On August 12th last year, we moved into Samwise the Brave to embark on a journey around the 50 states. Throughout this year, we’ve spent considerable time soaking in where we are and planning where to go next. The places we explored, the borders we crossed, and the long travel days we kept each other company with our thoughts and anxieties and ideas — we never imagined one year of life could be this fulfilling and this energizing.
During a recent drive, we discussed a piece in Medium that said the cure to burnout is experiencing “profound and utter awe.” The most compelling example is the perspective shift astronauts gain after seeing the earth from space and feeling a “universal connectedness” that transforms how they think about their lives. Having just left the jaw-dropping scenery of Niagara Falls and Toronto and finding ourselves perched above the great blue strait between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan on the Mackinac Bridge, we couldn’t help but breathe a collective breath of awe.
This sense of awe has fed us and fueled us this year. Every mountain, canyon, and roaring waterfall. Every sunset, skyline, and capitol dome. Every week had something in store that amazed and renewed us. String 52 of those weeks together, and you get the opposite of burnout — a year of burnin.
In place of complacency, we now know the empowering feeling of taking deliberate steps toward goals we set ourselves. In place of spectating others or wishing to have done something, we now push each other to do it and not feel shame if it turns out it’s not something we enjoy doing. In place of seeking external validation, we try to keep the fire of what truly matters lit on the inside.
There are so many ways full-time RVing has strengthened us as people, as a married couple, and as citizens of this country. Looking forward to the next chapter of our life in Denver after we wrap up our journey next month, we’re grateful and excited to carry the fire into the future!
“Why do you do this?” – a question we get asked often when people learn that we live and travel full-time in our RV. It’s easy to immediately think of the things we gave up. We had a spacious Jersey City apartment with a walk-in closet, washer/dryer, and dishwasher, a law firm job in Manhattan, the picturesque park down the block, and the corner deli where we could get Taylor Ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches (a Jersey staple) whenever we wanted.
But when we reflected on our life, we realized that although we were happy, we always dreamed of a more meaningful life together with more time, more experience, and more freedom. Despite all the inertia and deeply instilled risk aversion tugging us to stay the course, we knew that what we stood to gain from breaking out of our old routine far outweighed the conventional comforts we’d be leaving behind. We simply couldn’t deny the call of the open road any longer.
Today is Day 250 since we embarked on our new life, and we wanted to reflect on those key reasons that compelled us to take a giant leap of faith back in August of last year. Here is our Top 10 list (in no particular order) of why we RV:
1. More quality time
We wanted more quality time with each other, beyond just evenings and weekends. Practically speaking, we’re young, energetic, newly married, and don’t have kids yet, so we saw this as the perfect opportunity to maximize our time together. RV life has allowed us to spend pretty much every day together and nurture our relationship.
2. More time outdoors
Before moving into Samwise, we both spent the vast majority of our time indoors. Whether it was in a windowless office or in the apartment, our weekdays were not vitamin D heavy, to say the least. At the end of a long day or week, it was often the default to just curl up on the big comfy couch and loaf. We wanted to be more physical and spend more time outdoors. Living in an RV connects us to the outdoors all the time, as our home naturally extends to the space outside. Whether it’s a short walk around our campground or a full day exploring a national park, our new default has become spending time outside in nature.
3. More time to create
Before, we found ourselves almost exclusively consuming content rather than creating. Of course, we still love to watch our favorite shows, movies, and everything else, but we’ve become more thoughtful about our habits. Now we can devote significantly more time to finding and creating with our own voice. We’ve also exchanged a lot of time doing routine things like commuting every day with a dynamic life that regularly introduces us to new places, scenery, and communities. This helps keep our minds stimulated and inspired to keep creating.
4. Experience this country
As Americans who both grew up in the small state of NJ, we have always shared a passion to experience our big country to the fullest extent possible. By RVing, we can visit more of America’s vibrant cities, spectacular national parks, small historic towns, and see all the corn fields, wind farms, and giant roadside dinosaur statues in between. We’re privileged to call such a massive and diverse land our home. We want to take full advantage of that by seeing and living it for ourselves – to truly understand our culture and find the familiar in far-flung places across all 50 states.
