The Reality of Full-Time Travel

Last Updated on April 3, 2024 by Leslie Stroud

We are on month five of this adventure!  Kind of hard to believe.

We are in Oahu, which I had projected in my mind for a long time.  I had planned to get a lot of to-do’s done here, which is coming to pass.  I just stayed up for the last hour filling out 42 pages of intake forms for our doctor’s appointment tomorrow.  Yep, 42.

This will be to get travel vaccines, none of which will be covered by insurance and which will cost us well over 5K out of pocket. But what can you do?  I’m certainly not going to risk it.  Sometimes, having seven people makes things really, really expensive.  I’m sure someone else, somewhere, has come up with a better way to do this, but so far, I haven’t found it.

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So far, this month has been kind of rough.  We really disliked the original place we had booked.  In fact, the owner we booked with passed away in April from a heart attack!  It was terrible to find this out and made it quite the run-around to figure it all out.  We arrive in the dark and the rain and it was a miserable, depressing experience.

We made it only 5 days there before a major plumbing problem sent us over the edge of our tolerance.  We found somewhere else at the last minute to stay (much better, but still a little bit depressing and not that nice).  There has been tons of rain, which is tough when five kids have to stay inside.  They don’t actually stay inside- they love to go out and run in it.  However, I found out today that this much rain causes all the septic systems to overflow, and basically, there is sewage running down the road.  Ugh.  Gross.

Let’s just say, this month hasn’t been all we hoped for!  We came off from such a high in Kauai that this has been pretty disappointing.  We’ve hit a few emotional walls.  Just yesterday I was so completely burnt out I could hardly talk to anyone.  If I did, I was being mean and yelling.  I took the older four kids to the beach and let them run around while I just cried on my beach towel.

As I was able to watch them from afar (and do some deep- breathing to calm down the constant adrenaline surge I run on most of the time with them), I was able to see them again for what they are.  Children.  Beautiful, wonderful children.  Children that I have been trusted with by God to help raise into adults.  This also brought tears to my eyes and I was able to find some peace again.  I was able to apologize to them for how mean I had been that day.   I got the emotional strength back to play with them for a little while until the sunset sent us back home.

We are being pushed and tried this month, and I’m not sure why.  Maybe the honeymoon period has worn off.  Maybe we have great things ahead, and we go international in just three weeks.  Maybe we have just put too much on our plates.

Part of me wishes I could say where feels like home to me, but to be honest, nowhere does yet.  Even my old favorite places don’t feel welcoming enough to leave what we are doing.  So, I’m going to try to find more balance (a constant striving), more inner peace and strength, and more patience.  We will continue to prepare, and we will all get poked in the morning. 

Additional Reading

Happy 1-Year Travel Anniversary to Us!

What Mom Should Pack for Full-Time Travel

Our Mistakes with Full-Time Travel: 9 Months In