Morgan and I agreed to try this lifestyle for a couple of years, just until we paid off the Airstream and saw some of the country…
It’s April 2016, and Morgan and I are both 25 years young, essentially toddlers ourselves, yet raising a toddler, with another baby due in just a matter of months. We’ve both been feeling an itch. Hers was partly pruritic in nature, being 8 months pregnant and all. But we both shared that familiar, nagging sensation you get when you’re doing exactly what you thought you wanted, yet still feel like you’re missing out on something more.
Rewind six months. We had just moved from Maine to South Carolina in October of 2015 to be closer to my extended family, escape the Maine winters for a couple of rounds, and pursue the classic male nurse dream of becoming a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA)—a dream shared by all young men in my profession. In preparation for this dream, I took a job in the Cardiac ICU at Greenville Memorial, a large teaching facility, to gain the necessary experience and enhance my resume for CRNA school applications. However, God had other plans for our lives, and a series of events interwove to alter our course in the best way possible.
Morgan and I had just spent the previous two years before the move aggressively paying off $35k in student loans and car debt—we were determined to live debt-free as a core value of our family. My graduation from a CRNA program was far from guaranteed, especially considering I likely only graduated from nursing school thanks to Morgan’s meticulous note-taking and academic discipline. Even the most liberal college debt relief legislation wouldn’t forgive six figures worth of debt if I failed to succeed.
Additionally, and perhaps most impactful, during my time in the Cardiac ICU, I cared for numerous patients who had recently retired with grand plans to tour the country with their spouse, only to suffer a debilitating stroke or heart attack just as they were about to begin realizing their dreams. These raw moments and conversations at the bedside resonated with me, effectively evangelizing the reason why I shouldn’t wait until retirement to explore. I knew I had to shift gears.
So, there I was, no longer aspiring to be a CRNA, but what did I want? What did we want as a young family?
As a night shift nurse you suffer from symptoms such as headaches and notably pale skin, these symptoms are also accompanied by the inability to fall asleep at a tolerable hour, even on your days off. It was on one such late April night, sitting on the couch in our South Carolina duplex I stumbled upon a Youtube video. It featured a family traveling full-time with three kids in their Airstream. You know the Simon & Garfunkel line, ‘Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping’? Well, in my case, the seed for a new dream was planted when I should have been sleeping. I couldn’t ignore it. I left the couch, climbed into bed, and woke Morgan from her pregnant slumber to share my newfound vision.
Here’s a fact everyone knows about Morgan: she’s incredibly sweet and always encouraging. She has heard countless ‘dreams’ of mine and despite of this her responses are still consistent with her character, but she knows the drill. If every dream I shared had materialized, I might now be the proud owner of a tortoise or creator of a boot brand called Yaks.
Now to the pivotal moment: Morgan, groggily but supportively, agreed that the idea had potential! That’s all I needed to hear!
Soon after this late night conversation, Morgan’s parents came down for a visit from Maine to experience some southern hospitality and visit their only granddaughter. While sitting together as a family in our living room, we shared our plans to travel full-time in an Airstream while I took on travel nursing assignments and Morgan cared for the girls. They laughed, expecting a punchline that never came, and soon realized our seriousness. As annoying as it may be to some of our family, we love doing just the opposite of what they think is reasonable or prudent. This was the most unreasonable thing to date and we were energized by their reactions. An obnoxious type of fuel to run on for sure but it’s worked for us many times. As time has passed, our motivations have evolved and matured. Yet, there remains an undeniable satisfaction in pursuing something others deem a bad idea or impossible to achieve.
In a matter of nine months, we readied our life for this new adventure. We sold nearly everything we owned on the newly launched Facebook Marketplace. It was even more wild back then. Selling an item or two feels different from selling your entire household—it’s like inviting a committee of vultures into your living space, they pick through your items and judge your choice of decor and furniture and then proceed to make a lowball offer on the very thing they just dumped on. We ended up collecting close to three thousand dollars from these vultures, “great success!” We also sold our Seafoam Green (whatever that is) Rav4 to a guy off Craiglist and purchased our beloved ’05 Ford Excursion in Marietta, GA with the proceeds.
After completing countless hours of online research, going to nearby Airstream rallies and following other traveling families on IG we finally found an Airstream with the perfect layout for a family of four…you’ll notice that I mentioned it was perfect for a family of four. I scoured Airstream classified sites almost daily hoping and praying that a 2005 Airstream Safari 30BH model would pop up. Airstream only built about 70 of these units and they rarely came up for sale. Airstream did recreate the same layout in a newer model under a different trim name but those were going for 3x the price of the 2005 model and we couldn’t afford that on my $23/hr nursing job. On July 24th, 2016 we heard back from a seller in Winters, CA who had just received the bunkhouse model and we were first in line! He was incredibly helpful and patient with me as I figured out how to scrounge together $36k on a tight timeline.
After wiring him the money he had our new home delivered to our storage spot, 2,600 miles away from its origin. On a beautiful September day, we saw our new home for the first time!
From that day on Morgan and I would lay in bed at night and dream about all the places we would go and excitedly shared all the memories we wanted to make. The anticipation of it all was incredible, by far one of the best highs we have ever experienced. That anticipation turned into action and on January 4th, 2017, we hitched up our house and headed south to Panama City Beach, FL!
This week we celebrated seven years of living full-time in our home on wheels! We’ve grown from a family of four to a family of six, traveled 120,000+ miles across 47 states and Baja Mexico, visited dozens of national parks, worked in seven hospitals, survived the beginning of the pandemic stranded in the Arizona desert, adopted a dog from Taiwan, transitioned from bedside nursing to working remotely at a tech company, purchased a dream piece of land in Maine, and experienced the full spectrum of life’s highs and lows. We wouldn’t change a single thing about our adventures and we are constantly grateful for the Guiding hand that continues to show us how full life can be when you pursue your dreams. Go gett itt!!
Whale Rock Acres 
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