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Wandering Ottersons

Mission: Sharing World Exploration

“You’re doing what??”

Jen, July 10, 2019June 28, 2021

How the journey began…

Our adventure started in October of 2016 when we took a “surprise” trip. Not via the agencies that plan a trip for you; the surprise was on Shawn. I had planned the destination, and he knew where we were going once we got to the airport gate. We flew to San Francisco and stayed in a wonderful B&B in Glen Ellen, California (check out our recommendations page for more info.) That year and the next were a whirlwind of vacations – Hawaii for Christmas of ’16, another surprise trip in February of ’17, this time Shawn kept the secret and we flew to the Dominican Republic. We celebrated our 20th anniversary in Spain that October, visiting Valencia and Barcelona.

We fell in love with Valencia.

An idea was born.

Once home (or maybe even before we left the city), Shawn looked at me and said, “I want to move there.” I agreed, and who wouldn’t?! The city is beautiful: the history, the culture, architecture, its people. Like I said, we fell in love. And then Shawn dropped the proverbial bomb: “Let’s move there within three years.” Wait, what? This man is insane; I married a crazy person. But then I started thinking about his arguments (we’ve worked really hard for a lot of years, we can totally do this for ourselves now that the kids are gone, we’ve moved to new places before, etc.) and the idea took hold. So now, here we are, planning to start our new travel life in Spain, spring of 2021. We’re going to sell our house, most of our property, cars, most everything, and we are going to travel the world in the hopes that someday, people will appreciate what we share and follow along on our adventures. Some know about our plan, and the typical response we hear is “You’re doing what?” or “Seriously?“. Yes, seriously, we’re selling it all to travel for an undetermined amount of time. A wide open thought with no concrete plans. So yes, I married a crazy man. Apparently he married a crazy woman, so we’re even.

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