When booking our flights from Male, Maldives to Singapore, Tim discovered that we had a 12 hour layover in Kuala Lumpur. With a bit of research we discovered that Americans could enter Malaysia without a visa so upon arrival we filled out our arrivals card, passed through immigration and headed out to explore Kuala Lumpur!

I’m writing this while sitting at a glass desk, watching the fish swim beneath my feet (yes, the floor is glass as well) and thinking about the last 4 days we’ve spent at the Conrad Rangali Island resort in the Maldives. This has been my bucket list trip for years…to stay in an overwater bungalow in one of the most gorgeous places on earth…and it completely lived up to the hype and all my expectations.

After being on the road for over a week, our first multi-night stay was at Dixon Lake Recreation Area, just outside of San Diego, California. We had two sets of friends to visit in San Diego so we stayed for two nights.

For those of you who don’t know, I was adopted. My parents have always been very open and honest with my sister and me about our adoptions, and have always supported us if we ever decided we wanted to search out our birth parents. This is my story of exactly how that happened after setting out on full-time RV travel.

Back in late November, I was quickly approaching my retirement date, and wanted to send my “farewell” letter to those I was leaving behind at Lynden. It helps to explain why Jamie and I are doing what we are doing by selling our house and traveling the country in our RV full-time. I also hope it helps inspire others, not necessarily to do what we are doing , but to move forward in life being true to their authentic self.

After setting out on our journey to Tampa, our first stop was at Cape Flattery. Well technically it was the second as we got a late start and ended up spending the night at Neah Bay first.

While we were planning our trip to Spain, we decided to visit Valencia after our stays in Madrid and Alarcon. While looking up hotels, we were oddly surprised by how expensive the rooms were for a random night in March. Upon further investigation we discovered that the dates we had chosen fell during the Fallas Festival. Upon even further investigation of what the Fallas Festival was, we decided to extend our stay by a day to see it through to its conclusion. What is the Fallas Festival you may be wondering?

After spending 48 hours exploring Madrid and walking almost 20 miles, we picked up our rental car and drove 2 hours southwest to Alarcon. Alarcon is a tiny town on a hill, surrounded by a river. The entire town sits inside mediaval walls and there’s a castle, which you can actually stay at!

After spending 5 days in my home counry of Scotland for a cousins wedding, we jumped on an EasyJet flight and headed to Spain! This was Tim’s first ever EasyJet flight and thankfully it went smoothly. Both of our bags we allowed in the cabin so we didn’t have to check anything which was nice!

To get us in the Christmas spirit we decided to drive 2.5 hours north of Seattle to Vancouver where we saw they were having a Christmas Market!

Our final park of the trip was Lassen Volcanic National Park. After driving for four hours we arrived at the park just before lunch. We stopped for a bite to eat in the visitor center parking lot before heading out to explore. We found some smelly bubbly puddles, some stunning lakes and a lot of trees.

Our penultimate park for the trip was Yosemite and it was perhaps the park we were most excited to see. It definitely lived up to the hype and we will for sure be visiting again!

After a very short visit to Sequoia National Park we drove up and around to Kings Canyon and got to see the second largest tree in the world!

After 3 days parked up and exploring Zion National Park, we hit the road again and drove through a couple states to get to Death Valley. We spent the night just outside the park at The Pads, an awesome dispersed camping site that we highly recommend if you're in the area! In the morning we headed out into the park and spent a few hours exploring all the highs and lows the park has to offer.

For our second day at the park we spent the whole day doing the Narrows canyon hike

Since we knew our second day at Zion would be spent hiking the Narrows, we spent our first day exploring everything else the park has to offer. To explore any of the park inside the scenic drive route, you now need a ticket for the shuttle in advance. They go ridiculously fast so make sure to get yours as soon as they go on sale if you're planning a trip!