For years, I had a running list in my head of places I wanted to see someday.

National parks. Desert landscapes. Mountains. Historic places. Weird roadside stops. Small towns. Places I had seen in photographs and thought, Maybe one day.

The problem was that “one day” never felt very real.

Aside from living briefly in Eugene, Oregon, about 30 years ago and making the drive back and forth across the country, I had seen surprisingly little of America. I knew there was this enormous country beyond the places I saw every day, but actually exploring it felt like something other people did.

People with more money.
People with more freedom.
People whose lives somehow came with fewer complications.

At that point in my life, the idea of something bigger felt almost impossible to believe in.

Then I met Chris.

How We Became Travel Buddies

Chris and I met in 2014.

He had already traveled through the Southwest a couple of times before we met, so he had seen more of that part of the country than I had. But he had never really had someone he could claim as his travel buddy.

Then he got me.

Poor guy had no idea what he was getting into.

I already had years worth of places stored in my head, and once I realized I finally had somebody who actually wanted to go see them with me, that imaginary bucket list started looking a whole lot more possible.

We started traveling together in 2015.

Our first big trip together was much of New Mexico and parts of southern Arizona.

Our first stop was Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where thousands of images carved into volcanic rock preserve stories left behind hundreds of years ago.

And just like that, something that had lived in my head for years became real.

We were actually out there.

We were seeing it.

Our First Road Trip Together

That first trip took us from Petroglyph National Monument to Bandelier NM to Los Alamos and then Capulin Volcano NM, Salinas Pueblo Missions, Fort Craig Historic Site, Valley of Fires Recreation Area, White Sands NP, Carlsbad Caverns NP, Guadalupe Mountains NP, Prehistoric Trackways NM, Fort Bowie National NHS,  Chiricahua NM, Tombstone Historic Park, Coronado NM, and Saguaro NP.

I don’t think either of us knew at the time that we were establishing a pattern that would become such a huge part of our lives.

We were just traveling.
Stopping.
Looking.
Exploring.
Taking the road that looked interesting.
Pulling over because one of us saw a sign.

Learning that sometimes the thing you almost drive past becomes the part of the trip you talk about years later.

Since then, we have made it a point to take at least one big adventure every year, with plenty of smaller adventures squeezed in between.

And those smaller trips matter just as much.

Because travel does not have to mean boarding a plane for another continent or disappearing for three weeks.

Sometimes it is a national monument.
Sometimes it is a historic downtown.
Sometimes it is a scenic road, a diner, a battlefield, a lighthouse, a train, a state park or some completely hilarious roadside attraction that makes you say, “Well, since we’re already here…”

We Never Do Anything

Eventually our running joke became the name of this whole thing.

“We never do anything.”

Which is particularly ridiculous coming from two people who are almost always planning something, driving somewhere, wandering through something or trying to figure out whether we can fit one more stop into a day that already has nine stops.

That became We Never Do Anything.

Not because we believe everybody needs to travel the way we do.

Not because we think you need to collect national parks or rack up states or build the perfect bucket list.

It is because somewhere along the way we realized how easy it is to keep postponing your own life.

And I had already spent enough years doing that.

Why We Refuse to Wait Until Retirement to Travel

I am the deep and emotional one in this relationship.

Chris can confirm this.

And one thing I cannot shake is the idea that there is far too much to see in this world to spend decades waiting for the biggest scam we were ever sold:

Retirement.

Not retirement itself.

The idea that retirement is when life finally begins.

Work now.
Save everything.
Put off the trip.
Put off the dream.Put off the thing you’ve wanted to do for 20 years because someday, when you retire, there will magically be enough money, enough time, enough health and enough energy to finally start living the life you kept postponing.

Maybe there will be.
Maybe there won’t.

We are not guaranteed that version of someday.
We aren’t even guaranteed tomorrow.

That doesn’t mean we throw responsibility out the window and spend every dime we have.

