Update – The Adventure Continues…
Hey everyone!
A lot has happened since we first began this blog, so let’s begin with our latest update.
First, we have to apologize that we haven’t completed the sailing part of our blog. We will continue to update that portion of our blog until we are up to the present, however so much has happened since then, that we want to give you an update, so you’ll know where we are in the world now.
Melissa and I sailed from Honolulu, Hawaii to our home port of San Diego, California back in November of 2016. Since then, we have spent a lot time together with our family.
Melissa’s brother passed away unexpectedly, so for several months our plans to sell our boat and depart on our next adventure were at a standstill. As we spent time with our extended family, we realized that being together with our family was something we (and they) needed. Having said that, our dreams were still in the future, just derailed a bit. We bring this up because being adventurers doesn’t mean you don’t miss your family or other life events, however we always kept our focus on moving forward with our plans.
As the weather changed from Winter to Spring, interest in our boat became intense. As you have probably seen from our Harlow Hut training videos on YouTube, our boat was immaculate and we had a buyer quickly. I offered to sail our boat with the new owner up to Marina del Rey, California and I’m so glad I did. Our boats new owner, Gabe, is a great guy and I’m really glad I got to spend 24 hours with him, teaching him the systems of the boat. He allowed me to bring one of my friends, Scott, along for the sail up the coast and we were all glad to have him along. We laughed and had a great time the whole way. Actually, one funny story is Scott went below to lay down just before sunset and Gabe and I were hanging out on deck (just south of Catalina Island) and a big pod of dolphin came swimming by the boat and playing in our bow wave. Gabe and I took this video and went back into the cockpit to share pictures and video that we just took. I mentioned to Gabe that he should turn on the Navigations lights, since it was becoming dark so he went below and turned them on (on the navigation panel) and came back up. As we sat there looking at each other’s iPhones, we noticed a change in pitch in the engine but really didn’t think to do anything about it. As we continued to be hyper-focused on our videos and pictures, Scott came up the companionway and looked at us with an inquisitive look. Immediately, when I saw his face and the confusion of what was going on, I knew instantly that we messed up. First, I felt embarrassment that we got caught not being “on watch” and we were looking at our iPhones and secondly, as I saw Scott’s gaze over my shoulder, I looked and sure enough, the boat was doing tight circles (“donut’s” as Scott calls them :-). When Gabe went down below to turn on the Nav Lights he turned off the Navigations Systems on accident and we lost auto-pilot immediately and we didn’t even know. I guess being on a boat doesn’t change the rules to not “text and drive”. We were so embarrassed but laughed for hours about this error in our judgement.
Needless to say, we are completely happy that our boat has a new amazing owner because we know she will be well cared for and her adventure (and Gabe’s) will continue.
We used the proceeds of the sale of our boat to purchase a brand new 2018 Forest River Sunseeker 30’ RV.
You may be saying to yourself at this point, “Why did you purchase a brand new motorhome? Don’t you know that it declines in value right after you drive off the lot?” Well, the short answer is Yes, we know this, but there is a method to our madness. We call this purchase, our Exit Plan. We negotiated an amazing deal (we are both ex-sales managers) and purchased a 2018 model in the Spring of 2017. We did a lot of research for what we were going to do and we were going to purchase a 4X4 diesel truck and a 5th wheel and then, we realized that we could rent out our RV on RVShare.com when we were done with our trip around the U.S.A. and actually make money on our RV investment. If we rent out our RV, we can make up to $1,500 a week and it will basically pay for itself in less than a year and a half. We call that a solid exit strategy.
Okay, so where did we decided to go first?
First, we want to give you a quick background. Our daughter, Kayla is finishing up her sophomore year at Central Michigan University and we wanted drive out and see her (we already got to spend some quality time with our son, William who is going to University of California Irvine). If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning, you’ll know the my dad passed away when we were in Mexico and we wanted to bring his ashes up to Idaho Falls, Idaho where he grew up (and where his sister lives). That means, that we needed to head North, before we headed East. We spent a few days in Idaho Falls and then we headed off to Yellowstone National Park.
Since this is just an overview to bring our followers up to speed, we will keep this brief and write more detailed information as we have time.
After Yellowstone, we went to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Badlands and now were are is Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
We met a new RV friend today, Murray in Badlands National Park. I credit him for me getting off my butt and to begin blogging again.
We are about 3 days away from seeing our beautiful daughter and we can’t wait. These last few months/weeks/and days have been hectic and we can’t wait to slow down and begin to really enjoy our time on the road and our adventure travels.
Please bear with us as we transition from sailing life to our RV life and we are sure you will enjoy our stories to come.
Thanks for reading and sharing our adventure travel.
Michael and Melissa
TheAdventureTravelers.com
Check out our Next Blog Post USA – Yellowstone National Park in our RV
