Though we have been technomadic for several years now, 2009 was our first full year living on the road and in our trailer without any other physical place to call ‘home’ – in 2007 and 2008 (click for the past year summary posts) we spent part of each winter living in and working to sell Cherie’s old house in Florida.
We started 2009 with an extended stay near San Francisco, working to orchestrate the launch of the iPhone travel application HearPlanet with some over-the-top guerilla marketing. With our unauthorized renegade double-decker DJ-equipped party bus, we generate a lot of buzz at Macworld, and started off 2009 with a bang.
We wrapped up our time in the SF Bay Area by presenting on Technomadism at the O’Reilly ETech conference, and in March we were on the road again.
Since then we have crisscrossed the country 2 complete times, with many meandering paths and fabulous encounters along the way. Some highlights of 2009 include attending Burning Man, three regional Burning Man events, a submarine veterans reunion, Photoshop World, OReilly’s ETech, and our two particularly intense temporary work gigs (Amazon.com and HearPlanet).
We traveled roughly 13,217 miles (counting only miles actually towing the trailer) and visited 23 states. In 2009 we also traveled by air to Florida & Washington, DC, cruise ship to the Bahamas and by vehicle to Las Vegas & Tahoe.
Here are direct links to our pictorial travelogue posts covering the segments of this year:
- Florida, Bahamas and Washington, DC – January
- California Exodus – March 22 – April 9
- Arizona & New Mexico – April 9 – 23
- Texas to St. Louis – April 24 – May 17
- Loop to Hohenwald – May 18 – June 11
- St. Louis to Indiana – June 12 – June 29
- Philadelphia, DC, Appalachians and St. Louis – June 30 – July 29
- St. Louis – Burning Man – July 30 – August 28
- Burning Man – Hemet – Sept 6 – October 24
- Hemet to St. Louis – October 25 – December 31
It has been a great year on the road. And most importantly, we made many new friends and fabulous contacts along the way.
In our online life, we definitely increased our visibility by a substantial amount. At the beginning of the year we were getting less than a thousand unique visitors a month to our site, which was originally aimed at just keeping friends and family updated on our travels. Now we’re getting a least 7 times that traffic, plus we have several hundred RSS and Facebook subscribers as well. We feel very blessed to be able to share our adventures with so many people!
Here’s to an awesome 2010 – we look forward to where our adventures lead us next!
Great trip! I’ve always wanted to do an across the United States trip.
.-= Mike´s last blog ..The Mount Washington Hotel and Resort =-.
Hey, awesome idea for living, but you know it’s possible to cross those borders to the north and south.
@Dark_Nomad – Yes indeed. We keep intending too, but too much awesome and shiny within the borders keeps distracting us.
fun times! great year!