We are Nic and Katie Hendrychs, two 30-something adventurers with an itch to hit the road. After seven years of marriage and full-time work, with only limited vacation time to see this big world, we decided to make some big changes. We sold our house and most of our furniture, bought a used Class C RV, and are experiencing our biggest road trip yet. We will share the longer version of our story on a future blog post; for now, here are some answers to the questions we’ve been getting.

What’s your route? Where are you stopping? Are you going to do x cool thing when you are in x cool place?

As of a few days prior to closing on our house, we don’t know the answers to these questions. We have been so busy boxing up our life, getting out of our house, finishing well at our jobs, and spending time with loved ones that we have had no time to plan. The rough itinerary is to leave Wisconsin and head southwest to New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California. When it’s a little warmer, we’ll head inland to Utah before cutting back out to the Pacific coast north of San Francisco. We will drive north up the coast and eventually make it to Alaska. We plan on visiting as many loved ones as we can along the way, so let us know if you would like to see us! We haven’t touched our guidebooks yet, so we don’t know what cool thing we will do in that cool place.

What are you doing for jobs?

Nothing. We plan on enjoying it while we can. We have been saving for most of our marriage, and we plan on living as cheaply as possible. 

How long will you be traveling?

We hope to be on the road for six months. Having never attempted something like this, we realize that the road life we’re envisioning may not be a true representation of this adventure. We have no idea if the RV will live for as many miles as we have planned, if we’ll enjoy all the time on the road, if other life circumstances will come up, etc. We’ll see how it all turns out!

What are you doing when the trip is over?

This big trip is an intermission between life in Wisconsin and life in NW Montana. We plan on moving to the Kalispell area (just west of Glacier National Park) when our trip is over. Our route might bring us through territory we like even more, so who knows where we will land!

How did you come up with this trip idea?

We had originally planned to take advantage of time between jobs in Wisconsin and Montana and take a month-long road trip. We thought about buying a tear-drop camper to pull behind Nic’s FJ Cruiser. Our pastor suggested that we shouldn’t just settle for one month on the road – why not take a few if we could afford it? So the dream grew to six months in a small RV.

Where will you be staying each night?

We’re going to try to boondock (park without amenities) as much as possible. We’d love to stay on state forest land where it’s legal to park every single night of our trip, but we will also be spending some nights in glamorous places such as Walmart parking lots and rest stops.

What about the dogs?

Do you really think we’d go anywhere without our kids? Luna and Homer like road trips too. Traveling with a Weimaraner and Chihuahua-dachshund will present some interesting challenges, but we can’t imagine life without them for six months!

Won’t you get sick of each other in such tight quarters?

Probably. We’ve had some time to ease in to spending more of each day together as Katie’s workload went from full-time to part-time in September. In December, Nic’s slow season at work meant that we got even more time together. We’re trusting God to hold us together, and we plan on being very open with each other about needing space. We will each have our own motorized way of getting around when the RV is parked, so we will be able to hit up a coffee shop or explore solo any time. We actually do enjoy being together, though, so this trip should hypothetically be the best thing ever, right? RIGHT?

What’s the point?

That’s a deep question that’s hard to answer in the FAQs. Here’s the short answer: time together as a couple, adventure, seeing lots more of beautiful North America, thinking and planning time for the next stage of our life, stepping out of the path so many people naturally take in America for at least a little while.

Where is all your stuff?

Considering the size of our house, we never accumulated a lot of stuff…or so we thought. We started getting rid of stuff in preparation for listing the house last summer. In the last two months, we have sold most of our furniture and purged all sorts of random stuff. Even though we consider our possessions pretty minimal, we have been amazed (and exhausted) by the work it has taken to reduce, sell, pack, and store everything. The things we chose to keep will be living in storage in Wisconsin.

Won’t you miss the comforts of home?

Nic’s answer: I’m a big wimp. I will miss space (tall people problems), our oversized toilet seat, my home studio, and my garage. At the same time, though, I’m looking forward to opportunities to grow.

Katie’s answer: I could comfortably live in a tent indefinitely, and I think I was a nomad in another life. So no, I don’t think I will struggle with this too much.

You must be really adventurous.

Sometimes we feel adventurous, but we very often feel scared, nervous, and awkward in new situations. We have a huge desire to see and experience as much as we can. We have recently felt a little suffocated by the modern-day American Dream of buying a house, filling it with kids, buying nice stuff, and working your tail off to pay for it all. This trip will give us a chance to spend time away from the rat race, to reflect on what’s meaningful, to seek God’s will for our future. 

What’s with the website name?

Read about it here.