What does it mean to be travelling full-time? How much travel is too much? How long should you stop and stay in one place? These are questions that I didn't really give much thought to before we moved into our camper full-time, with the intention to travel and see the country. In my mind's eye I could see the things we would see and do, I could imagine life inside the camper, but I honestly didn't daydream much about the time we would spend in the car driving from place to place.&nbsp;

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The truly ironic part of this conversation is that, while we are living full-time in our camper, we haven't done a ton of travelling yet. We spent the entirety of "travel season" simply learning to live out of our camper while we were parked in our home state. It was a really valuable transition time and I wouldn't change my mind about doing it if given the opportunity to go back in time and do it again, but I might have considered leaving Ohio a bit earlier than we did for the sake of travelling more.&nbsp;

When we left Ohio, it was mid-October. We headed south and came to roost in Central Texas with the goal of being in decent weather (that rarely if ever drops below freezing) so that we could be comfortable in the camper. So, we arrived November 4th and we have been parked here since then… and we will be here until March 1st. So, just think about the timing for a moment…

We moved into our camper May 1st in Ohio. We spent 15 days travelling to central Texas. We are parked in Texas November - March. Our first 10 months of "travelling" has only included 15 days of actual travel. Does that sound depressing to you? Because it was for me.&nbsp;

I have been endlessly frustrated by our lack of movement. I am stir crazy. I want to see something new, I want to see something at all outside of this campground (thanks Covid). We didn't really have a choice though, because of when we started this adventure. It wasn't really possible for us to "go" anywhere during the winter months if we wanted to stick to the "staying where it's warm" plan. Sure, we could move around different campgrounds, but there isn't really anything we wanted to see or do in the south, so we hunkered down to take advantage of off-season rates.&nbsp;

Looking ahead, 2021 is going to really be our year of travel. Now that we understand just how restrictive the seasons are for us, we have really examined, re-examined, and re-re-examined where we want to go and how we want to move around the country (what pace). I think at this point I have charted 6 alternative routes in RV Trip Wizard.&nbsp;

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The pace was what we have been particularly sensitive to because clearly we understand how long is too long to stay put in one place- at least for us. For our family, 2 months is an upper limit, and that's super valuable information to have! That helps me tremendously in thinking about how we can move around in a year. Since our only experience with travel days came in the form of our 15 day trip down here, we have less data but feel pretty comfortable with the idea of moving frequently, short distances, as long as Alex has time to work through the day and participate in his video-meetings, he says he is fine with driving up to 3 hours in a day.&nbsp;

So we are going to cover a lot of ground in 2021. We are going to see things and visit regions we have never seen before and I couldn't be happier about that! We do have a couple of one month stays planned as a respite to the constant short drives approach we are taking. But, we will just have to see what it looks like, how it feels for our family.

If there's one thing I have learned so far, it's that everybody approaches this differently. Every family has different needs, different goals, and different levels of comfort with the changes that come along with moving around a lot. Thankfully for us, our kids travel really well, our pets don't mind moving days, and we are putting a premium on the ability to put some miles on our tires this year. I can't wait for March 1st to get here!

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a panoramic view of a bright blue lake with the sun shining brightly in the upper left corner and trees in the foreground