Looking back through the archives here on the blog made me realize that I haven’t written one of these annual wrap-up posts since 2021 (though, to be fair, I did write a summary of our summer RV travels in 2022 which was chock-full of the usual driving / camping / cost statistics). The last two years have involved much deliberation about what we wanted our lives to look like in terms of how and where we spent our time. When we left our jobs at the end of 2017 to embark on a years-long journey around America, the challenges of full-time travel kept us fully engaged. Between the logistics of travel planning, then reading about and preparing for upcoming destinations, and also figuring out how to fix the latest thing that broke on the RV or how to locate items in this week’s grocery store, we essentially traded in our corporate jobs for a different, more enjoyable full-time job. After we felt a strong pull to establish a home base, building a home on scenic St. George Island in the Florida panhandle kept us entertained for a year. But over the next several years we became increasingly dissatisfied with our situation and wanted to make a change. Ken called this exercise “building Retirement 2.0” and we both wanted to be very intentional about our next move.
Change of Venue
The original idea of establishing a home base in Florida was to give us a permanent place to enjoy winters while still using the Airstream for lengthy spring / summer / fall trips. Although we loved the home that we designed, and it was exceptionally well-built, it turned out that leaving a single family home on a barrier island standing empty for months at a time was challenging for us. The large number of poorly-behaved summer tourists walking across our property (and under our house) as a shortcut to the beach meant we constantly received activity alerts from our security cameras when we were away. And we finally came to terms with the fact that the season we most wanted to travel — the brutal, oppressively hot summer months — coincided perfectly with the height of hurricane season, making it even trickier to leave the house unattended.
In addition, while we absolutely loved the pristine beaches, undeveloped public lands, and immense variety of wildlife on the Forgotten Coast, we found it difficult to live in an extremely rural environment. Driving two hours to reach a subpar airport or a Costco gets old fast, and the local health care option and grocery store left a lot to be desired. Despite signing up for plenty of hands-on volunteer experiences with Turtle Patrol, microplastics testing, Audubon bird conservation, and more, we weren’t as busy as we would like to be. Our idyllic beach life in Florida just wasn’t working for us.
While we had previously lived in several large cities (Miami, New York City) and we do like urban life, we weren’t ready for the expense or hassle of returning to a major metro area. After much discussion, we concluded that we would be best served if we lived in a medium-sized college town where we could have access to the cultural and sporting events that come along with a college, plus the active vibe of youth. Last year we explored the possibility with our month-long stays in two prospective home towns in North Carolina (Asheville posts 1, 2, 3, 4 and Winston-Salem posts 1, 2, 3, 4). The experience gave us enough information to make a well-informed decision about what daily life would look like for us in those areas. So this year we took the plunge: we sold our beach house in Florida and moved to Winston-Salem.
Please enjoy these exciting moving photos:
Winston was on our list because of my strong ties to Wake Forest (I am an alumna and have served on many different advisory committees and boards over the years) but the community has a lot to offer outside of WF. The city bills itself as the City of Arts and Innovation, and there is a high level of entrepreneurship in fields ranging from biotech to culinary arts. While we still cook at home the vast majority of the time, we actually have a good-sized roster of locally-owned restaurants that we genuinely enjoy patronizing. We have attended several live sporting events ranging from football, baseball, and basketball games to collegiate and professional golf tournaments. We’ve also been to high quality music performances and art exhibits. Within a three-minute walk from our new place we have a YWCA with a well-equipped gym as well as a scenic section of the city’s extensive greenway system, and our fitness level has increased considerably since moving. We have had no trouble finding interesting volunteer opportunities. Also, we purchased a condo instead of a single-family house, so it’s a snap to lock the door and leave for trips.
Change of Travel Style / Change of Wheels
As discussed in my post earlier in the year, we weren’t prepared to embark on another extensive RV journey and felt ready to adopt a new style of travel with a different menu of destinations. Once we knew we didn’t want to move the Airstream to North Carolina and keep it in storage, we acted quickly to place it on consignment and were happy that it sold early in the year. Selling the Airstream meant we no longer needed to drive a brawny tow vehicle, and living in a (small) city places a priority on nimbleness for squeezing into parking spots.
