As the flowering trees blossomed to life around us in the spring of 2023, a dream that we’d uncovered last summer returned to us. We wanted to go camping with our three dogs. We wanted to spend more time in nature. And finally, we wanted to realized our dream of traveling.
Jonathan and I have always wanted to travel, and we’ve talked often about traveling together. Before we met, I spent time in Europe and Mexico. And Jonathan lived in Japan for 11 months during undergrad!
My family spent a lot of time camping and traveling growing up, but I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to pursue as an adult. Jonathan and I even joked about being “indoorsy” and being “fancy” travelers. A hotel on the Las Vegas Strip? Yes, please! (One of our favorite trips!) A night spent in a field? Probably not.
But my, oh my, were we ever wrong.
start small, now
Before I share how we went from being “fancy” travelers to outdoorsy, I want to provide a brief background on where we got the idea to compromise on our dreams. Even writing that, I still cringe a little. That is not the message that American culture is fond of telling!
But in not compromising on our dreams, we didn’t travel for five years. We didn’t want to keep doing that.
finding inspiration
There was a YouTube channel we started to watch last summer, when we were thinking about camping, called Keep Your Daydream. One of the things they say often is to start small, now.
Starting small, now, is better than waiting for your perfect, dream situation later.
This was a revolutionary concept for us. Jonathan and I are dream-followers. We’re ambitious. The thought of compromising on our dreams was really difficult to internalize at first.
But if we wanted to travel, we would have to find a way to do it that allowed us to do so affordably, with our dogs. We added in more hikes on the weekends, exploring the areas around us, before we bought a tent. In a future post, we’ll tell you about how we bought a small camper that we can tow with my Jeep.
I am so glad that we stopped waiting for the perfect situation and started living our dreams. We’ve already made lifelong memories that I will cherish forever.
And that can be true for you too.
an inspiring shift
When I look back, I think this shift for us truly began when Jonathan started CrossFit a few years ago. As things opened up after Covid lockdown, a friend invited him to try it out, and he loved it.
There had been periods, before, where he had worked out regularly, but not as much during grad school or after our move to North Carolina. Money was really tight for us our first few years here (grad student + English teacher), and we didn’t have extra room in our budget for a gym membership. As our expenses decreased during Covid, though, we found some space.
About a year into his working out, I started having major issues with shooting pain in my arms and wrists. This was misdiagnosed at first as tendinitis. It turned out to be two pinched nerves, one in my neck and one in my back. I started going to physical therapy and, as the pinched nerve in my neck got better, my PT suggested I start a more regular workout regimen. I joined a women’s fitness program where we live for about a year but have since left to enjoy more time outside. (And while I am outdoorsy now, I am still an introvert, and so workout time fills me with more energy when I’m alone or with Jonathan and the dogs.)
wanderlust
As you may have guessed from my mention of our limited budget, not only were gym memberships out of reach, but so was traveling. In fact, before this summer, we’ve only been on one non-family, non-work-related trip since our honeymoon in 2017. (Our honeymoon was a long weekend in Asheville, which was lovely, but also budget-conscious.)
Those of you with pets will also know how much more expensive travel has become post-Covid. We exacerbated this further by adding more animals to our family in the fall of 2022 (one rescue puppy, named August, and two rescue kittens, Jasper and Mystra. Find that story here!).
Our dream trip is/was a trip to Ireland, which would cost several thousand dollars just for us plus boarding for five animals. Or, we could add a fence to our yard, which would cost very close to $10K, but it would make having a pet sitter easier.
The long and short of it? Paying for a hotel and transportation for ourselves was costly enough. Adding in rising animal boarding costs, and travel remained unreachable. What we needed, we quickly discovered, was a way to bring the animals with us while we traveled.
family travel
When my mom was little, my grandparents didn’t have much money. They’ll tell stories of waiting till she was asleep before they would crack open the can of Coke that was theirs to share that evening so they wouldn’t have to split it three ways with her.
(And yes, I realize this post is more about money than I had set out for it to be, but I think for most of us, there are real financial barriers to living the life we want. That’s part of what Jonathan and I want to share and work through with you here.)
