear about it all — Have a blast!
Thanks, Aunt Evelyn! To say we are excited is an understatement. I hope all is well with you and Uncle Mark!
Happy bday Brian. Safe travels to you and Alison and may you always see the bright side in everything, no matter the circs. HAVE AN AWESOME ADVENTURE!!! UA and AS
Many thanks! Happy new year to you both!
This is truly everyone’s dream, but how did you finance all of this once you quit your jobs?
Hi Leila! Thanks for visiting our blog! We are frequently asked this question and plan to address it and similar questions in the near future in a more detailed fashion. For way of a brief summary we worked for 5-6 years before we left and financed basically all of our trip through savings. Budget travel is much more realistic than most people realize (we didn’t even know it was possible until doing some research). For example, you can travel in places like Southeast Asia and Central America for as little as $30/ day by staying in hostels, taking local transport, and eating local food. If you can save $4,000, you can buy a round trip flight to Asia ($1,000), insurance ($300), and travel around for 3 months (90 days X $30 = $2,700 of on the ground costs). That’s certainly a lot of money but probably much less than most people would think for 3 months of travel. We tried to stick to those types of destinations where we knew the dollar would go further, which helped us travel for a longer period of time. That said, we met countless other travelers who manage to work while traveling to finance their travels (and even save money) while on the road. Freelance writers, ER doctors, photographers, tour guides, nurses, and scuba instructors are some of the travel professions that come to mind. We even have friends who worked in New Zealand (where the minimum wage is close to $15/hr) doing manual labor for 9 months on a working holiday visa and managed to save enough money in that time to travel around asia for 5 months. You have to get creative sometimes but it’s more doable than you think! More to come but reach out with any additional questions in the meantime…