Our Family of 5 welcomes you to share our 15 months of traveling the US, Europe and Asia in our self-built RV Shachagra.
Use the tabs at the top to follow our day by day travels (The Odyssey;Trip Narrative) or to find out more about our trip and RV.
Why let school stand in the way of a great education?
Our unique opportunity to pull the children out of school for a year of travel just couldn't be missed and so launched our RV Odyssey, a quest to educate our three "Road Scholars."
We traveled on three continents and through 20 countries, south from the Scottish Highlands to the borders of Syria and Iraq before turning back northwest to the Fjords of Norway.
We held "class" in over 130 museums, ranging in size from the British Museum with its treasures from the world over, to household goods in a few rooms of a beautiful Ottoman Mansion in Ohrid Macedonia.
Our "field trips" included over 60 ruins, from the remains of Cistercian Monasteries plundered by Henry VIII, to the surviving evidence of the ancient Silk Road, including the bridge across the Tigris River in Hasankeyf Turkey.
We pondered religious differences and their effect on our world today at over 50 holy sites, from the birthplace of Abraham, to the footsteps of Saint Paul, stuck by similarity in concept, difference in detail between religions.
We laid siege to 33 castles, from William the Conquerer's "Key to England," Dover Castle on the South Coast of England, , to Mahmut's Mamure Castle on the South Coast of Turkey.
We marveled at the opulence and excess enjoyed by a few at 14 palaces, yet cringed imagining the primitive conditions that even those pampered few lived in when compared to the average modern-day American.
We visited the land, villages and cities of our forefathers, paid our respects at their final resting places, looking for remainders and reminders of their lives and times, seeing the homes they lived in and the places they worked.
We are witness to the capability of man for both good and evil. We stood in awe of great works, Michelangelo's David, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and slumped in horror at Aushwitz-Birkenau, trying to understand why.
All of this from the comfort of our home.
This is the chronology of our families year on the road with some additional details about the self-built home on wheels that made in possible.
I am building this site for my children, so they have a place to go and trigger those great memories of our year traveling. I was motivated to build this site to consolidate many forms of trip and build documentation; photos, videos, web forums, Facebook, posts, E-mails home and a blog from the road doomed because of slow internet in remote areas.
Our unique opportunity to pull the children out of school for a year of travel just couldn't be missed and so launched our RV Odyssey, a quest to educate our three "Road Scholars."
We traveled on three continents and through 20 countries, south from the Scottish Highlands to the borders of Syria and Iraq before turning back northwest to the Fjords of Norway.
We held "class" in over 130 museums, ranging in size from the British Museum with its treasures from the world over, to household goods in a few rooms of a beautiful Ottoman Mansion in Ohrid Macedonia.
Our "field trips" included over 60 ruins, from the remains of Cistercian Monasteries plundered by Henry VIII, to the surviving evidence of the ancient Silk Road, including the bridge across the Tigris River in Hasankeyf Turkey.
We pondered religious differences and their effect on our world today at over 50 holy sites, from the birthplace of Abraham, to the footsteps of Saint Paul, stuck by similarity in concept, difference in detail between religions.
We laid siege to 33 castles, from William the Conquerer's "Key to England," Dover Castle on the South Coast of England, , to Mahmut's Mamure Castle on the South Coast of Turkey.
We marveled at the opulence and excess enjoyed by a few at 14 palaces, yet cringed imagining the primitive conditions that even those pampered few lived in when compared to the average modern-day American.
We visited the land, villages and cities of our forefathers, paid our respects at their final resting places, looking for remainders and reminders of their lives and times, seeing the homes they lived in and the places they worked.
We are witness to the capability of man for both good and evil. We stood in awe of great works, Michelangelo's David, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and slumped in horror at Aushwitz-Birkenau, trying to understand why.
All of this from the comfort of our home.
This is the chronology of our families year on the road with some additional details about the self-built home on wheels that made in possible.
I am building this site for my children, so they have a place to go and trigger those great memories of our year traveling. I was motivated to build this site to consolidate many forms of trip and build documentation; photos, videos, web forums, Facebook, posts, E-mails home and a blog from the road doomed because of slow internet in remote areas.
This isn't a blog, it is a post trip report, my attempts at blogging took a back seat at the start of the trip and never made it back up into front. I can summarize the report. It went great.
Never in 15 months living in tight quarters with 2 teenagers and a pre-teen, did we try and kill each other, quite the opposite, our mutual respect for each other steadily grew. We were all involved in something big, and no one wanted to let the others down. My children became my friends and my respect for my wife, already considerable, grew even greater. I have always loved them all “to death,” they are great kids and have always been relatively well behaved and have listened to what we say, but our relationship changed over the miles and the exposure, today when they listen to us, they hear and understand what we’re saying- and we hear and understand them. We have also learned to enjoy each other’s company; we have fused us as a family.
This project is a work in progress and I have given myself a year to complete it. we'll see.
Never in 15 months living in tight quarters with 2 teenagers and a pre-teen, did we try and kill each other, quite the opposite, our mutual respect for each other steadily grew. We were all involved in something big, and no one wanted to let the others down. My children became my friends and my respect for my wife, already considerable, grew even greater. I have always loved them all “to death,” they are great kids and have always been relatively well behaved and have listened to what we say, but our relationship changed over the miles and the exposure, today when they listen to us, they hear and understand what we’re saying- and we hear and understand them. We have also learned to enjoy each other’s company; we have fused us as a family.
This project is a work in progress and I have given myself a year to complete it. we'll see.