Four Year Nomadiversary!

Guys! Today is our four year nomadiversary!!

I can’t believe we’ve been doing this crazy nomad life for four years. I thought it would be fun to look at the stats for our journey overall so far before getting into the nitty gritty of year number four.

This map shows where we’ve been so far. Each color is a different calendar year. Our journey so far in numbers: 51,808.85 miles, 49 US states, 4 Canadian Provinces, 1,460 days, 119 National Park Units, 137 Junior Ranger badges, and countless memories.

We spent most of our fourth year as nomads exploring the west coast and it did not disappoint! It took me three years to talk Jerl into going to California and I knew it would probably be years before I could get him back to California so I packed as much as I possibly could into our time there. It was one of the best states we’ve explored…but it was also really crowded and super expensive. I’m already trying to talk Jerl into going back for a shorter visit to some of our favorite places.

Oregon was on fire when we went through, but we managed to see some of its beauty. We only spent a few weeks in Oregon…I have tons of places on our to see list, so we’ll definitely be back in Oregon exploring!

Washington was gorgeous. It was also dealing with some wildfires so it was really smokey some days, but we saw enough to know we would totally spend an entire season up there. We’ve made plans to spend a couple of months in Washington in 2020 and we’re so excited to get back up to the PNW!

We spent so much time on the west coast that we had to rush through Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. We didn’t get to see much of them, but we were able to see the State Capitols of each state and make plans to visit again. We’ll be back in Colorado and Utah this year (2019) and we’re super excited to get back and explore more! We’ve already made reservations for Idaho and Wyoming for 2020…yup…2020. I’m a bit of a planner.

We spent the winter hiding from the cold in Florida. Florida was mainly sand and shells and amazing sunsets. We mostly succeeded in avoiding winter weather, but we did hit some colder weather once we moved up into the Orlando area. We didn’t mind the cooler weather while we were at Disney and Universal. The cold weather thins the crowds a little bit…not much…but some…and if you’ve been to Disney or Universal, you’ll know any help with shorter lines is welcome!

In our fourth year as nomads, we made it to fourteen new-to-us National Park Units and we revisited three NPS Units! National Parks really are America’s best idea. We have plans to see around twenty new-to-us NPS Units for 2019 and we are sooo ready to get going! Our favorite NP from year four of our explorations is Sequoia National Park. Something about those tall trees spoke to us and for the first time since we went nomad, we were genuinely sad to leave an area.

We finished our fourth year as nomads back in our home state of Texas so our boys could go through driver’s ed. Our timing was just right to see some of the best bluebonnets we’ve ever seen so I took the opportunity to snag some pics with the boys. We’ve also been eating as much bbq as we can…I mean, we are in one of the best bbq areas in the country…it would be wrong to waste the opportunity to try as many different bbq joints as we can…right?

And that is our fourth year as nomads in a nut shell! Thanks for coming along on the ride!

See y’all down the road!

#nomadiversary