Professionally Homeless for 1 Year

1 Year….365 Days. A year ago today we sold our house and embarked on our crazy adventure. How do you celebrate 1 year of being willingly homeless? You pack for your next location of course 🙂 As we had our coffee this morning the question came out of my mouth “could we name all the places we had been in the past year?” Jerry smiled and said “nope” in a way that indicated no shame. For me? Challenge accepted! It took 2 brains and the photo history on my phone, but I think the following is a pretty accurate representation:

Lake Wawasee – West Lafayette (college apartment) – Metro Detroit – West Lafayette – Sydney – Indy – Monticello, IN – Oglesby, IL – Split: JB flew to Taiwan by way of a closed Hong Kong airport (August 2019) while I finished working in Lafayette, spent a weekend in Oglesby, IL and then flew to Atlanta where Jerry met me – Atlanta – San Francisco – Napa – outside Yosemite Park – Las Vegas – Oglesby, IL – Metro Detroit.

Pausing here for a minute. Lake Wawasee was where we were on June 28, 2019 and we arrived in Metro Detroit on September 6, 2019. The places listed above indicated places where we actually spent a night. There are many other places (Death Valley, Hoover Dam, a 1 day trip to Metro Detroit to meet with a surgeon, etc) that we saw along the way but did not stay at.

For those new to this journey our stay in Metro Detroit was almost 8 weeks long and was a planned disruption for Jerry to have heart surgery. We left Metro Detroit on October 18, 2019……

West Lafayette – 1 night in Kentucky (I don’t remember where exactly) – Edisto Island, SC – Savannah, GA – Atlanta – Orchard Lake, MI – Oglesby, IL – Chicago – Oglesby, IL – Columbia, MO (Thanksgiving) – Kansas City, MO – Columbia, MO – 1 night in Mississippi (we went for steak in Como, MI…that is the important part) – Gulf Shores, AL – Huntsville, AL – West Lafayette, IN – Oglesby, IL – West Lafayette, IN – Columbia, MO (Christmas) – West Lafayette, IN (New Year’s) – Oglesbly, IL – Manchester, NH – Los Angeles – Sydney.

We arrived in Sydney on the night of Thursday, January 16, 2020. We were scheduled to arrive early morning on the 16th but our original flight was cancelled and created the 1 night stay in Los Angeles.

Sydney (Surry Hills suburb) – Taipei, Taiwan via Singapore – Sydney via Hong Kong – Thirroul, NSW – Sydney (Wentworth Point) – Oglesby, IL via San Francisco – Oglesby, IL.

The Taiwan trip should have been longer and included time in Taichung, Taiwan but….plans change, COVID 19 happens and you adapt. The Taiwan trip being cut short allowed us to discover Thirroul, NSW and truly one of my favorite spots on our travels.

Due to COVID 19 we also cancelled a trip to Romania. Romania was never a place that I had longed to visit, but now that we were scheduled to go and couldn’t, my desire to visit has increased exponentially. We were going to see Dracula’s castle……how can we not reschedule that!

We should have been back in the states on April 8, 2020, but COVID.

We should have been back in the state in early May 2020 but COVID.

We arrived back in the states on May 31, 2020.

Thank you for the love. Thank you for following along. Thank you for the suggestions. Thank you for the words of encouragement. We are excited to continue our professionally homeless journey and see where the road leads.

More later, NB