My mom is also the oldest of seven, so as their family grew, I can only imagine that travel became more and most costly. But they traveled often! My grandmother saw 47 of the state capital buildings before she died at the beginning of this year, and in her honor, my aunt has now seen all 50! They would set up multiple tents, and as they got older, they upgraded to a 5th-wheel camper which they took to Yellowstone and Alaska among others. They also loved meeting up with friends at camping rallies, well into their 70s if not 80s!
My parents took up camping quite a bit when we were little, at first in a tent. After my youngest sister was born, we got a pop-up camper and added a hitch to the minivan. (It dragged on practically everything.)
I think it was these things combined that led me to ask: could we travel more affordably if we were willing to camp instead of staying in a hotel?
enter the wide (affordable!) world of camping
Short answer: yes we could!
The number one advantage of camping is that we can bring our dogs with us, saving $150+/day for puppy boarding.
And that would make it easier for someone to hop over and take care of the cats. I don’t know that we’ll save a ton that way. Their kitty boarding place is $42/day, and I think we’ll pay a family friend at least $30, but it certainly saves on time and extra days!
The almost $200/day doesn’t even include a hotel for us!
Instead, we figured out that we can tent camp locally for around $30/night through HipCamp, which is one of my favorite things we’ve ever done as a family!
Tip for traveling with dogs: We decided to use HipCamp instead of a state park so we could try out solo-camping as a family instead of being surrounded by lots of people. One of our dogs barks quite a bit, especially when he’s excited or nervous, and we wanted him to have a chance to get used to the experience first.
(We also tried camping in our backyard, but the roads around us are way too loud for that to be an enjoyable experience.)
In future posts, I’ll share in more detail about our camping with dogs experience. And we’ll also have posts and videos about how we went from a tent to a camper!
do what you can, today
I started this post with talking about a dream returning to us.
Last fall, after we adopted August (the small, reddish dog pictured above), things got a little too busy for us to go camping as a family. But as that dream returned, Jonathan found the HipCamp site and booked our trip.
I am forever grateful that he did. A little over a week after our trip, our beautiful black lab, Carolina, got really sick. We found out that she had stomach cancer, and it had progressed too far for the vet to be able to help her. We lost her ten days after our trip.
Jonathan and I are still absolutely heartbroken. I think there will always be a hole in the center of my chest where our sweet princess resides. She is such a special dog, unlike any dog I’ve ever met.
And endless source of gratitude for me over the past several weeks has been that we didn’t wait to go till we had the perfect situation. We didn’t even wait for an ideal situation! We went out in our tent, on a night it was going to rain. (And rain it did!) But we did it!
I have the sweetest memories of us with Carolina on that trip that are the icing on the cake of a decade of memories with her since I adopted her at seven weeks old.
making our dreams more possible
I don’t believe in advising people to do something because they’ll regret not doing it. But I do believe in asking: Can you make this easier on yourself? Are there places where you can compromise and still achieve what you’re hoping for?
As a creative, a writer, and a small business owner, asking these questions has led to some of the best decisions of my career, some of my biggest successes. And now, these questions have fostered some of my favorite memories as a puppy mom.
what’s next for you?
So what’s next for you?
Is it time to start your first novel? Do you need to embrace the seasonality of creativity and go a bit easier on yourself? Are you looking for ways to add more ritual and magic to your daily life?
Is there an amazing trip that you’ve been wanting to go on for years? (For us, it’s Ireland and Scotland. But until we’re ready for such a big trip, we’re working our way up to a week or two in Acadia and a trip to the beach!)
What small steps can you take now to live the life of your dreams? It can be as simple as going for a hike at a new park, planting a rose bush.
Try to do something tangible and not just more research.
Our brains pay attention to what we say and what we do. Taking action will prove you to yourself. Your mind will see that you’re taking steps toward your dreams, and you’ll see new opportunities you didn’t see before. New paths forward.
What’s one thing you can do today to bring about the life of your dreams? Let me know in the comments below!
Wishing you all the magic, adventure, and love.
💚 Beth
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