This beautiful adventure has been born out of wanderlust {that strong, innate desire to rove or travel about}. We have the travel bug in our bones, and we can’t seem to get rid of it. And it’s not just me. It’s me, my hot hunk of a hubby, and all 4 of my babes. I’m not sure that I know where it came from…the wanderlust….but it’s kind of running our lives right now.
As I write this very first post, we are less than 24 hours away from beginning a 25 day road trip across the Western United States. 25 days! Yes, you read that right. Six people, 25 days, 17 stops, 11 states, and almost 5,000 miles. Go ahead and call us crazy, because we are. We work from home and have the freedom to get up and go as we please, so why wouldn’t we go for it? Why wouldn’t we do our best to show our kids as much of this planet as we can?We have big plans to travel the world as a family of 6 for a year, so I think we can manage 25 days in the U.S. Surely we can manage 25 days.
I’m not going to even attempt to fake my confidence in front of you. I have none. Zero. No confidence that this will actually work out well for any of us, but it’s that scary, unsure, exhilaration that has kept me putting one foot in front of the other and stepping out in blind faith believing that this adventure is ours to own. Honestly, if it weren’t a little scary, I don’t know that it’d be worth pursuing at all.
I’ve been a little anxious and overwhelmed and just straight up scared during the preparation for this trip. There were many, many days that I wanted to look at my husband and beg him to call the whole thing off. Did I forget to mention the ages of my kids? There are 4 of them…Addy is 10, Luke is 8, Wyatt is 4, and Lucy will be 2 in August. It’s Ms. Lucy that’s the linchpin in all of this. She’s really the make or break of the whole ordeal. Can she manage in the car? Will she sleep well not being in her own bed? Of course there are a million other concerns that have bombarded my brain, but a sleeping baby is a big one.
This adventure won’t just be about this epic Summer Road Trip. The road trip is really just the beginning of something bigger happening in our souls. There is this desire to simplify our lives in a way that allows us to love well, work well, and serve well, and then travel and see well. We want to do good work that glorifies God and serve the people closest to us in ways that actually matter in their lives and in ours.
To get there, we believe we have to go and see, because travel changes us. Every time we go somewhere, we come home a little different. Maybe it’s more aware of our surroundings, or more focused on the people we love, or maybe it’s that we simply come back grateful for our home and our community. I don’t really know what it is yet, but I know that we’re being changed by each and every place our feet land.
The goal is for this place to be a place where we share those changes. We want you to be able to experience all these places with us. We want to be honest about how travel is changing us individually and as a family. So today, our beautiful adventure begins. We’d love for you to follow along on the journey. We’ll be writing here daily (both myself and my 10 year old, and even the hubby sometimes), and we’ll be sharing over on Facebook and IG. You can find us there @thebeautifuladventureblog.
Off we go. Will you join us in praying for babies that sleep in the car (and in hotel rooms), good food, beautiful scenery, memories that will last a lifetime, lots of snow cones, and new friends all across the country.
{Also, I’m still working out some styling details with some of the pages here on the blog. Hang with me, and I’ll get it all worked out.}