The Plan

Kyle and I like to make plans/dreams and be pretty specific with them. We feel it is a great form of manifesting and has always worked for us in the past. That being said, we make these plans with intentions to follow them, but also to be open to any changes/opportunities we feel suited for us along the way. With that, I will share our “two+ year plan” below.

When we leave in October we will head South towards the Florida Keys. We will then head back up towards Ft. Lauderdale before making our crossing to the Bahamas at the end of November. Arriving in the Bahamas we will explore the Abacos for a few weeks before we head to Nassau where we will meet my parents to celebrate Christmas 2019 together. After Christmas I will be getting off the boat for 1 month and heading to Paradise Island, which is connected to Nassau by a bridge. There I will be living and completing an intensive 30 day Yoga Teacher Training Course (200hr. RYS). Kyle might join me for a week and take a week long course at the center, or he will sail the surrounding islands for a month either single handed or with a friend/s that fly in for a couple weeks to join him.

When the course is over we will leave the Nassau area and head South. Our plans are pretty open for the months of February, March, and April of 2020. We plan to explore the Exumas, the endless uninhabited Bahamian islands, and then will make it to the Turks and Caicos to hopefully meet up with some more friends and family. By the middle of May we will end up in a small bay in the Dominican Republic called Luperon. Here we have arranged to keep the boat for 6 months during hurricane season (June-November). We will be paying a marina to keep an eye on her while we are gone and just have to hope and pray no major hurricanes come through 😉 Fortunately Luperon is rather protected from major storms, and the marina has 24hr security and is set up to keep boats during hurricane season as it is common for cruisers to leave their boats for 6 months in the off season. There is always going to be risk in leaving the boat and we understand those risks. But with proper planning and execution the risks become minimal and well worth the freedom to explore elsewhere during hurricane season.

That brings us to May of 2020 when we will fly from the D.R. to Peru. I have always wanted to backpack the Cordillera Blanca in Peru and Kyle has always wanted to ride motorcycles in South America- so why not combine the two! We plan to purchase used motorcycles when we arrive in Peru and explore the country that way- riding motorcycles and taking breaks to go backpacking. We will each have our own motorcycle as I do not like being the passenger 🙂  I am sure you can imagine endless hours of research has gone into this trip, as well as talking to friends we have in Peru and we are both extremely excited to visit South America in this way. We have spent a lot of hours researching all the gear and are almost done purchasing our head to toe riding gear.

After Peru (around September of 2020) we will fly back to the United States for a couple months and begin working on the property in Virginia. Which I guess now is the time to introduce the property in Virginia 😉 Last year my parents purchased 15 acres of land in a small town of Virginia just outside of Bristol, TN/VA. While a bit hilly, the property is pretty awesome. There is a big creek that runs right through the front of the property, it is tucked away far from the road, is surrounded by mountains, and is located in a spot that is very secluded yet only 25 minutes to a big city. Also there is a place just down the road that has traditional live bluegrass music every Saturday night.. which Kyle and I are thrilled about. Anyway, the deal is that Kyle and I spend the hurricane seasons developing the property and putting up the buildings, in return we will own half of the property. My parents are building a small round cabin/ house (sort of like a yurt but not a tent- has hard sides and is much more house like- see: https://www.smilingwoodsyurts.com/). There will also be a really cool shop made with a converted shipping container, a wrap around porch on the house, a fenced in area for the dogs, and a view of the creek and mountains. This part of the project will take about 4 years of 6 months at a time development. Kyle and I have plans for our own homestead on the other half of the property. The property is set up in a way that we can have our own area without being able to see my parents’ dwelling. It will be like being neighbors but still having the privacy of living in the woods surrounded by trees 🙂 Kyle and I aren’t quite sure what kind of dwelling we want, so for the first while we are going to build something like this:

Which I honestly am SO excited about. I have always wanted to live in the mountains in a little wall tent. There is a lot more to this project in terms of permits, planning, zoning, rules, land development, etc but I will save all of that for when it is actually happening. So basically Kyle and I will sail for 6 months of the year and then live in Virginia exploring and developing land for 6 months during hurricane seasons. We are thrilled about this idea because we have always said we wanted to do 6 months on the boat and 6 months in the mountains- and now 6 years later we are making that a reality!

Alright, well this has been quite the update, and now I feel I can start using this blog as I did on the river. More of sharing the journey along the way rather than a catch-up and update. I won’t be posting as much as I did on the river, but am going to make a goal of posting 2 times a month until we leave. Once we leave in October sometimes I will post more and sometimes I will post less depending on internet connection and availability.

Kyle and I have had a dream board since the first few months of our dating 6 years ago. For a while it was full of graduation stuff and buying a new boat. Then once those things happened it was about getting out of debt and building a boat to take down the Mississippi River. Then that happened and it was about making enough money to refit Sirocco. Now that has happened and our dream board is filled with pictures of far away places and adventures we can’t wait to have. I am sharing a picture of our dream board because Kyle and I both believe whole-heartedly that this board and other forms of manifesting are a big part of how we are able to live the life we do. I encourage each and every person to have a dream board. Put it somewhere you look at it every day and don’t think any dreams are too big or too far-fetched. (Do you know how insane I thought it was that we would ever be able to build a boat and actually take it on the river?? We put that on the board TWO years before we even started building the boat!) I also am sharing a map of our tentative plans in case anyone wants to come meet/join us for any of our adventures. We would love to meet up with anyone who wants to (even if we’ve never met!) and this gives an idea of where/when we will be different places! Anyway, onward and upward.

Danielle