Working the dream life for 16+ years.
how we got here by selling our graphics business, and where we’re going on to the next big thing
Jim and Rene spend a quiet Halloween in a Virginia State Park campground compared to previous hallowed parties.
Come September, scenes like this put a wide smile on campground owner’s faces.
We have often considered buying a campground when this trip is over. So whenever we can find an owner who has time to chat about what it’s like to run one, we love to listen and hear about what it’s really like. When we arrived at one resort in Maine, it was a quiet weekday, and the owner was happy to share some advice about the realities of running a campground.
Perhaps that’s a good thing. But perhaps the reason we like Vermont so much, is that it reminds us of the last place we called home. After spending ten years in Humboldt County, CA, we were ready for a change. But finding a small town near abundant natural beauty with an open minded population of young creative individuals has been a challenge. Until we visited the Green Mountain State, that is.
RV Life Magazine features profile on young professionals of Live Work Dream and their RV road trip sabbatical.
Team Agreda and their Tripod dog Jerry reach the Atlantic Ocean in Acadia National Park, Maine. Driving over 7,000 miles towing their RV 5th wheel trailer, they have gone from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
We’ve traveled many miles searching for our ideal community. A few times, we thought we might have found it. But . . .
The thought of moving into a small town is nice, but few have the diversity that we feel makes life more interesting.
We crave the solitude of 40 acres in the sticks, but fear we might go nuts being so isolated.
And in places where we love both the land and the people, it might a lot of effort to fit in.
So where does that leave us? At the other end of the country, completely enamored with one state in particular, which is now the benchmark to compare all future areas against. That state is Vermont.
René asked me if I felt any more Candian now. Truth is, I have always felt part Canuck – though my home team would be the Maple Leafs – since I learned my mother was from Toronto and I went to the Snow Festival in Quebec as a child. After all, I am supposedly half French Canadian and half Scottish Irish. And one of my closest, dearest friends hails from Winnipeg eh. But I have to admit it felt good being Canadian at least for a day. Especially since that day happened to be September 11th.
It was actually nice to not be bombarded by the regular American media suspects forcing us to remember in vivid detail the tragic events of 2001, as they have every year for the past six. The only sign whatsoever that it was in fact 9/11 was a group of peaceful demonstrators in downtown Toronto proposing that the World Trade Center tragedy was an inside job. And personally, I was glad the morning paper didn’t carry a full page image of the burning towers that has been burned into my psyche the very day it happened.
Coverage of events at Ground Zero made it to page eighteen of Canada’s national newspaper. The front page was reserved for a 30th anniversary tribute to the beating death of Steven Biko by South African police. I found the story educational, enlightening, and touching. Perhaps it was buried deep in U.S. papers, I don’t know. But I doubt this important reminder of apartheid in the world made the front pages.
I just had to play Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” from Shaking the Tree
We haven’t blogged in a few days because we took some time to trace my roots with a brief trip into Toronto. While we accomplished our mission of finding the church where my parents were married and the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, we also discovered that the trip was far too brief to discover everything we wanted to know about living in Ontario, Canada.
Although we have budgeted for a few hotel nights each month on this trip, our stay at Melford Cottage Bed and Breakfast in Oakville Ontario was the first time we have left the comfort of our trailer since selling our stick house and putting our bedroom furniture in storage over three months ago. While it did feel a bit weird leaving all our possessions in the trailer at Four Mile Creek NY State Park campground to take a little vacation from our “vacation”, Heather Donaldson’s home served as a great base to search for my Mom’s roots around Toronto and gave us a chance to reconsider what the future holds for us once again.
OK class, though I still often feel like the student myself, quite a few folks have been asking questions lately through our fulltime RVer contact form. Here’s the rundown of a few recent e-interviews…
Granted, many readers may be saying to themselves, “Thank God all those ads are gone!” But by the time others read this post, they may be thinking, “What on earth is this guy talking about?” If you’re the slightest bit interested in making little extra spending money by placing Google ads on your own website, or you wonder why we’ve stopped running ours, please read on. If not, rest assured the ads will be back. Hopefully soon.
I sure like the view from my new office – at least this week. And it sure is nice to take a break from working online to go fishing or for a walk in the woods. Earlier today while desperately trying to catch a large brown trout that was toying with me for hours in the creek coming out of Silver Lake, a kid asked …
We can officially call the trailer ours now that we’ve given it its first battle scar. But it could’ve been much, much worse. When checking out the forest service campground at Silver Lake East, we came a bit too close to the trees. More than once. Luckily, we only put a good sized mark on our awning. It didn’t even tear through. But I’m actually …
The new owner of Marcom And POP is smart. She seems to know how to manage a business, has a good designer on her team, and appears to have picked up everything very quickly. She has strongly given us the impression that she is totally confident to run this show and is ready for us to move on. Our premiere clients must be getting taken …
If you’re the entrepreneurial type, by all means, start up a business and grow it with a solid exit strategy in mind. Selling a business is an excellent way to reward yourself for years of blood sweat and tears. If you ever get the inclination to sell your home and hit the road for a sabbatical or change of life, just do it. Do it …
