With my new found fascination with driving around the World with my family, I needed to figure out a way to make it a reality. The idea was to try it out with a rental RV at first. Would we like it, did we want to kill each other afterwards? Then from there plan a means to getting our own RV. With our own rig spend a few years with progressively longer trips learning what works and what doesn’t or need to be improved. Then step into the world of an expedition vehicle to implement all of the learnings we’ve had over time.
The new RV needed a personality, so after much thought, we came to R.O.A.M. – Roadschooling Overland Adventure Mobile! With that, our blog name was secured!
The trial run
The first part of the plan had to be to see if the 5 of us would survive in a camper for an extended period of time. We had been on a few road trips and staying in hotels, but we needed to see if we were actually compatible with a camping lifestyle. Afterall our previous trip out West involved trunk camping from hotel to hotel.
As luck would have it, I had an opportunity to travel to Arizona with my company and visit our plants in Flagstaff for a week. Because we were homeschooling this kids already, the family unit is very portable. My company was very flexible as well, so we decided to make a 3 week family vacation out of this work trip. The first 10 days was an RV Rental with Cruise America from Phoenix. Then I worked in Flagstaff for 5 days while the family stayed at the hotel and toured the local sites. Then finally the last 4 days was a Bed and Breakfast in Sedona for some more hiking and exploring.
For the RV Rental we planned out an itinerary which would take us up through a some sites around Flagstaff then up to Monument Valley, and up the Four Corners Region and over to Mesa Verde National Park then back to the Grand Canyon before circling back to Phoenix. Needless to stay it was an amazing experience and trip, everyone loved it!
We got an untold number of junior ranger badges from that trip, maybe 8 National Monuments and 2 National Parks plus several other state parks, Navajo sites. It was simply amazing, and further cemented my desire to drive around the world to see even more. The 80 page journal/photobook I created from that trip is one of my prized possessions.
The next step is to do some benchmarking and some design work!