5. Collect experiences, not stuff
Yi caught onto the Minimalism and Marie Kondo’s tidying movements many years ago (before it was cool). So we’d already made an effort to downsize our possessions and keep only those we really value – those that “spark joy.” When we reduced physical clutter, we also made room for ourselves mentally and emotionally, allowing us to focus more on seeking and appreciating new experiences. Moving into Samwise took us to the next level. Even in a 30ft RV, our space is very limited. We try to keep only the essentials, things that serve a purpose and spark joy – looking at you multi-position ladder! We used to collect commemorative magnets when we traveled to new places, but now we focus on collecting the precious memories.
6. Living our values
We’ve always seen ourselves as adventurous people who get out there and try new things. But we wanted to walk the walk, and exchanging our Jersey City apartment for an RV allowed us to do that. When your home has wheels, you’re constantly setting out a course to something new and encouraging yourself to not fall into the routine. We also hope to impart these values onto our kids one day, and draw on this experience to encourage them to be curious, bold, and open-minded. We want to teach them to be unafraid of taking calculated risks, embracing adventure, and appreciating all that the world has the offer.
7. Freedom to live and work how we want
We now live in a hyper-connected digital economy, and we wanted to take advantage of this shift in the world to free ourselves from the traditional office and daily commute. Through living it, we hoped to prove that a rewarding career and work life doesn’t always have to be tethered to a neatly defined path. You can forge your own personal mission and path by doing what you love. We value the ability to be location-independent, and RV life has given us the flexibility to work from anywhere and truly shape our work life by doing what excites us.
8. Freedom to be at home anywhere we go
This one might be a little self-explanatory. We have a home that moves with us, so no matter where we move, we still feel at home. But it’s not just the physical aspect of taking everything to new places – it’s the feeling of being at home in Samwise and by extension, feeling at home in our new community. Over these past 250 days, we’ve been home in states as far as North Dakota, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, Arizona, and more. We’ve lived in the mountains, the desert, the plains, and the coasts. RV life gives us the steady comfort of home with each exciting new environment.
9. Freedom to express ourselves
The RV lifestyle has allowed us to define our lives and put our voice out there. This goes hand in hand with #3 (more time to create) – now we have the freedom to be creative and expressive. Instead of just watching travel videos, or reading others’ posts, or watching movie reviews, we create those things. We experience, travel to awe-inspiring places, and learn how to create videos and blog about the things we’re interested in and our experiences. We’re challenging ourselves to learn new skills. Trying something new can be frustrating at times, but the reward is ultimately getting to express our own voice.
10. Freedom to live intentionally
For us, that means being intentional from our everyday decisions to how we plan for the future. RV life teaches us to be more conscious as consumers, to set goals for ourselves that align with our values, and to not let toxic notions of success – that our personal worth is tied to the size of our paycheck or job title – derail us from the life we want to live. No one laid out the RV life for us. We had to go out and get it. Planning and executing on this dream has liberated us to really define our own path going forward, whatever that might be.
Today marks 6 months since our “one day” became “day one,” as we set off in Samwise the Brave to fulfill our full-time RV dream years in the making. Coincidentally, it’s also “Winnebago Day” – 61 years since the iconic company began enabling families to venture outside and explore more, and we couldn’t find a more fitting occasion to cross this milestone.
We’ll never forget the sense of freedom and endless possibility that buoyed us as we started our journey westward. In these 6 months, we’ve crossed the country, traveled 20 states, visited 11 national parks, explored national monuments and public lands that we’d never heard of, celebrated friends’ weddings, and luxuriated in some of the best camp pools. Add to those adventures many other new experiences—creating a website, editing and sharing YouTube videos, blogging, learning how to use a DSLR camera, and setting up and working from a mobile home office—there’s no doubt that we’ve learned deeply about this digital nomad lifestyle, our country, and most of all ourselves.
Rocky Mountain National Park
Thousands of miles later, driving our home down the road still feels novel, and setting up camp in a new location brings a fresh sense of adventure. And while our living space has shrunk considerably, our appreciation and love for each other has grown. Above all, we’ve gained a real sense of being at home anywhere we are.
Today, we find ourselves under the Orlando sun for the HIMSS conference, but we can’t wait to be back in a week with Samwise, who is awaiting our return in Las Vegas. Here’s to the first 6 months of freedom, growth, and adventure, and what’s to come in the next!
While on our trip back to New Jersey, we had a chance to drop by Liberty State Park, where Yi was having a work meeting the same day. We’ve visited several times before as former residents of Jersey, but this place never gets old!
