How I Turned Empty Nesting into a Nomadic Adventure

In March 2023, I moved out of the house I’d lived in for the longest time of my life. It took almost two months to empty its contents and get it ready to sell. Then, with my dog and my cat, and what else I could fit into a Volvo S60 sedan, I set out on a grand nomadic adventure.

It was a combination of circumstances that made it possible. I was divorced, and my daughter was off at college, so I already had my sights on downsizing to something that fit my current lifestyle. I had put money down on a new condo development that was a year behind its construction timeline, with no definite completion date in sight. My employer was still in that post-pandemic phase where they said we could all continue to work remotely.

Reading Tina Fey’s great book “Bossypants” a few years prior, I learned that the key to improvisation, and maybe life, is to agree and then say yes. So, when my daughter asked if I would caravan with her from Denton, Texas, to her summer job in Creede, Colorado, I said yes. Then I started thinking, “AND...what if I just kept going?”

So I began looking into where Creede was and what furnished, animal-friendly options there might be where I could stay for a month in the area. I ended up booking a spot in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. It was close enough that I could get to my daughter if needed, but far enough away that she wouldn’t feel like I was hovering. It looked to offer lots of great hiking (more on that in another post), and it was in between two National Parks.

The first step had been taken, and so many ideas began to form from there.

Next, I decided to go ahead and put my house on the market. To make what was beginning to form in my mind financially feasible, I couldn’t be paying a mortgage and rent every month. I thought it would just take a few weeks, but 20 years of accumulated “stuff” is A LOT to sift through, pack, store, sell, give away, and ultimately pay someone to haul off. 

I decided it would be easier to do the final clean and prep if I was out of the house, so the first of 18 AirBnBs I would end up living in over the next 16 months was in the Castle Hill neighborhood of Austin. It was a great way to get to know more deeply a part of town I’d only driven through before, and a crash course in adjusting from a 2,800 square foot house to a tiny efficiency apartment.

Then the time came to hand the keys of my house over to my friend and real estate agent and hit the open road. 

First, I had to travel the not so exciting road that is I-35 between Austin and Dallas. It’s a path I’d taken often without great anticipation. Typically just hoping to get from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible. But this time was different. Point B was not my final destination – I didn’t even have a final destination.

Stopping to see sites was a new muscle I needed to begin exercising, though. And since I’d been daydreaming about what I could do with my new-found geographical freedom, I’d become a frequent visitor of the National Park Service (NPS) website and app.

Did you know that in 2015, a new NPS National Monument was designated in Waco, Texas? 

Waco Mammoth is one of only eight sites in the United States where you can view fossil remains still in their original position in the bone bed. In this case, it’s the remains of 24 Columbian mammoths, and a camel, believed to have died in multiple flash floods. The site is an easy on/off from the Interstate and was to be the first of 21 NPS sites I visited over the next year.

After a few days in Denton, Texas, helping my daughter get ready to roll, the two of us began to make our way across the Texas Panhandle. We’d seen things like Cadillac Ranch on a previous road trip to New Mexico, so this time, I suggested a more off-the-beaten-path route that took us through Shamrock, Texas.

If you’ve seen the Disney movie Cars, then Shamrock will look familiar. Its U-Drop Inn was the clear inspiration for Ramone’s House of Body Art in the animated film. The restaurant that operates there now was, unfortunately, closed when we arrived, but I stopped for photos and couldn’t help but enjoy the irony of the fact that there is now a Tesla charging station in the parking lot of the former gas station.

We made an overnight stop in a small town near the state line that smelled like a stockyard, but where we found the most authentic Mexican restaurant I’ve encountered outside of Mexico. And the next morning we cut across the very northeast corner of New Mexico to visit Capulin Volcano National Monument.

After so much flat land, it’s hard to miss this 60,000-year-old cinder cone volcano standing 1,300 feet above the plains, far away from a plate boundary where volcanic activity more typically occurs. From its top, at an elevation of 8,182 feet, you can see views of four different states. Also, I was able to purchase my NPS annual pass, which they unfortunately didn’t sell at Waco Mammoth, but that paid for itself twice over in the coming year.

From there, we made our way up to Colorado Springs, Colorado, just long enough to pick up another student who would be working at the wilderness camp with my daughter. Then we turned south toward South Fork, Colorado, where our roads diverged. 

I made my way toward Pagosa Springs over the Wolfcreek Pass on the Continental Divide in the San Juan Mountains. It was amazing to be driving through snow when it was already nearly triple-digit heat back in Austin. It was the first of many more amazing sites I'd see on my journey through the American Southwest, and there are many tales to tell.

But this one was supposed to be about how I did it. How I just picked up and went. So here are some helpful tips if you, too, get the urge to become a vagabond but don’t think “van life” is for you.

• To travel light, color coordinate your clothes. This isn’t some new discovery of mine; tons of articles out there will give you advice on a capsule wardrobe. But if you find yourself needing something along the way that you didn’t pack, thrift shops are a great resource for both buying and giving away, and often, you’re giving back to a local nonprofit.
• Get a virtual mailbox. I used Texan Registered Agent and was quite happy with the service. They provided me with a steady address I could give anyone who needed it. They scanned all incoming mail (weeding out obvious junk) and sent me an email with a link to view it. If it happened to be something I needed in hand, I paid them to forward it to wherever I was residing at the moment. Related, and more obvious, go paperless with all your bills that you possibly can.
• If you’re traveling with a cat and a dog that has the bad habit of wanting to get into the cat’s litter box, don’t waste a lot of money on a fancy covered litter box. You can just cut a hole in the top of a regular plastic bin, and it serves the dual purpose of being easy to pack when moving locations. I had the bonus of finding one of my daughter’s old dance team storage boxes that had been painted with sunflowers which gave a festive look to ours.
• Go old-school with paper maps. Not only will you sometimes find yourself without cell service, but also, map apps are designed to get you where you’re going the fastest way possible - not the most scenic. It was great fun whenever my time was drawing near in one place to go all Indigo Girls. You know, spread out the map and place my finger anywhere.
• If hiking is part of your plan, learn to use a compass along with those paper maps. One great thing I discovered is that the compass on an iPhone works even when you’re out of cell service.
• If you plan to hit more than two NPS sites (there are way more out there than just the big parks you’ve heard of), buy the annual pass. And be sure to download the Recreation.gov app which you need to purchase tickets for some of the most popular places or activities.
• If you're remote working, the ultralight, ultrathin 14” portable monitor from my former employer Dell is a great addition. I also had a compact speakerphone in my travel setup that connected between my laptop and the monitor. It all quickly packed away in my backpack when moving to new sites or just choosing to get out and work at a coffee shop.
• AirBnB seems to have had a bit of a rough PR patch lately due to issues that I mostly chalk up to the property investor types, but there are a lot of nice individuals that use the service to rent out their vacation properties or backyard apartments. They were a great way for me to find furnished, pet-friendly spaces in small towns.

There are probably more things I’ll think of and add later, but if you have any specific questions about how it all worked, subscribers should be able to post them as comments, and I’ll answer.