The Summer Road Trip Experiment

Six weeks ago, Jill and I pulled out of Wisconsin with our travel trailer behind us and a pretty ambitious idea.

We weren’t exactly going on vacation.

We weren’t exactly going on a business trip either.

We were going to try something.

More importantly, could we enjoy doing it?

After thousands of miles, a whole bunch of campgrounds and Harvest Hosts, meetings, conferences, family visits, long driving days, generator problems, electrical problems, canceled flights, questionable internet connections, and more than a few changes of plans, I think I have an answer.

Yes.

But maybe not in the way I expected.

It Wasn’t a Vacation

I think that’s important to say first.

There were certainly vacation moments.

We saw Niagara Falls. We drove along Lake Ontario. We sat outside the camper overlooking vineyards, farms, and valleys. We watched some incredible sunsets. We drank good beer and wine. We spent time with friends and family.

Those moments mattered.

But there was also a surprising amount of work.

We visited Ruger in New Hampshire. I spent time at West Point exploring opportunities for future training and events. We attended conferences, met with sponsors and partners, visited organizations, developed relationships, explored future Comprehensive Fitness opportunities, and continued running ILEETA from wherever the camper happened to be parked.

Some mornings I was working before sunrise.

Some days involved meetings followed by several hours behind the wheel.

There were conference days, travel days, work days, and days that somehow managed to be all three.

Jill was doing the same thing. Her work with ILEETA didn’t stop because we were traveling. In some places, her role was central to why we were there. Eventually she headed home while I continued south because the nature of the work changed. She needed to get back to Wisconsin and focus on selling the ILEETA Expo while my work shifted more heavily toward training, relationships, and program development.

That was part of the experiment too.

Work and Life Don’t Always Need a Wall Between Them

For years, we’ve been taught to think about “work-life balance” as though work belongs on one side of a scale and life belongs on the other.

I’m not sure I believe that anymore.

I certainly don’t want work to consume my life. I’ve done enough of that.

But I’m also fortunate enough to do work that matters deeply to me. ILEETA matters. Comprehensive Fitness matters. Teaching matters. The relationships I’ve developed through this work matter.

So does my family.

The interesting question became whether those things always have to compete with one another.

This summer, sometimes they didn’t.

A business meeting could put us in a part of the country we’d never explored.

A conference could become the anchor for several days with friends.

A long travel day could end at a winery overlooking a valley.

A professional relationship could become dinner with someone we genuinely enjoy spending time with.

And sometimes a Tuesday afternoon could simply become a chance to sit outside the camper with Jill and realize,
this is pretty damn cool.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t tradeoffs.

There were plenty.

The Plan Was Useful. Changing the Plan Was Essential.

I planned this trip.

A lot.

Routes. Campgrounds. Harvest Hosts. Meetings. Conferences. Flights. Fuel. Power. Internet. Truck and trailer logistics.

And then reality showed up.

A flight got canceled.

Electrical service didn’t work.

Internet disappeared.

Schedules changed.

People weren’t available when we thought they would be.

Stops lasted longer than expected. Others disappeared entirely.

At one point we were trying to figure out how to get Jill to Newark Airport while towing roughly 54 feet of truck and travel trailer through northern New Jersey.

There is probably a leadership lesson hiding somewhere in that sentence.

The trip reinforced something I already knew but occasionally forget:

Having a plan made it possible to adapt when things changed. The goal wasn’t to execute the itinerary perfectly. The goal was to keep making the next right decision.

Sometimes that meant changing the route.

Sometimes it meant staying another night.

Sometimes it meant accepting that something we hoped to accomplish simply wasn’t going to happen.

And sometimes the first right move was nothing more complicated than pulling into a rest area, sleeping for a few hours, and figuring out the rest in the morning.

We Learned What We Actually Need

One reason I wanted to do this was to test the idea of working from an RV for an extended period.

Not theoretically.

Actually do it.

That’s an important distinction.

It’s easy to imagine what you would need.

Living it tells you what you actually need.

Reliable internet matters more than I thought.

Electrical redundancy matters.

Workspace matters.

The ability to separate from each other for a while matters when two people have been sharing roughly 200 square feet for weeks.

A good truck matters. A lot.

And after living in our Mallard for this long, I have a much better understanding of what I’d want in a future RV. I’m increasingly convinced a fifth wheel may make sense for us someday, not because we need something enormous, but because I’ve learned where a little more usable living and working space would make a meaningful difference.

Those lessons would have been difficult to get from YouTube videos and RV forums.

Sometimes you have to run the experiment.

The Relationships Were the Best Part

Looking back, I don’t think the places are what I’ll remember most.

I’ll remember the people.

Some were people we’ve known for years. Others were relationships that became stronger because we finally had the opportunity to sit together without rushing to the next thing.

There is something different about being able to say, “We’re going to be in your part of the country. Let’s figure something out.”

That happened over and over again.

Professional relationships became personal conversations.

Old friendships picked up where they left off.

New possibilities emerged that never would have happened through another Zoom meeting or email exchange.

That’s difficult to put on a spreadsheet.

It’s also probably one of the most valuable outcomes of the entire trip.

There Was Another Experiment Happening Too

Somewhere along the way, I realized we weren’t only testing an RV.

I think I was testing a different way of living.

For much of my adult life, my calendar was dictated by someone else.

The Army told me where to live and when to move.

Jobs told me when to be in the office.

Conferences told me when to get on airplanes.

Responsibilities created structure, and I became very good at operating inside that structure.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

But this summer felt different.

We had obligations. We had deadlines. We had places we needed to be.

But between those fixed points was an unusual amount of freedom.

We could stay.

We could leave.

We could reroute.

We could work from a campground in New Hampshire, a farm in New York, a winery in Virginia, or somewhere alongside the interstate.

That freedom comes with responsibility. Work still has to get done. Bills still have to get paid. Relationships still require attention. A travel trailer still has tanks that need emptied and things that inexplicably stop working.

But for a few weeks, I got a glimpse of what it might look like to design more of my life instead of simply scheduling it.

I liked it.

So, Was the Experiment Successful?

Absolutely.

Not because everything went according to plan.

Almost nothing does.

It was successful because we learned.

We learned what works.

We learned what doesn’t.

We learned what equipment we need, how much space we need, how we work together on the road, and how much travel is too much travel.

We learned that business and adventure don’t necessarily have to be separate chapters of life.

We learned that some of the best opportunities happen in the spaces between the things you originally put on the calendar.

And I was reminded that time is moving whether we use it intentionally or not.

That’s probably the biggest lesson I’m carrying home.

I don’t want to spend my life waiting for someday.

There will always be another reason to wait.

This summer, we didn’t.

We hooked up the trailer, pointed the truck east, and ran the experiment.

It wasn’t perfect.

It wasn’t always easy.

But it worked.

And somewhere along those thousands of miles, I think the question changed.