This massive park on the Hudson River features stunning views of both the Jersey and New York City skylines. But of course, the main attraction is Lady Liberty herself. Though she has long been made a symbol of New York City, she stands tall in New Jersey waters! She faces out toward the open waters as a constant reminder that our nation must strive to be a beacon of hope to the others – welcoming them rather than slamming the door.
The park also pays tribute to those lost in the 9/11 attacks. The solemn memorial set against the skyline starkly highlights the empty sky where the Twin Towers once stood.
Established in 1967, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area now encompasses 197,349 acres of land in Southern Nevada. In 1990, its status was changed from Red Rock Recreation Lands to a National Conservation Area. It was just the seventh to be designated in the country.
A short 17 miles from the glitz and glam of the world-famous Las Vegas Strip, Red Rock Canyon is actually visible from there. But it is best experienced up close, as over 2 million visitors find out every year. In addition to its natural beauty, the park also features a particularly robust exhibit at the Visitor Center. Check it out before setting off on the 13 mile scenic loop.
Red Rock Canyon’s dramatic landscape developed through a fascinating geologic history. Over 600 million years, the land transformed from a seabed, to great sand dunes, to the Keystone Thrust we see today. It features colorful and jagged sandstone walls rising up to 3000 feet tall.
The natural environment is also an oasis in the desert, playing home to hundreds of species of plants and animals due to its perennial water supply and cooler temperatures. And while we weren’t lucky enough to see any desert tortoises, we did manage a couple of close encounters with two of the area’s more than 100 bird species.
Situated just a half hour from the bright lights and buzz of the Las Vegas Strip, Red Rock Canyon stands out as a natural refuge for residents and tourists alike.
Our alma mater invited us to share our story as part of their “Tell Us Tigers” series. We were honored to be able to take part and hope that our story might inspire others to chase their dreams. The post can be viewed on Princeton’s official Instagram or Facebook, and the content is included below.
Cathedral Rock, Sedona, AZ
When Yi invited me to watch the X-Men trilogy in the theater of Colonial Club in 2011, we had no idea that one day we’d be newlyweds traveling the country in a Winnebago RV. But a simple common interest led to more movie nights, shared meals and conversations that saw the sun rise.
A year later, we took our first road trip to Mt. Rushmore to commemorate Yi’s naturalization and our anniversary. On that trip and each after, we fell in love with each other and the road, and our road trip romance came full circle when I proposed at Colonial during Reunions 2015 and we celebrated our wedding at Mt. Rushmore in 2017.
By then, we’d already started researching RVs and full-time travel, but most days it felt like a pipe dream. We’d followed traditional paths, me through law school and Yi through business school, and attained the success and stability our parents worked so hard for after migrating to the States from Puerto Rico and China. Moving into an RV meant big changes — downsizing, leaving my law firm, setting up a remote office and more — but we were committed to turning our ‘one day’ into ‘day one.’
In September, on day 29, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary as full-time RVers. We hit day 100 last week. This photo was taken on day 91, hiking the Baldwin Trail in Sedona, with Cathedral Rock in the background. In these months, we have traveled to 19 states and 11 national parks (bringing us to 45 and 20 total). Our goal? Visit all 50 states and as many national parks as possible to witness history across their diverse cultures and landscapes.
We call ourselves @rvleaguers and nomad nerds because Princeton taught us that learning doesn’t stop once you walk out of FitzRandolph Gate — it’s a lifelong journey. On the road, we challenge ourselves to explore the unfamiliar and truly taste freedom. We have a marriage founded at the best damn place of all (Princeton!), unfolded over thousands of miles and growing every day. The road can be long and unpredictable, but RV life has shown us that if we face it together with love and curiosity, there’s no limit to what we can do.
We’d never really thought of Theodore Roosevelt National Park until we decided to make touring national parks one of our major goals for this journey. To be fully honest, we didn’t know much about what North Dakota had to offer other than what we gleaned from a few North Dakota tourism airport advertisements featuring notable local Josh Duhamel beckoning visitors to his home state. And while there is a lot of what you might imagine – open roads over vast, nondescript plains – we were taken by the unexpected natural beauty and fascinating history of the state’s sole national park.