Trading in the truck for a fuel-efficient small SUV (a new-to-us VW Taos) set us up perfectly to take road trips from our new home base, including our trips this year to the Great Smokies/Blue Ridge Parkway/Shenandoah and to the Outer Banks. Proximity to airports (30 minutes to Greensboro; about 2 hours to Charlotte or Raleigh/Durham) gave us the chance to take a long-awaited trip to Chicago during the summer. Airports also made it easy for family to reach us: Ken’s brother and his girlfriend visited in the fall and my mother visited us for Thanksgiving.
But even though we no longer drag our house behind us when traveling, we haven’t lost our affection for the brown signs of the National Park Service. We added several new sites to our lifetime tally this year, bringing us to…
Total NPS sites visited: 108
Our late summer and fall trips checked a few more parks, historic sites, and memorials off the list, pushing us over another threshold: we’re above 25%, y’all! Here is my usual chart showing the breakdown of the sites we’ve visited.
And we’re still collecting lapel pins to turn into magnets at various sites we visit. We are less space-constrained than in the Airstream, and perhaps our dreams have gotten bigger, so we now have an even larger magnet board to fill with souvenirs from our future travels.
It’s been a tumultuous year, with real estate purchases and sales, vehicle purchases and sales, and doing all the administrative junk associated with uprooting one’s life and settling in a different state. Despite these challenges, we still made time for several enjoyable trips in addition to establishing our new routines and activities. Now that the dust has mostly settled on all the changes, I’m happy to report that we are very satisfied with where we have landed. I think it’s going to be easy for us to establish new roots here in the North Carolina Piedmont.
FAQs
What’s the worst part about moving?
Buying a new couch. We sold our Florida house fully furnished, and while IKEA was able to meet most of our furnishing needs for our new place they did not offer any couches we liked. There is a terrible trend in the furniture world of incredibly deep sofas, with the result that I (a normal-sized person) could not simultaneously have my feet on the floor and my back against the backrest on any of the sofas we tried at numerous different furniture stores. We ended up ordering a couch from Norway and waiting 6 months for it to arrive. Which sounds crazy, until you consider that the couch is actually comfortable.
How’s the winter?
So far, so good. We had some early snow just after Thanksgiving but in general we expect winter high temperatures will be in the 40s and 50s. For those familiar with the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones, we are in 8a, which is the same zone as Atlanta, GA and Carlsbad, NM.
How long is the drive to Costco?
Google informs me that it is 6.2 miles from our condo to our local Costco, so we never have to go without Kirkland brand products.
Do you have a new favorite local brewery?
We are thrilled to have a really excellent local micro-brewery within walking distance of our new place. Lesser-Known Beer specializes in the traditional beer-making styles of the Czech Republic / Bavaria / Franconia and only offers on-site consumption and very limited bottling. It’s a true neighborhood spot with a rabidly loyal following (including us). And while Winston does not have a vast and wildly creative brewing scene like Asheville, there are quite a few local standouts. For us, Wise Man Brewing, Incendiary Brewing, and Foothills Brewing are reliably excellent choices.
What are your travel plans for next year?
They are still coming into focus. So far we are planning a quick trip back to Florida in early February to support the annual fundraiser of an organization I volunteer with, and then I’ll be taking an international trip in April with my mom to celebrate a milestone birthday for her.
The worst part of moving is buying a new couch, lol!!! I share your frustration with sofas that are too deep—that was one of the reasons we had our sofa custom made. I love being comfortable! How in the world did your search lead you to a couch made in Norway? Inquiring minds want to know.
You guys certainly had a busy year of big life changes, and still managed to do a lot of fun stuff. Even though I knew about everything you were doing when you did it, it’s impressive looking back at the year you lived. Here’s to a wonderful 2025, filled with adventures (and more magnet souvenirs) along with plenty of time enjoying your cool new hometown!
We considered a custom-made couch also — there are a lot of custom options made relatively locally, since we are in a hub of furniture manufacturing in the Piedmont. But since we wanted leather and a somewhat more modern look that got very expensive very fast. So when we discovered that Stressless (the company that makes those fabulous recliners) also makes couches, it was an easy decision. Funny enough, one couch that seats three is about the same price as one Stressless recliner with ottoman. The only downside was waiting for the product to ship.
Like you, most of our blog readers are not going to be shocked by the big “reveal” that we have moved, but I felt like I wanted to explain some of our reasons behind the move so the story line of the blog makes sense. It was also really nice for us to reflect on what we accomplished this year (and why) as a prelude to making plans for next year. Hint: more travel plans are in the works! Best wishes for 2025 to you, Eric, and Maggie!
