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Greetings and thanks for joining us! We are Kim Edwards and J.D. Roth, two adventurous souls seeking to explore the world. Together, we’ve traveled to England and Scotland, France and Norway. We’ve visited Alaska and Hawaii, and spent a couple of weeks exploring Ecuador.

But how much do we know about our own country? Answer: Not much.

While we’re still young and can afford it, we decided it’d be fun to take a year off to explore the United States (and, possibly, parts of Canada). We bought a ten-year-old motorhome (a 2005 Bigfoot 30MH29SL), put our work on pause, packed up, and took to the road.

This blog chronicles our adventures as we travel across the country, admiring the natural beauty, eating the regional food (and drinking the regional wine!), and listening to stories from people we meet along the way.

If you’re new here, you can get more background by reading the following posts:

• Here’s how we chose an RV style and set a budget.
• Here’s how we started our search for the perfect motorhome.
• Here’s the story of finding our motorhome.
• Here’s a quick look at our Bigfoot.
• And, finally, here’s an account of our first trip in the RV.

The first question we get when people meet us is, “Where are you going next?” Our short answer: “We don’t know.” We’re trying to keep things open and loose so that we can seize unexpected opportunities. That said, we have a general plan.

We’ll take off from Portland and make our way south to the Yosemite area, where we’ll meet up with Kim’s brother, Doug. We’ll spend a couple of weeks exploring California before making our way east toward Arizona and New Mexico. Gradually, we’ll make our way north through Colorado (where we have lots of friends and family), Wyoming, and Montana.

After Montana, we’re not sure where we’ll go. The Dakotas? Canada? Regardless, we’ll probably hit Minnesota in mid-July. We want to be in Charlotte, North Carolina in mid-September, so that gives us two months to explore Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

As fall begins, we’ll be in the New England states, and we’ll work our way south along the eastern seaboard. While things cool off in the northern states, we’ll explore Florida and Louisiana and Texas.

After that, who knows? We expect we’ll slowly work our way back to Portland, but we’re also open to the idea that we’ll find someplace along the way that feels more like home.

Our current map of potential places to see. There’s so much!

The bottom line: This is a grand adventure, and we don’t want to plan it out too much. We want to take what life brings us, and to have fun with each other and the people we meet along the way. Let’s do this thing!