Introduction To Our Travel Journey

Hello and Welcome to The Nomad Dad Life, the travel guide for the digital nomad with kids!

This is the first installment of The Nomad Dad Life. This will be an introductory post with some background information before we really start to dive into our travels around the country with our kids.

My wife and I recently started traveling the country with our young children (2 year-old and an 8 month old.) I want to share our journey about traveling and working remotely as well as raising 2 small kids. We will share things you should do while working remotely with children (or pets, or just by yourself!) in a different environment and things you should avoid. Throughout our journey details will be provided about each location we go to and the places we went to at each location we’ve been to. This will include the places the locals told us to check out as well as what can be found online on your own.

How it Started

Our adventure began in the middle of winter in West Central Minnesota. Two feet of snow and temperatures that struggled to get above 0 will really make you consider what you are doing living in this area of the world. After talking and dreaming about warmer weather where the kids could play outside year-round without having to put on 4 layers of clothes to stay warm in the Minnesota winters or dealing with the heat and mosquitoes in the summer we came up with a solution. Traveling around the country and living wherever we wanted for 3 months at a time by travel nursing.

The pandemic shut a lot of doors (literally) when it happened, but it also opened many at the same time. Bars and restaurants around the world were forced to close their doors, travel was limited, and concerts and sporting events were canceled. Remote work was becoming more common, as meetings and trainings were now taking place virtually instead of in person. I work as a supervisor in the fiscal department for our local county’s social services department. Everything about my job was based on my location. Where my office was located, the people we served, where our board meetings took place. My job was dependent on where I was located.

When we first decided to take the leap of faith and start traveling with our kids, we didn’t think I would be able to keep my current job. We were prepared to make things work with what they are paying travel nurses. I would stay at home to watch the kids and try to find some part-time bookkeeping work. This would allow me to keep busy after the kids went to bed. I put my resignation notice in on a Friday with our director that I would be moving and wouldn’t be able to continue working for the agency. On Monday I was called into the director’s office. I thought this was going to be about finishing up the projects we were working on and getting a timeline for when my last day would officially be.

Instead she asked more questions about where I was moving to and what our plans were for the future. I explained we were going to be traveling until our oldest child starts school. Then we planned to move back to the area. I know I joked about the weather before, but it is a great place to live and raise kids! Two and a half years was our timeline for traveling and moving back to the area. She asked if I would be interested in working remotely if the board of directors approved it. I agreed that I would be open to it. Unsure of how it would work out with my having to watch the kids.

The board voted and allowed me to work remotely with a flexible schedule. Meaning I could work weekends and nights instead of my normal 7:30-4. I was excited about this, as I wouldn’t have to try to find new work while we were traveling. This would fit around my schedule with the kids and my wife’s work schedule, which isn’t consistently the same days or nights. This would present a new set of challenges though. I will discuss in more detail in future posts for anyone interested in traveling with kids and continuing to work. For now, we are going to continue our journey and share why we decided to do it.

Why we became Nomads

Many factors pushed us in the direction to be nomads and pack up everything to move to a new city every 3 months. We knew this wasn’t the “normal” way to raise a family. We wanted to do what was best for our family, which is what everyone should do. Focus on yourself and your family instead of worrying about what you think other people think about you.

Financially it made a lot of sense to make this move. The housing market was good for sellers which we wanted to take advantage of. We had a plan to be out of our house in 5 years after we bought it. We were able to do that by traveling. The pay for the travel nurse lifestyle is more than the staff nurse. We would be able to earn more money and not have a mortgage payment and the utility payments that come with owning a home. With cutting back on many of our expenses, we were finally able to feel like we were getting somewhere instead of seeing our paychecks disappear to monthly payments. We had a goal to be debt free. Now we were so we could start really saving money to build our forever home.

We wanted our children to be able to play outside year-round. That wasn’t always an option in the North Star state. Now our kids are able to enjoy being outdoors year-round. They also get to see a lot of our country. Way more than we would have been able to with a traditional office and nursing job. We also would be able to raise our kids ourselves instead of sending them to daycare. . Not only did this save us money, it allowed us to spend a lot more family time together. I know some people need a break from raising their kids, myself included, which is why sampling the local beer/breweries is always something on my to do list when we move to a new city.

With those factors and my flexibility to now work from anywhere, we only had a couple more obstacles to figure out before we could get on the road. First was figuring out where we wanted to go. Second was moving out of our home in the middle of a Minnesota winter. I’ve moved plenty of times in my life, but I always waited until the ground was green instead of white. Moving is easier when the temperatures were on the positive side of zero.

First Move

Our house had a walkout basement, so to get our furniture out of the basement the easiest way was to go out the walkout basement and put it in a truck or trailer that you were able to drive around the house. Simple enough when we moved in during the summer. This time we had to take multiple paths with the snowblower to clear enough snow to walk back there. Getting a truck back there wasn’t going to be an option. Now I was really regretting putting the gun safe I purchased the previous year in the basement.

Getting things out of the house wasn’t the only challenge we had with our move. Since our plan was to build a home (or at least not purchase a home until the market cooled down) we had to rent a storage unit. One night when we made a trip to drop off some of our belongings we noticed when we got there our door was frozen to the ground. It had been warm and had rained since our last visit to the unit, so we had a solid 2 inches of ice holding our door to the ground. Unfortunately, my ice fishing stuff was already packed in the storage unit. Sitting in the back corner of our locked storage unit is my ice chisel. . .

We didn’t have anything else with us this trip that would help bust through the ice, but we did still have 20 minutes before the hardware store closed. We made it to the hardware store before it closed and purchased a chisel and some liquid ice melt. After fighting with the ice for another half an hour we were finally able get into our unit. Our half hour trip turned into 2 hours. For anyone with young kids, you know that extra hour and a half is an eternity for your child. The number of times they can ask if we are done and can go home yet is unbelievable.

After that we decided it would be a good time to figure out where we wanted to go to get away from this lovely winter we were having in West Central Minnesota. Our options were pretty much limitless; I now was able to work remotely with a flexible schedule. There was a need for nurses pretty much anywhere in the US so we could pick where we wanted to. After much discussion and debating we decided we were going to head to the southeast! Not all the way down to Florida, though! Our first stop on our journey brought us all the way south to St. Cloud Minnesota. . .

Make sure to follow our journey on social media as well!

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