This post made me pretty jealous, if I’m being honest. You really landed in a great town with all the things we love – from outdoor options, to sporting events, to restaurants and breweries. But the thing I am most jealous of is Costco… ohmygodimissitsomuch.
The color you’re painting the kitchen is reminiscent (for me, at least) of the color of your living room in Florida. Am I talking crazy, or is it similar? On a related note, I’d love to see how the place all came together once it was set up. Especially with this Norwegian couch. Interestingly enough, we have all kinds of issues with our Ikea couch because it gives us back pain. Between the issues you highlighted and the actual angle of the back support, it just makes a mess of our rapidly aging backs. But… it’s puppy friendly, so we’ve stuck with it. If you wouldn’t mind sharing the name of your Norwegian furniture company, I’d appreciate it.
Anyway, I’m glad you guys are loving your new home. I look forward to reading more fun travel reports in 2025. Happy New Year!
In the course of our years-long debate about where to move, Ken and I had at least three separate discussions on the question of which store is more important to our daily happiness: Costco or Whole Foods? We decided on Costco, mostly because of substitutes: Publix is 85% as good as Whole Foods for us but there’s nothing really like Costco. I suppose that’s why we visited 30+ Costco locations in states around the country while we were on the road. In retrospect we should have gotten one of those RV maps of states, but just for Costco visits. 🙂 Even nicer, in the end we didn’t need to decide for purposes of the move because we have both in Winston.
As for home details, get ready for some links! The colors are not exactly the same (blue at the Florida house, green in NC) but both have strong grey tones and I think they have a very similar vibe. We are Benjamin Moore loyalists and in Florida we used Paradiso 717 while in North Carolina we are living amongst Antique Jade 465. As I mentioned to Laurel the couch is from Stressless (parent company is Ekornes). We actually purchased the couch without even sitting on it, but that’s because (i) there was a different model couch on the floor at the furniture store which was great, just the wrong size for our space and (ii) I have never sat on a Stressless seating product that was anything other than comfortable. Luckily it worked out perfectly for us!
Happy 2025 to you both (and Thor)!
Though it was quite the surprise when you originally announced you were leaving your new home in Florida, it’s good to know that it was the right decision for you, and you’re happy with where you landed. The sofa dilemma was funny in a “welcome to my whole life with seating” way. I hope your condo neighbors all behave — at least they can’t walk under your house (!) and that you can take advantage of that growing zone to create a lush balcony garden. Happy New Year to you both!
We knew when we built the place in Florida that it was not going to be a “forever home,” since 14 feet of pilings with stairs but no elevator is not a recipe for aging in place. While we did end up leaving a bit sooner than we initially expected (thought it would be 5-10 years), I’m glad we didn’t let the sunk cost fallacy prevent us from making the right decision going forward. I’m also glad we were fortunate in buying a sofa that actually fits me, and would probably fit you also. I don’t know why “comfort” isn’t higher on the list of objectives for most furniture manufacturers. Sadly our balcony is too small for growing much but I volunteer every week at a historic estate with gorgeous gardens set on 170 acres, so I have plenty of opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of our new zone. In early December I planted hundreds of bulbs for the first time in my life, and while I may never want to plant bulbs again at least I have something specific to look forward to at the garden in the spring: MY narcissus, tulips, hyacinths, etc. Happy 2025!
Funnily enough, we have the exact same IKEA sofa that Kevin & Laura have (in a different color) AND we have a Stressless recliner!
Since you have a Stressless recliner I imagine you can see the appeal of a Stressless couch! I was initially a little skeptical of a sofa with moving parts (we have the Sapphire with low back) but the thing is incredibly comfortable.
Selling your house on St George was a surprise but I now totally understand. You both are too young and active to live in a retirement/vacation spot full time. Someone got a well built house for I read about it when you were helping with the construction and paint. I love the color you painted your new place. You have your favorite places to shop, an airport, and more activities in Winston Salem. You have NC weather also (4 seasons). Happy travels and less notifications from your security system.
Pat
For us, St. George turned out to be a great place to visit but a hard place to live full-time. It’s surprising how much the lack of a decent grocery store can affect your quality of life! While we were a little sad to sell the house, we know that the new owners are going to love making memories there. And now we have the chance to easily enjoy more of the activities we love. The four seasons are taking a little getting used to, but fall was spectacular and I am very excited for spring.