Adios Texas, Back on the Road

After returning from Australia in 2024 and travelling around the United States for nearly a year, we did something novel: we stayed put.

For the past twelve months, we have enjoyed becoming part of our new community in the Texas Hill Country. The children settled into school, weekends filled with baseball, gymnastics, band and orchestra, and we slowly unpacked not just our boxes but our lives. After years of living halfway around the world, and with many of our belongings in storage since before COVID, we enjoyed a year with virtually no travel.

As summer approached, however, we found ourselves looking back at the map from our original journey across America. That trip took us through 43 states on the way to Texas, staying with family, in hotels and Airbnbs. We introduced the children to an extraordinary amount of the country, but there were still plenty of blank spaces: places we had driven past, national parks we had missed and roads we had promised ourselves we would return to one day.

With school out for the summer, the travel itch returned.

This journey will take us from central Texas to northern Maine, covering nearly from Mexico to Canada and from west of the Mississippi to the Atlantic. We will visit parts of America we had passed too quickly the first time, while giving the kids a re-introduction to camping.

We know it will involve plenty of frustrations and adjustments. Amy and I will plan together, change course when things do not work and accept that travelling with five children and a dog rarely follows the itinerary exactly. But that is also why we want to go.

It is good to be back on the road.