Bert: We knew going into this that we would be away from our families and friends. And, yes, that is still hard for me because with children, even older kids, they do change and grow up more every year, and then come the grandkids!
So, we schedule time in the Austin and Denver areas, where our families are, every year to see family and friends. What we’ve found though is that since we are traveling full-time we are able to see and spend significant time with family and friends that are not in Austin or Denver, which we would rarely see if living in one place. We actually can see more family living on the road than we would have had we settled in the Austin area permanently.
Now, when you ask what else has been hardest, in four years, it turns out I really like having a home base. Not a house but a familiar place to come back to when we just need to chill, a place to garden, a place to store our stuff, and a place that we can go to when there are no other places, like in 2020 when COVID concerns shut down a lot of RV parks. Thanks to Escapees for keeping their parks open!! That saved us this year. So we are looking at buying a small plot of land or a site in an Escapee Co-Op park where we can take a travel break when we need to.
Lupe: The hardest aspect of traveling for me would be being so far from my parents and siblings all the time. My family is very close so not being able to see them makes traveling full-time hard. The way I get around this is we make time to call and video chat as often as we can. During the winter holiday, we spend as much time together as we can when back in the Austin, Texas area. They love that we are doing this and always want to see pictures of our travels. Most of my family has not really traveled like this so they are always interested and sometimes shocked by where we go and stay.