Unlike traveling for a week or two, traveling for months on end can lead to intense feelings of burnout if you aren’t taking breaks or time for yourself. In our day-to-day lives, most of us aren’t packing in as much as we can, seeing new things, and meeting a lot of new people. Finding that balance while constantly traveling can be challenging until you get into a healthy routine.

It’s something we are still trying to figure out for ourselves.

Read below for a fun story about our experience in NOLA, too.

Making Time For Down Time To Avoid Burnout

Being a more introverted person, having enough down time is something I have been struggling with the most in our travels. We have been taking our time in each place we go, but are still meeting new people and sightseeing most of each day. I have found that our driving time has been one of the best times for me to be quiet, read a book, or research something I am interested in. Luckily, I have a partner that prefers driving, so while he is manning the bus, I can do whatever I want to!

We also reserve the evenings (usually after 7 or 8 pm) for quiet time to connect with friends and family or just take some time to do things for ourselves. Having our evenings in the bus has been really great and allows us to make sure the bus is organized and set up exactly how we want to.

Being Present and Spontaneous

We have found that traveling with a strict plan or too many goals set into a short time frame leads to feeling overwhelmed and rushed. For this reason, we tend to plan as little as possible, aside from identifying a place or two we would like to see or making sure we have a place to park. We tend to take any opportunity that presents its self or follow what peaks our interest. On the other side, we also avoid what feels tedious or wrong.

For example, while traveling through southern Florida, we were working our way down highway 41 through the everglades on our way to Naples. While we were excited to see the Everglades, neither of us felt like going on the airboats or taking a long hike. We both felt guilty for not making the most of our time there, but found ourselves growing frustrated trying to force things. Instead, we continued our drive and found ourselves at a great beach in Naples, went swimming, got ice cream, and had a great day!

Later on that week, we ended up seeing some family friends on their boat. This boat happened to be docked within the Everglades!! It all worked out exactly as it was supposed to.

Our Experience in NOLA

Speaking of being present and taking things as they come, our experience in NOLA is a perfect example. We got to New Orleans with absolutely no plan and had the following goals:

• Visit Frenchman St
• Listen to music on Bourbon St
• Eat some good Creole food
• Try Crawfish.

We used Harvest Host to find a place to stay and ended up booking a few nights with Faubourg Brewing Co, so we had a safe place to stay and just needed to see how everything came together.

When we first showed up to the brewery, we noticed some people parked with the other RVs that looked like they were struggling with a Vespa scooter. Sure enough, when we walked over to them, they immediately asked if we had some wrenches to help them get a new battery placed into one of their scooters. Jacob has all of his tools in the bus with us, so we was able to help them out and get the scooter running again. After, they offered to get us a drink inside and after about 2 hours of talking, we found ourselves on our motorcycle following them to a brewery across town.

They were in town for a Vespa scooter rally/meetup and within a few hours, we found ourselves within a community of about 150 riders and signed up to join the weekend’s festivities, despite not having a scooter of our own. We spent the weekend exploring New Orleans with a group of scooter people. We met some of the nicest people, found great restaurants and bars that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and were able to check off all of our goals for the weekend in no time.

The experience left us feeling so happy and excited that traveling like this is our life right now. When you can, try letting new opportunities present themselves, you won’t regret trying something new!