Post Script

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New York Times Article, Nov. 27, 2005 Click Here to read.

The view from our new home.

Alright one last note.
I am thrilled to report that Dan and I have fully assimilated to our new surroundings and more traditional lifestyle. We have successfully completed re-entry. For a while there we were worried about burning up, but the warning lights and buzzers seem to have been greatly exaggerated.

I lasted all of two weeks at my first job. Truth be told, after the first two hours I knew it was a bad fit. But once again the stars were aligned and through a chance meeting I secured an interview for a not-yet-listed job opening with Aspen Skiing Company and got hired on the spot. Somehow I have dumb-lucked my way into my perfect job. One that blends the things I already know how to do, with the chance to continue learning and gain real life experience in the field of marketing, (which is what my degree is in). And it is for a skiing company!

Dan is busy saving lives. He has had to adjust to adding “what illegal drugs have you taken today and is there any silicone in your body that I should know about”, to his laundry list of pre-treatment questions, but otherwise it was like riding a bicycle, everything just came back to him. He has been offered a job on Aspen Highlands ski patrol, which he is very excited about. Highlands’ is a prestigious patrol and he’ll get to throw bombs, in the name of avalanche mitigation, which is every man’s dream now isn’t it.


With much assistance from our friends we have secured housing. While the home is not much to speak of, the views would make it worthwhile even if there were only an outhouse and fire pit for creature comforts. Every weekend has found us biking and hiking in the beautiful forest lands around here. We hiked from Aspen to Crested Butte for lunch one day, an 11 mile hike with a 90 mile car ride back to the starting point. Most recently we have been hiking to see the fall foliage which is like watching a wave of fire sway across the sky. Flaming yellows, oranges and reds, intermixed with bright green, the stark grays of granite and the white of freshly fallen snow. If you have never visited Colorado in the fall, what’s keeping you?


The Maroon Belles, along the trail to Crested Butte.

Our lives here are so full that I really don’t miss traveling. I walk past the camper everyday and wave at it like you would an old friend. Sometimes I do miss the compactness of it, like when I have to get out of bed to brush my teeth, or start the coffee maker, but mostly it is just a great reminder of how lucky I am, and how I need to never forget it.


The crest between Aspen and Crested Butte.

I really have become a happier, more confident and, I think, better person because of this trip. If possible I adore my husband even more than when we left, and I have managed to fold the sense of adventure that came with being in a new place everyday, into being in the same place, (albeit still a new place to me). I have been taking lots of photos, it is easy to be inspired with the views we have and on the route I drive to work each morning. Dan has been busy keeping off the weight he lost when he was ill by riding long bike trails and hiking every chance he gets. I am channeling my inner Italian mother, force feeding him every fattening thing I can find. (In my mind a man who is 6’2” tall should not weigh 155lbs!)


Avalanche chute along Avalanche Creek, outside of Redstone, Colorado.

I truly appreciate all of the emails I have received asking us to continue the blog, but I just think it has reached a nice, tidy, ending point. If anything that really pertains to it pops up I may put some quick snippets on here, but otherwise I thank you all for a fantastic ride and wish that each of you will enjoy a journey of your own, sooner rather than later. I hope that you will continue to fill us in on your lives, so many of you have become our friends and mentors along the way, and it brings a smile to my face when I know that we helped someone plan their trip, or inspired someone to follow a similar path.
Again thank you.

El Fin

“It’s true; life really is generous to those who pursue their Personal Legend, the boy thought. Then he remembered that he had to get to Tarifa so he could give one-tenth of his treasure to the Gypsy woman as he had promised. “Those Gypsies are really smart”, he thought. Maybe it was because they moved around so much.”
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

If you asked what was the biggest err we made during this trip I would have to say it was our lack of an exit plan. We honestly believed that somewhere along the way we would have a great epiphany. “Aha!…this is the place, and what? You want to give us high paying fulfilling and infrequent employment. Well alrighty then.”

Except that isn’t what happened. Instead we spent the last month foundering. Even without the unfortunate events that we have been bombarded with, we would have been lost during this time. Most people seem to assume this is because we never want the trip to end, but really that isn’t it. You see Dan and I are task/goal oriented people; we set out to travel for a year and we did it! Now it is time to move on to the next adventure and we are both eager to get that started. The problem really stems from our lack of decisiveness. Somehow over the last year we have developed a serious case of co-dependency, so much so that if we cannot both reach the same conclusion at the same point, then we are rendered powerless to make any decisions.