It means we decided that our lives could not be built entirely around preparing for a future we may or may not get.

No, We Are Not Wealthy Travelers

This is probably the biggest misconception about people who travel frequently.

We are not wealthy.
There is no trust fund.
There is no secret pile of money financing our road trips.
We are two pretty simple people who have decided what matters to us.

Some people want the newest car.
Some want a massive house.
Some want expensive clothes, luxury everything or a bank balance big enough to stare at lovingly every night before bed.

Give me a mountain.
Give Chris a road map.
Give us a national park, a historic site, a strange roadside attraction and somewhere decent to eat afterward.

We would rather climb a mountain than sit on a mountain of money waiting for “that day.”

Money matters.
Of course it does.
But money can be earned again.
Money can be saved again.
Money can be replaced.

Time cannot.

And neither can the exact version of a moment you let pass.

Travel Has Changed the Way We See America

When you start exploring America by road, something happens.

The map stops being a collection of state lines and highway numbers.
Places become stories.
New Mexico becomes more than a state you fly over.
Arizona becomes more than the Grand Canyon.
A random town becomes the place where somebody told you a story you still repeat five years later.
A roadside stop becomes an inside joke.
A national monument you had barely heard of becomes one of the reasons you want to keep traveling.

The big destinations are wonderful.
We love them.

But some of the best parts of our trips have happened between the places we originally thought we were going to see.

That is one reason road trips became such a huge part of how we travel.

There is room for curiosity.

And we are very curious people.

Stop Saving Every Adventure for Someday

There will always be a reason not to go.

Work.
Money.
Schedules.
Family obligations.
The house.
The dog.
The weather.
The fact that you are tired.
The fact that planning a trip sometimes feels like another full time job… by the way… Chris can help you here 😉

Life will happily fill every available space you give it.

At some point, you have to decide that your life deserves some space too.

That does not mean booking an expensive cross country trip tomorrow.

Start small.
Go somewhere two hours away that you have always driven past.
Visit the national monument you have never bothered to stop at.
Take the scenic road.
Spend the weekend in the little town you keep saying you want to visit.
Finally go see the place that has been sitting on your bucket list for 15 years.

Your adventure does not need to look like ours.

It just needs to stop existing entirely in your imagination.

The Real Reason We Keep Going

Chris and I started traveling together in 2015.

What began with one trip became another.
And another.
And another.

Big adventures started collecting smaller adventures around them.

Some trips went exactly according to plan.
Others absolutely did not.
We’ve gotten tired.
We’ve gotten lost.
We’ve crammed far too much into a day.
We’ve changed routes because I saw something interesting on a sign.
We’ve stood in places that photographs could never adequately explain.
And we have built a life filled with memories that neither of us would have if we had decided to wait for the perfect time.

That is what matters to me.

At some point, every one of us runs out of time.

We all arrive here the same way, and eventually we all leave.

What happens in between is the part we actually get to choose.

So while we can still walk the trails, take the road trips, climb the mountains, laugh at the ridiculous stops and wonder what is around the next curve, we’re going.

There is too much out there not to.

And if there is one idea behind We Never Do Anything, it is probably this:

Do not wait for someday to start making memories. Someday is not a date on the calendar.

Go see something.
Even if it is close to home.
Even if it is small.
Even if nobody else understands why you want to see it.
Because money can be replaced.
Things can be replaced.
Plans can change.

But time only moves in one direction.

And we’d rather spend ours seeing what is out there.

Come Along With Us

We Never Do Anything follows our road trips across America, national parks and monuments, historic places, small towns, roadside attractions, scenic drives, local food and all the unexpected stops that somehow find their way into the itinerary.

Sometimes we know exactly where we’re going.

Sometimes curiosity wins.

Usually, it is a little of both.

And after more than a decade of traveling together, our bucket list somehow keeps getting longer instead of shorter.

Which sounds like a pretty good problem to have.