Hello, friends, family, and fellow digital nomads!
Thank you for visiting Our Working Vacation! Currently we are traveling the United States as digital nomads, with plans to go abroad soon, and want to share our experiences along the way. Michael will continue to work his full-time job with GoDaddy and building our side business of developing websites. Onalea will be doing the web design and content creation for the websites. We are on a budget and plan on spending less than $3,000 a month for food and lodging.
One City at a Time
We are excited to enter life as Digital Nomads! We will be taking on one city at a time for the next year. Once the year is over, we will decide if we want to keep going or if it’s time to retire the suitcases.
We met in November of 1999, we started dating pretty much the day we met. We got married in 2005. We have been through health issues, two natural disasters, good times and bad. With all that we have learned navigating through each of those instances we know we make a good team and can rely on each other to make it through whatever comes our way.
Over the years we have taken trips which include our honeymoon in Cancun, Mexico. Weekend trips to places like St. Louis, MO, Omaha, NE, Kansas City, Mo, Chicago, Il, and more. A 3-week vacation in 2015, to Memphis, TN, then to New Orleans, LA, next stop was Tallahassee, FL, then onto Orlando, FL, then we drove on A1A north to several more cities. Through his work, Michael has traveled to places like Niles, OH and Vancouver, Canada.
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
– C.S. Lewis.
Health Issues
Michael is bionic! Well, not quite. He was one of the youngest people to have both knees totally replaced. The surgeries were both in 2012, one in late spring and then again in late summer, he was 33.
Onalea was diagnosed in 2015 with Congestive Heart Failure, at age 38, she also had a heart-attack that same year. In total there has been 6 stents placed in her heart, she is on a medicine regiment that helps her condition.
Natural Disasters
2008: Our house was totaled due to a flood. The water filled our basement and came up above my head on the 1st floor. As we slowly drained the basement family and friends showed up to help with the clean-up. Then when the water was gone, and we were able to see the damage in the basement it was evident that the best choice was to stop clean up and figure out what was next.
2020: Our house and garage were damaged due to a Derecho. The winds were over 100 MPH, our town and surrounding areas had millions of dollars’ worth of damage. We had less damage than most, we are still waiting for some repairs.
How We Became Full-Time Travelers
Traveling and living in different places has always been a dream for Michael, Onalea loves to travel, but is ready to be home afterwards.
2020 comes along and there we were cooped up in our house for so long! Michael started making hints of travelling as he knew he’d have to approach it slowly to Onalea, (you know, make it her ideal) it didn’t take her long to be agreeable.
We made a trip to visit Michael’s parents and sister and her family in February 2021 and found we were able to get our work done easily away from home. We stayed for a week and came home to frozen pipes. There was no end in sight for the cold so back to his parents we went.
This not being home became more appealing day by day, we decided to try out an Airbnb in Tennessee had a good time.
To do lists were made, things are being crossed off! We left for our first adventure, with plans to be home in several weeks to finish off that to do list so our new roommate can have her space. Read more…