However, I am happy to report that even with this disorder and the drama that has distracted us oh these past few weeks, we have made our decisions and we are ending our trip on a high note. Next week we are moving to Ahhhspen. Now I realize that since virtually no one voted for Ahhhspen in our on-line poll, this may come as a small surprise. But, here’s what we learned this past year and what led us to the Roaring Fork Valley.

We needed to find a town that allowed us to balance career and recreation. Aspen is surrounded by world class skiing, mountain biking, fly fishing, hiking, rafting, kayaking etc… And unlike some smaller towns Aspen has a booming economy and a veritable plethora of career options. Dan walked right into a job on the ambulance (he is, after all, the golden child, they hadn’t hired a paramedic in over five years and the very day someone quits he knocks on the ambulance bay door), and I got hired in the marketing department at The Ritz Carlton. We have secured housing and, save for my need to procure a car in the next week, we are right back into a “normal lifestyle”.

Among the harsh realities of re-entry is learning to embrace debt once again. Remember how I told you all early on that we are not independently wealthy? Well that is really crimping our style right now. We did plan enough to have not touched our savings account during this year, and we budgeted for a month or two extra in order to get re-established. But no matter, we are going to have to buy a car and soon a home.

What amuses me about this is that we lived a hedonistic, adventurous, dream lifestyle for an entire year, total cost approximately $20,000. In order to live in Aspen, drive a car and buy a one-bedroom condo the cost is approximately $30,000 a year, and that is just for the car and condo, add food, clothing, commuting etc. and we could travel for at least another two years!!! The American Dream is EXPENSIVE!

But I digress and we aren’t done RV-ing just yet. Our house in Aspen won’t be available until September 1, so for the next two weeks we will be living in our RV. Don’t you just love the visual of me exiting the camper in my business suit to go to my job at the Ritz? You can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.


Time to reflect:
What a gift this blog has been, I can read back through this site for years to come and be reminded of how truly fortunate I am. I just got to spend an entire year with my best friend, experiencing some of the world’s most beautiful places. I pushed personal boundaries almost daily, allowing me to grow more confident and I hope more interesting. I learned first hand about geography, history, biology and culture. My belief that people are inherently good and generous was re-affirmed day after day. I had the opportunity to renew friendships and to spend quality time with my most cherished friends. Because of our trip, friends of ours and my parents got to see parts of Mexico that they had never been exposed to before, and I got to speak another language every day for three months.

And maybe, just maybe we have inspired someone we don’t even know to do what we did. I swear it is easy once you set your mind to it, I am hard pressed to think of anything that wcould ever be so rewarding and educational. Quit your jobs, rent out your houses and buy an RV, do it NOW, not when you are old enough to wish you’d done it before. Spend a year getting to know your mate and yourself. Leave the TV at home and read every book you always said you would. Ride your bike, hike or just stop the car and appreciate everything from the engineering feats that create roads like Beartooth and Red Mountain passes, to the smallest creature along the your path. Emerge from your trip embracing the kinder, gentler and more gracious person you’ve become. Know that whenever normal life gets you down you have something extraordinary to reflect upon and to make you smile. Take the time to make yourself better by allowing yourself to be different. You too can be an Under Aged RVer, even at 75, it is a state of mind, more than an age range. And when you do hit the road, create a blog and tell us all about it, you’ll be amazed how rewarding it will be.


Que les vaya bien.
Dan and Rachel Goddard


p.s. For Sale: 2000 Lance 810 Light Camper, slightly used ;)
p.p.s. We were interviewed by the New York Times the other day, when I know a publication date I will post it on here.

A Hitch in the Giddy Up

This is not quite the end...

Just when we thought things were going to settle down, life throws us another curve ball. Dan returned last week from his whirlwind tour of Thailand. His sister is doing really well and we are very relieved that she is safe and healing. Dan on the other hand seems to have brought home a nasty virus, most likely Dengue Fever. Dengue is also known as Broken Bone Fever, since the accompanying joint and bone pain is excruciating. After eight hours in the ER and a follow up visit with an Infectious Disease Specialist, we now know that whatever it is, it will just have to run its course and all we can do is keep him doped up and comfortable. I really wanted to post a picture of him administering his own IV of saline, but he refused to let me photograph him.

In the midst of all of this chaos we have made a few decisions. We have both found employment in Aspen and will be moving there over the next couple of weeks. That is assuming Dan can stand up by then.

