INTRODUCTION
Since 2008, our family has been living a nomadic life. It started as just a way to take our one-year-old baby girl to see her exciting new world. We started documenting our travels under the name Mali Mish. Little did we know it would be the beginning of a new chapter for our family.
Salmon Glacier – Hyder, Alaska (2015)
Since then, we have traveled all across North America. After visiting nearly all states and provinces of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, we began our international travels. For nearly two decades, we have traveled over 300,000 miles overland and driven to 53 countries as a family.
As we continue to learn all about living on this planet as global nomadic citizens, we wanted to share with you everything we know about how to thrive on the road, how to live comfortably with a minimal ecological impact, how we give our kids the best education we believe they can have, and all the while saving for the future.
Hole in the Ground, Oregon (2015)
In 2008, we bought our first rig, a 2007 Airstream International 25FB Ocean Breeze. We started the process of living on the road when we were new parents to our 9-month-old baby girl, Ava. Our family had grown from 3 to 5 with the addition of little sister Mila in 2009 and baby boy Luka in 2012. For 7 years with the Airstream, we traveled across the country from California to Florida’s Key West to the tip of Maine to the far corner of Washington State, and everywhere in between. Once we visited all of the lower 48 states, we spent an awesome summer in Alaska. Our time in Alaska was life-changing and caused us to re-evaluate our traveling lifestyle. After that summer, we felt like the Airstream was holding us back from spots we wanted to camp and explore. It also somehow started feeling a little too comfortable, like we were living with all the comforts of a stationary house again.
Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico (2017)
So in 2016, we decided to transition the Airstream from our home to a passive income project and bought a 2015 Four Wheel Grandby truck camper on a 2016 Ford F250 long bed. For the next 3 years, we pulled ourselves out of our comfort zone and pushed our adventure further south into Baja and Mainland Mexico, close to the Guatemala border, and then into the northeasternmost corners of Canada, the Maritimes, Newfoundland, and Labrador.
We also had a little stint with a 2017 Casita Spirit 17 Standard for a year when Dan needed some quieter office space, when the weather conditions were no longer ideal for working outside. After all those miles and years spent all over North America, we once again felt like it was time to make another significant change in our traveling lifestyle.
Virpazar, Montenegro (2019)
Then in 2018, we decided to shake things up once again. We built out our very own rig, a 2017 Sprinter 4×4 crew van 170. After a quick 30-ish day self-build, we drove our new home from California to Maryland, loaded it onto a boat across the Atlantic Ocean, and continued our travels around Europe in September of 2018. As of August 2020, we have driven to 27 European countries plus Turkey on the Asian continent and Morocco on the African continent. Our initial plan was to stay in Europe for a year or two, but now we are thinking more than that.
As long as everyone in the family is on the same page, we don’t currently see an end to our travels. But I do see adding or switching gears again. Maybe a new continent, maybe a sailboat, but always together, where we are our happiest.
Little films made about us
June 2019
February 2018
April 2019