From Kauai With Love

Wrapping up summer on the Garden Island, 4 am rooster wake-up calls included

Aloha! We’re currently in Kauai, spending the last two weeks of summer soaking up the sun, going for sunset swims in the bay, and enjoying life and fresh food with our good friends who live here.

We’re doing all the things we would if we were just visiting the island for vacation, but we’re also getting a glimpse into what it’s like to live here. We’ve appreciated this aspect of the experience but are not even close to getting used to or comfortable with the humidity.

It’s been good training for our upcoming travels to SE Asia, though, later this spring. I quickly realized I need to swap out the clothes I have and was planning to bring for more breathable fabrics and looser fitting essentials. If you have any tips on good brands to look at for these items, or items you have and love, drop them in the comments (THANK YOU in advance).

We’re putting together a Kauai guide with our favorite things and will share that when we’re back. Here’s a glimpse of what we’re up to…

We’re also reflecting on the fabulous time we had this summer on our road trip throughout the PNW and then down the coast and PCH from Oregon to Los Angeles.

Our updates weren’t as frequent as we would have liked, and many of you reached out to ask what we were up to and to see how we were doing. THANK YOU for that - we love hearing from everyone and enjoyed the opportunity to not set too many expectations for ourselves at the start of our travels.

But there’s a lot we want to share with you about these travels, so we’ll plan to do some future posts about the different places we visited and maybe about the whole experience of being on the road for almost 3 months straight. We had a great time but would definitely do things differently if we were to plan something like this again. We learned a lot about what we want out of traveling and how we want to travel.

As we close out our summer travel chapter, we’re also in the midst of doing a lot of planning for travels this fall and winter, and we’re even looking ahead into the spring to see if we can score some cheaper international flight deals.

We’re in the process of selling our car, got some bigger carry-on luggage, and Chris has been wrapping up the few remaining work projects for this year.

Here’s an updated plan of where we’re heading in the next few months:

• September & October: Europe - Bordeaux, London, Paris, and Prague

• November & December: Mexico - Mexico City, Oaxaca + possibly somewhere else in MX like Miguel de Allende or Puebla.

Most of these places are new to us, so if you’ve been and have any tips, we’d love to hear your insights and advice.

September also marks the start of our almost-continuous travel phase. We had originally thought we’d want to travel for 1-2 months and come back to the U.S. to relax and regroup for a few weeks before heading back out. But we’re finding that approach is adding stress and $$$$, so we’re going to try something different: almost continuous traveling and living abroad.

We’ll still spend a few days here and there routing through the U.S. and swapping out hot weather/cold weather items, but we’re excited to try this new approach and will let you know how it goes.

As always, thanks for being here and staying in touch. We love to hear from you and hope you’ll comment to share your insights, experience, and what you’re up to.

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