In 1883, a 24-year-old Theodore Roosevelt visited North Dakota and fell in love with the frontier life he found there. Investing in two ranches, he was eager to develop his hunting, ranching, and other cowboy skills as well as confront his physical issues with asthma. When he tragically lost both his wife and mother on Valentine’s Day the following year, he returned to the badlands of the Little Missouri River Valley, now found in the national park in his name, to grieve and to find solace. He frequented the rugged region throughout his life, even crediting his ascension to the Presidency and conservationist mission to his time spent there.
In 1899, Roosevelt gave his famed “The Strenuous Life” speech, in which he extolled the virtues of rejecting ease and seeking out hard work: “I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor… [L]et us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.” The speech reflected the very core values that he lived out in North Dakota.
Theodore Roosevelt – Rough Rider, Conservationist, President [Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library (520.14-008)]
The focus on the importance of this place to President Roosevelt sets this park apart from every other national park that we’ve seen. While boasting the natural splendor visitors typically seek out from national parks, Theodore Roosevelt National Park felt like a much more personal experience. If you allow yourself the time to stop and take in your surroundings – the awe-inspiring badlands and vast herds of buffalo roaming nearby – you can feel first-hand why Roosevelt came here for both physical and emotional healing, as well as personal growth.
Teddy Roosevelt helped save bison from extinction, and many still roam his namesake parkMany prairie dogs also call this place homeI call it “Squirrel Rock”
While Theodore Roosevelt National Park might not be the most famous of national parks, it certainly ranks high on our list!
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From Friday-Saturday, August 17-18, we made our way from from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to North Dakota. We went a little out of our way to visit the astonishing Dignity statue in Chamberlain. We’re so glad that we did, not only because the statue is a powerful addition to South Dakota’s collection of monuments and sculptures, but also because the road north traced part of the Native American Scenic Byway and the historic Lewis and Clark expedition, flanked by spectacular views of the Missouri River.
Dignity of Earth and SkySouth Dakota rest stops’ signature teepeeLewis and Clark historical marker
It was nice to get off the interstate and take the scenic route as we cut a relatively straight path through South Dakota.
Driving along the Missouri River on the Native American Scenic Byway
After a one-night stop at a camp right off of Route 83, just south of the border with North Dakota, we finally made it to our 41st state! We were determined not to leave the Northern sister state of our cherished new home state of South Dakota for last. Interestingly, so many people on the road to 50 states leave North Dakota for last that there are specific souvenirs made for the occasion and even a “Best for Last Club” based in Fargo.
Adding North Dakota to our cross-country trip was a no brainer. We were taking the northern route (mostly I-90) across the country to Seattle, and wanted to visit as many new places and national parks as we could on our way. North Dakota is home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and, as we witnessed along the route before reaching I-94, home to many sunflower farms — at times creating a sea of yellow as far as the eye could see. We later learned that sunflower viewing is something the state officially promotes, and the Route 83 we took north from the state line to Bismarck is listed on this official ND tourism map.
So many sunflowers!
Another goal we have for our travels is to visit state capitals, and Bismarck was squarely on our route to Teddy Roosevelt. Admittedly, I wasn’t very excited about seeing this one because my quick google search had shown images of what appeared to be a fairly bland office building – quite different from the typical domed structures. However, we were very pleasantly surprised to find that, while there was no dome in sight, the Capitol Building perched over a sprawling green field and floral arrangement of the state name, overlooking a campus reminiscent of the National Mall that included the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum, the state’s largest museum.
After a walk around the campus, we visited the Heritage Center and Museum, a modern and intriguing location offering exhibits covering the state’s history from the earliest geologic formation 600 million years ago, to the early Native American people, to the present day. It was a lot of history to take in, but we tried to experience as much as we could in an hour before hitting the road again!
From there, we drove about 100 miles to North Park Campground in Dickinson, our base camp for our time in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park area. We were greeted by Holly, a friendly campground staff member who kindly offered a golf cart ride around the campground so that we could select our site. Holly was formerly a schoolteacher in Utah for four years, and recommended visiting the state in the Fall because the weather is still great. We were glad to hear that since we’re already planning to spend time in Utah in the coming months! After choosing a nicely shaded site, we settled in for our first “extended” stay of our journey – a whopping four nights – and prepared for our visit to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. More on the park later, and as always, follow our Instagram for daily updates and join our email list for the latest blog posts.
