About

How Did We Get Here?

Once upon a time, there were two extremely overworked people who loved to travel.

Their careers kept them hopping, but once or twice a year they would take a week and drive down to the Outer Banks and rent a big house on the offseason with some other couples, or drive down to the Blue Ridge for hiking, or drive to see trilliums bloom in the Smokies. Never too far; because time and money was limited (and after their son was born money was very tight indeed) and there were always other places they wanted to see. So they saved their pennies and their precious vacation days and parsed out travel as best they could—a week here, a weekend there—and counted down the days on their personal calendars until they were free again.

Later the couple got promotions and more vacation time, and they started expanding their list of destinations. In 2003 they flew to Belize in January and drove up to Nova Scotia in August, and it opened their eyes to the endless potential of international travel. They were still on a budget, but every trip taught them more about how to make the money go farther; and when they splurged (Paris, Rome) the following few vacations were much more modest. (Full disclosure: Paris still wrecked their finances for several years. All those museums. All that fabulous food.)

At last, the couple grew ready to retire. While they had accumulated through careful planning and a whole lot of luck a nice nest egg, they would have to travel on a budget again if they wanted to see the world. And they did want to. Now there was time to do it right; to really see all the places instead of just blitzing through them at breakneck speed because they had to be back on Monday for that presentation. And so they devised a plan to slowly wend their way through the world; to spend a month here and six weeks there. And so-- these are the voyages of Bill and Raine.

Our five-year mission: to explore our strange old world. To seek out local life and people and food. To (slowly, carefully, don’t throw your knee out again) go everywhere people on a budget can go.