Our trip has come to an end in a rough and abrupt manner. While I have not had the time to reflect that I had wanted I can’t just simply say goodbye to you all or to this site. So instead I will simply say Que les vaya bien. And I will do my best to finish this blog with a follow-up in a few weeks, letting you all know where exactly we have landed and more about what we have learned.

Que les vaya bien = [may you] travel well.

Never a Dull Moment

On our way back to Durango we hit a few detours. The first was in Chicago. Now if you draw a straight line from Cincinnati to Durango you do not go through Chicago so this was an unplanned detour. We were just outside of Indianapolis when Dan’s mom called to inform him that he may need to go to Thailand. Dan’s sister, Tracy, had had a bad accident in her home there and needs his help to come back here for further treatment.

On this occasion I am reminded how proud I am of my husband's chosen profession, he is a paramedic. The doctors in Thailand only agreed to release Tracy to him because he is a medic and can care for her on the return flights. One problem however… Dan’s passport expired on June 20th. Public Service Announcement: NEVER let your passport expire. Many calls to the State Department, US Embassy in Thailand, an entire day in the Chicago Federal Building and Dan has a new passport.

Special thanks to Marc and Heather, our friends who put us up on three-hours notice and held our hands through the trains and throngs to get us to the right office. To our other loved ones in the Windy City, please accept our most humble apologies for not seeing you too, but I know you’ll forgive us given the circumstances.



Once that task had been handled we entered a “hurry up and wait” phase. Hurry to get into Colorado so that if Dan had to fly out I’d have a place to stay, and wait because we didn’t know when or if he’d be going. By Monday we still didn’t know so we detoured to Aspen for some job interviews. Tuesday at noon we got the call and raced to Durango, one more hectic preparation day and he was off. This morning he left for the 26-hour flight to Bangkok where he will meet his sister in the International Hospital there, help her settle some details and lovingly return her to her family, where she can heal and recover. Thailand is her home however, so she won’t be here for too long I don’t imagine.



I am resting in the veritable lap of luxury that is our friends’ Bob and Sherry’s house. You may remember them from the “Mexican Prank Wars of December 2004”. Bob is a dentist and he and Sherry are off charitably donating their time to help those in need of dentistry in Peru, before hiking the Inca trail and otherwise touring the country. While they are gone we are house sitting and watching after their oh-so-lovable dog Mailo, who is my protector while Dan is away.

It would be repetitive to gush yet again about how amazingly generous everyone is to us, so instead I will just say thank you.



Assuming all goes smoothly for Dan and his sister, he and I should be moving to a new house and beginning new jobs (thus ending this chapter), by August 1st.

Beginning of the End.

The beginnings of a plan are starting to take hold. After two weeks in Ohio, we are ready to hit the road again. And where are we heading, you might be asking?? Well it isn’t very original but, we are off for Colorado. Seems home for us lies in the Rocky Mountains and no matter how we try and rationalize it, we love Colorado more than the opportunities that a new place might present. Tomorrow morning we hit the interstate for the 30-hour drive west.

We will be traveling for the remainder of July, then the trip money really has run out and we must settle back into a more conventional lifestyle, for at least a little while. For me this isn’t a sad time, a bit crazy and unsure, but not sad. We have always been very task oriented. We set out to travel for a year and accomplished that goal. What an amazing year it has been. So instead of being sad, this is a celebratory time and I intend to keep that theme throughout my last remaining posts.

Over the course of the next few weeks, it is my intention to reflect upon our trip, perhaps list some mistakes, some triumphs and even a few humorous antidotes that will help to close this chapter and perhaps help one of you begin your own. Who knows, maybe we still have one or two more adventures left to enjoy before we find our new home.

Let me take this opportunity to start thanking those who have helped us along the way, beginning with all of you who read this site. It seems that I failed miserably at being unemployed, so I created a job for myself along the way. Maintaining this site has been so much fun for me. I thank all of you for keeping me motivated and helping to create this lasting record of our journey.

The generosity shown to us by strangers whose acquaintance we made only through emails, has been overwhelming. Over forty people emailed us with offers of free lodging, meals or Pabst Blue Ribbon. Many offered advice, solicited or not, but always read and considered. Some of you taught us things we really needed to know, like how to go clamming, how to repair our fridge, batteries, and heater, where to camp and where to avoid. You even helped us decided where to move.


And in the tradition of Bud Light commercials… We salute you, faceless travel blog reader. You aren’t afraid to correct our spelling and historical errors. You freely offer advice and are willing to wait days or weeks for a reply email. You click the ads and you, faceless blog reader, have helped us to stay on the road and realize our dream. Thank you.